Transcript of Episode 414 WP Plugins A to Z

All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. They are the complete verbatim of Marcus and John’s discussion of the weekly plugins we have reviewed.

WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #414 here.

Episode #414

John:   It’s Episode 414 and I’ve got plugins for WooCommerce Product Customization, Ordering your Posts, Cleaning up WordPress, and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!

WordPress, it’s the most popular content management and website solution on the internet. And with over 80,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the junk from the gems? Join us for a weekly unrehearsed conversation about the latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress

Plugins from A to Z.

John:   Well good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today. Coming to you direct from the Brewery Overlook in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, I’m John Overall. And I have the usual great show for you today but of course right off the top, don’t forget you can get all the show notes over at wppluginsatoz.com.

And if you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d greatly appreciate your time over at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and the iTunes Store, subscribing to the show and leaving reviews. You can also catch the show live every Thursday on YouTube where you can also subscribe to the show, check out our training videos, screen casts, and other pieces as they show up there. You can follow the show live on Twitter @wppluginsatoz. Join me on our Facebook page at wppluginsatoz.com/facebook, or you can also take a few moments and subscribe to the newsletter for more information and tidbits.

And we are pushing towards Episode 420! I’m not sure what we’re gonna do yet, but 420 is such a cool number.

All right, with all that being said, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.

Alrighty, I do have the usual great set of plugins for you today but to start off I do have a plugin that I have yet to use but thought you might want to know a little bit about it. And keep in mind, the ratings are based off descriptions, their site, and their demo if it’s available.
Today’s plugin was sent in by Brian Schofield and this is called Zakeke – I think that’s how they pronounce it – Zakeke. The names that are invented today are tough. At any rate, it’s a really interesting plugin. What it is is a cloud-based plugin that allows you – those with online stores – to do real-time product customization’s and 3D product imaging before, so their customers can make a purchase.

This allows you to set up your customers to quickly and easily create customized products, preview them in a 3D mode, and then make their purchase. It gives lots of abilities in here. It is a third-party service that interfaces with your WooCommerce system, so not having need for this, I don’t have a chance to get in there and test it. They do have a demo site where you can go check it out, see exactly what it offers. They’ve got a back-office demo on it also, so it does look like a pretty decent plugin that allows you to set up many different types of products and styles that you can sell, add your images, allow your people to do their customization’s to it.

All in all, not too bad of a looking plugin. You might want to go check this out. Go check out Zakeke – we’ll try that, Zakeke – that sounds good, and the link is in the show notes for it. I give it a 3-Dragon rating.

All right, what do we got this week in the world of WordPress news? Well, the big news this last week is WP Engine has acquired Flywheel as it moves to a $1 Billion valuation. WP Engine is moving for an IPO, you can bet your bottom dollar on that one. But what does this mean to many people out there? I myself was considering using Flywheel, but having used WP Engine, now that they own Flywheel, I might shy in another direction. It’s simply because

Flywheel sounded like it could be something for people that want a WordPress managed system that didn’t want to pay the crazy-high prices I felt WP Engine offered and the limitations.

But what’s it gonna mean for it in the end? I really don’t know, but there are a couple of good articles in the show notes today, one from TechCrunch and another one from WP Tavern, talking about this acquisition by WP Engine as they – instead of competing, just buy out their competition, which is the general way of the world; if you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em. You know, I guess if you’ve got the money, you may as well. But – and sometimes I don’t blame the people. Like if I built up a decent business and I just wanted to get out of it all, yeah, I’d sell it off and run away. At any rate, check this out. It’s a really great article in case you’re living under a rock and you hadn’t heard about it.

Another piece of information for this week, how ransomware targets WordPress websites. This is a good article to read if you’re at all concerned about the security of your WordPress website. You’ll want to go check out the link in the show notes. Go read this article here from Marketing Land. It talks about ransomware, how your site is at risk, some of the steps you can go through to ensure that you protect your site and yourself from ransomware, and a lot of it is good, basic common sense. But you’d be amazed at how even if it’s common sense can get slipped through the cracks and people get caught, you know.

I still remember as paranoid as I am, there’s been a couple of times that I’ve almost been caught just because I wasn’t reading clearly, or I was too tired. It’s real easy to slip up, no matter how cautious you are, so check it out. It could be a really great little piece of information for you.

