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Transcript of Episode 419 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 #419 here.


It’s Episode 419 and I’ve got plugins for Bio Links, WP Mail Diagnosis, Tracking Email, and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!


Episode #419

John:   It’s Episode 419 and I’ve got plugins for Bio Links, WP Mail Diagnosis, Tracking Email, 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 you can get all the Show Notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And take a few minutes out of your day. Go out there, spread the word, hit people in the mouth, tell them about the show. You can also catch it live every Thursday at noon on our YouTube channel.

We’re only one episode away from Episode 420, and I’ve lined up some great stoner plugins for your website, so make sure you tune in to Episode 420 next week.

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

And I have the usual great set of plugins for you today, and of course starting out I have a plugin that I have yet to use but felt that you would want to know about it. Keep in mind, the ratings are based off the descriptions, their website, and using their demo if it’s available.

The one I’ve got for you today was sent in by Cadu de Castro Alves – I know I mangled it and I’m sorry. The plugin I’ve got for you is WP Link Bio. Now, this is a plugin here that is a freemium modelled plugin and what it does for you is it allows you to use a single link in say, your Twitter feed or your – what’s that bloody thing called? Instagram feed – you know, where you put your bio link and then it takes people to your landing pages where you can have all the rest of your bio linked. A very useful plugin in that you consolidate all that information into one place, have one single link that you use for everything. Kind of a useful item. It’s a good, average plugin. It helps you get your followers into customers, you know, you can see what’s happening on the ROI, etc. A really nice one.

They do have a premium version of it which gives you extra support, animation, and different views for everything you want to do. So all in all, it’s a really good-looking average plugin. I checked out a little bit and checked out the, you know, the basic demos of it. So go check it out if you’re looking for something like that. This could be a plugin for you, and I give it a 3-Dragon rating, so go check it out: the WP Link Bio freemium version plugin.
A little bit of WordPress news this week.
What do we have for you?
Well, we’ve got one here – a little bit of security. WP Super Cache, they’ve issued a patch out on their plugin and they are repairing some security issues. So if you have not upgraded that, you need to get in there and do that as soon as possible. So they’ve got Version 1.69 that patches a security issue discovered in a debug log. The vulnerability can only be exploited if users have debugging enabled, so not a massive flaw or really going to be standing out, because most people don’t have debugging turned on. But it could be a problem and who knows? There may be other security issues along with it, so make sure you get in there and update WP Super Cache if you’re using it.

Another article I’ve got here from me comes from Beaver Builder, and this one here is talking to you about managing multiple websites using WordPress Multisite instead of separate installations. Now, this is a really good article. I read it through, and it does describe all the advantages and some of the disadvantages of using Multisite versus standalone websites. And if anyone has been following me for any length of time, they’ll know I went through a Multisite phase with WordPress where I consolidated a lot of websites into multisites.

And while Multisite does have its uses, there is a lot of issues that go with Multisite. Multisite requires a whole lot more work to manage and maintain than standalone sites. I actually spend less time on standalone sites than I did in my multisites, so think about that and how it can be. But it does have its really great uses, but it does have its detraction’s and – so read through this article, check it all out. It’s got a lot of great tips and information in there that can help you out.

Another security article here – this is a security article on reverse hardening the WordPress config, and basically what it is is they talk about how hackers get in and unharden a hardened website. They’ve given some examples on what can be done, how it can be done in here, some examples on how you can help protect your website. Basically, its ways to help protect your WP config file, protect all your important areas of your website, so this is a really great article to go check out. And as far as security goes, you do want to pay really close attention to the security of your WordPress website because nowadays that is a problem.

Okay, a little bit of news from me. I know I’ve been mentioning it in the last few shows and I’m going to keep mentioning it because the buildup is coming. Plugin Dynamics is developing the website. It’s coming together; we now have four plugins that are — don’t breathe and swallow. It never works, I swear to God. Plugin Dynamics is coming along quite nicely. The website is in development and it’s coming along fairly decently, and we do have four plugins that are just about ready for public consumption.

We have a Date Calculator, a Metric Conversions calculator, what we call the Clock de Resistance, and then our freemium – it’s going to be a massive freemium plugin and it’s called Tabular Data Dynamics, and it’s used for managing all kinds of data and tables, so that one there is getting closer and closer to full development. The other ones are actually in use right now on a client’s website as we’ve been developing them, and these are some really great plugins. We do have a couple of others in the development queue, like one of them that’s in the development queue right now is a Tarot reading program, where you can do Tarot readings. So we’ve got a fair number of plugins coming together here. Me and my partner, Mike DeWolf from DeWolf Consulting, so hey, check him out but Plugin Dynamics is coming together.

Okay, this show currently brought to you by…

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Absolutely! And if you’ve had a website hacked, cracked, or any other problems, come see me and we’ve got some new things coming from JohnOverall.com, so stay tuned for that.

Contests – our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin, who have kindly provided us with the premium version for our contests – a really excellent plugin. I can’t say enough about it and how easy it is and how much better it has gotten. I think I’ve been using it since it was nearly brand-new, almost three years now, and the improvements they’ve made to this plugin are fantastic. So if you’re planning to run contests, go check out the Simple Giveaways plugin.

Our last contest for the WP Pay Per View license, we have a winner! Winner, winner chicken dinner! It goes out to Ed and thank you very much everyone who entered the contest. Ed has been contacted and he has received his license for that plugin. So good luck with it, Ed. I hope it works out really well.