Okay, this show currently brought to you by…

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Absolutely, and remember me for all of your WordPress needs, all the way from development to everything in between. I especially help with broken WordPress websites, fix them after they’ve been hacked, cracked, or something else has gone wrong.

And currently we are still working on a contest. We should have one here in the next week or two. I’ve got a couple of people lined up for it; I just haven’t confirmed them yet. But that is coming down the pike.

All right, next up I have for you a plugin that is very useful. Now, it’s not often needed, especially with today’s themes and the ability to set up your posts that display on the page in multiple ways and ordering. But every once in a while, which is what happened to me in the last couple of weeks, I picked up a couple of new clients and they were using an older theme, and the way their posts displayed on their site was determined by the post order in the post area – the administration area.

Well, what this plugin does for you is it allows you to go in there and customize your post order without having to change the dates on the post. It’s very useful and it allows you to create a new mix and a new layout of your posts. Very simple, it works very well. It’s got a specific page you go to and you just drag-n-drop and move the posts up and down as you see fit to which ones need to be showcased the most.
A really cool plugin, works excellently. It’s quite smooth and of course free – hey, where else are we gonna go? This is a 5-Dragon plugin.

Go check it out: Post Types Order, a really great plugin.

All right, if you would like to say something about the show, good, bad or ugly, please contact me via the Contact page, SpeakPipe, email me directly at john@wppro.ca or the multitude of other ways that I can be reached through social media and everywhere else. Hey, let me know what you think of the show, whether you think it’s good, bad, ugly, whether I’m going in the right directions. I don’t really care; I like it all. It’s helped improve the show. It’s one of the reasons the show has gotten to where it is now. It’s with all the feedback and content, and it’s been a while so hey, I’m certain some of you are harbouring some sort of grudge. Feel free to just let me know.

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And if you don’t want to donate cash, I have other ways you can help the show. You can go to the WP Plugins art generator and submit your art to be used in the artwork that’s changed every week for the artwork that’s displayed in iTunes and everywhere else out there on the web. Submit your artwork.

You can submit articles, news, and information. I’ve got a link in the show notes that takes you to that. You can submit plugin suggestions for reviews, so help me keep – instead of me having to figure out what you guys want to know about, you know, or what you think should be shared. Anything I haven’t thought of yet, let me know. Lot’s of ways you can support the show.

Doing all these little things, you guys are my producers to help me produce the show and the more you contribute, the better this show will get – trust me on that one.

I do like to acknowledge the producers that have supported the show in various ways, and I’d like to thank our producers for donating time and artwork. And this week’s cover art is coming from Angel Lemus at https://www.koadigital.com. He has some really great art and digital designs on his website. Go check him out. He’s a really great guy. I’ve helped him out and he’s helped me out, so give him some love, folks. You can submit your artwork, as I said, to wppluginsatoz.com/artwork and there’s other links on the website for all the other places.

Donations $50 and over are credited with a producer’s credit in the show notes and their note is read out on the show. And for all those who you’ve come in below $50, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time and your support of the show.

All right, next up – what do I have for you here? The next thing I’ve got for you here is called WP-Sweep. Every once in a while, it is time to clean up your WordPress website if you’ve had it a while. Or, in the case where I’ve used this recently is, I’ve inherited a few older websites that needed to be updated and upgraded to have a lot of old content in there to be junk. It had broken images, etc.

What WP-Sweep does for you is it goes in and it’s got some easy tasks that allow you to clean up all of the database and it uses proper WP delete commands as much as possible, instead of MySQL queries, thereby getting a cleaner sweep through the system. The areas it cleans up for you, it cleans up revisions, auto-drafts, deleted comments, unapproved comments, spam comments, deleted posts, orphan posts meta, orphan comment meta, orphan terms, orphan term relationships – just all the junk that accumulates over time in a WordPress website, basically.

This is a really great plugin for helping you clean that up, get that database running a little smoother. It’ll actually improve the performance of your website too if you can get your database all cleaned up and running. A really great plugin – I’ve used it over time. I may or may not have brought it to the show previously, but because I was working with it, I thought, “Well, let’s bring it back out to folks.”

Go check it out: WP-Sweep and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

All right, the next thing we’ve got for you here, and that’s the ClassicPress Options section. Well, right now I’m still hunting for some ClassicPress plugins to review and get brought up, but I do have a little bit of information on ClassicPress. I tripped across a really interesting article here to – while doing some research as from Prysmcat Writes and it’s an article on why they switched to ClassicPress, and it’s a really interesting read about some of the reasons why you might want to consider using ClassicPress over WordPress, and this is one of the things I’ve been in turmoil about.

I’ve started to build some websites in ClassicPress. I’m still building some in WordPress, but it’s long-term wise, you may end up in the ClassicPress arena depending on how well you like Gutenberg. And it’s a really great article. It’s a really great read, talking about some of the problems they’ve faced and why they made the switch and how easy the switch is, so it’s something you’ll want to check out.

Another great article here is “Behind the Scenes of ClassicPress” article from Vidalcom Solutions, talking about ClassicPress and some of the stuff that comes with it. And these articles aren’t too old – a few months at most. So other than that, we’ve got a fair way to go with ClassicPress, I’m sure. It’s still growing, there’s a lot of things that are happening in that community.

I keep hearing little bits and pieces but not much to bring forward at the moment. I have some sneak peeks at things that are up and coming. CodePotent – let me take a sneak peek at a new plugin hub he is creating for his ClassicPress plugins that he writes, and I’ve showcased several of his ClassicPress plugins on the site. It’s a really nice system. The sneak peek I took a look at, I think people are gonna be pretty excited when it finally comes out there. And if he produces it as a plugin for ClassicPress to use that, that would be even more awesome, so I’m really kind of excited about that, so thanks a lot, CodePotent. I much appreciate you letting me take that sneak peek. It was a really cool tool.

For a few ClassicPress resources, check out the ClassicPress Club. It’s a really nice place to go get some other information on ClassicPress. And of course there’s the must-have plugins for ClassicPress. It’s a forum post of plugins for ClassicPress, the must-have ones that people need and if there is a confirmed ClassicPress version plugin for that must-have plugin.

Then there’s also a plugin list that is being maintained there, plugins that are built specifically for ClassicPress, so this is a good start for any ClassicPress user to go check out.

All right, well that pretty much wraps it up and I covered in today’s show the Zakeke plugin, which I gave a 3 to; the Post Types Order plugin, which I gave a 5 to; and the WP-Sweep plugin, which I gave a 4 to.

And of course, take a few minutes. There is another new interview show out there. It is with Ed Bardwell and Will DeWitt of Rainmaker Digital Services. It’s a really great interview; it’s one of the longer interviews I’ve done in quite some time. I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing those guys. In fact, I enjoyed it so much and they gave out such great secrets, I’ve had to listen to the interview a couple of times and I usually don’t listen to them more than once or twice anyway. So anyway, you’ll want to check this one out. It’s a really great interview to go check out. The link is in the show notes. If you get the podcast feed, it’s already in your podcast feed.

The next WordPress Meetup for Victoria is July 14th at the Boston Pizza. We just had the meetup last week. It was a pretty decent success. I had a bunch of people out where we had pizza, beer, and, you know, good chatting time. So hey, come on out to the next one on July 14th. It’s on a Sunday afternoon. It’s just a social, not gonna be broadcast or anything, but if you’re in the Victoria area, come check it out and join us. It’s a really great time. Just go to wppluginsatoz.com/meetup for this social get together.

And be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel, where you’d find training videos, screen casts, and of course the live show here every Thursday at noon.

If you have any suggestions for plugins, go submit the plugin. And for all developers, if you would like to submit a premium plugin for a contest where you get lots of promotions, please go to wppluginsatoz.com/plugin-contest.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you here today, so thank you very much everyone for coming to the show and taking the time to listen. Imma let my girl take us out of here.

Reminders for the show: All the show notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the Thursday newsletter for more useful information directly to your email inbox. Wppluginsatoz.com is a show that offers honest and unbiased reviews of plugins created by developers because you support the show. Help keep the show honest and unbiased by going to wppluginsatoz.com/donate and set the donation level that fits your budget.

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John can be reached at his website at JohnOverall.com or send him an email, john@wppro.ca. Thanks for joining us and have a great day.

Thanks for listening to the show. This show is copyright by JohnOverall.com. So until next time, have yourselves a good morning, good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.