The current contest we are running until August 14th, and we are giving away a license for the Magic Tool Tips for Gravity Forms plugin. This is a really cool little plugin here and go check it out. It’s one that adds tool tips into your Gravity Forms, so we’re giving a one-year license for this plugin here and it’s from the same makers of the WP Pay Per View plugin. And if you want to hear more about that, check out the links to the Show Notes. There’s an interview with Russ Mate from WP Pay Per View, talking about this plugin and all the others that they create, so go check it out.

To enter the contest, simply go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests and enter all your information. All we need is your name, email address, and that’s it, so the contest is running until the 14th of August. I’ll announce the winner on the 15th because we have a show on that day.

All right, next up for you I have a plugin called Check Email. Now, this one here is for dealing with the WP mail function in your WordPress website, and this is going to occur to you sooner or later. It’s happened to me a few times over the years. You’re going along with a site or your client is going along with their website, and all of a sudden, they’re not getting their notification emails from whatever plugin was sending them and they don’t know why. You know, did they do an update? Did something change on the server? What’s happening?

So one of the things you have to find out is if the WP mail function is actually working, and in this particular case I was working on a site and it wasn’t sending out a notification email. And when we checked the logs, it kept saying that the WP email function could not be located; it does not exist, and they were like, “What?” So what I had to do was diagnose to make sure the WP email was working to see if it was a WordPress problem or a plugin problem.

Well, this is a nice, simple way to go in and diagnose the WP mail function. You install this plugin, activate it up. It gives you a place; you just put an email address in, and it sends you a sample email with some sample text that you enter to know that that is the email you sent out and received. And if you received the email, the WP mail function is working just fine. Well, that’s what we found. It turned out to be a plugin issue.

But this is a way to eliminate that grief without having to go in and add a bunch of code to your functions file and everything else. You can add this plugin real quick, do your diagnostics. Once you’re done, turn the plugin off and delete it. A really great, simple, fantastic plugin, free, works well, and it seems like its been a while since I’ve done it, but hey, a 5-Dragon plugin for WP Mail.

There we go. Okay, and this show is supported by you, our producers. As a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, give some value back. Become a producer and help the show out. You could do that by donating money to help the show, submitting artwork at the WP Plugins Art Generator, submitting articles, news, and information, submit plugin suggestions for reviews – anything along those lines to help the show out, and I’m looking for pretty much anything – anything I haven’t thought of.

I like to acknowledge all the producers who have supported the show in various ways. This week’s art comes from Angel Lemux from koadigital. He has some really great art and digital designs on his website, so go out there and give him some love. Really great artwork – he’s also volunteered to help with the redesign of the WP Plugins A-Z website, so I’m looking forward to his help in that zone there, so thanks a lot, Angel. I really appreciate all your support there.

Donations $50 and over are credited with Executive Producer credits in the Show Notes and their note is read out on the show. And for all those who come in below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much. So a big thank you to all the producers who came in under $50 and for all of those who have the small weekly subscriptions coming to the show and for the little Patreon donations that come in also, so thank you very much.
And a big thank you to all of those who’ve hired me because of listening to the show. That’s as good as donating to the show, so it helps keep me driving forward with the show knowing that you listen to the show and you continue to hire me to do things for your website, so thank you very much.

So if you want to give some value back, you can do that by submitting your artwork at wppluginsatoz.com/artwork. You can go create a donation at wppluginsatoz.com/donate. So remember, donate to the show in multiple ways. This show is listener supported and we can use more than just your money to help the show grow. Get out there, hit people in the mouth, tell people about the show. Yes, I stole that from the No Agenda show. (They’ll get over it though.)

All right, next up I have for you another plugin for dealing with emails on your website. This one here is called Email Log, and this is for another client I was working on their site and he was having troubles whether the emails from his WooCommerce store were properly landing into their customers’ sites. They’re saying they’re not getting them, they couldn’t find them, they couldn’t get the download links. We were going back and forth with all the tests and everything. They said finally, “Well, let’s see if they’re being properly sent from your website, okay?” And if you know WordPress, you really have no way to determine if they’re being sent from your website unless they come into your email box, you send them to yourself.

But what if they’re sending to other people? You want to know that it’s happening. Well, this plugin solves that problem for you. It’s called Email Log and what it does is it sets up a new table in your WordPress database and it logs all outgoing emails from your WordPress website into a log for you. It not only logs them, but it logs a copy of the email sent, so you not only know if it was sent, when it was sent, but you actually got a physical – not a physical, but a digital copy of that email that was sent from your website.

So you could go in there, check the log, open it up, have a look at the email, and see if it’s even formatted correctly.

All of these little things in here, this helps you discover and save you the grief of wondering if that email has actually been sent and delivered, and it shows where it went to. So a fantastic plugin; it really helped us with that problem, and it helped us determine that his clients that were complaining, well they were actually disappearing off into some other filtered box in Gmail, which seems to be a problem nowadays.

At any rate, fantastic plugin. Really easy to use, really simple to set up, and does exactly what you need it to do so you can check all these logged emails. If it gets too full, you just dump them all, clear the plugin, and you’re done. But it’ll do a lot that you need to be done and of course simple plugins that are free, provide everything you need right off the bat, hey, it’s another 5-Dragon plugin.

Check it out: Email Log.

All right, ClassicPress Options. What do we got for ClassicPress this week? We’re still just in news mode for ClassicPress, waiting for some things to happen here. The project is still moving forward at a rapid pace it seems.

Lots of people working behind the scenes on it from what I can gather in the bits and pieces, and I’m still really liking ClassicPress where I’m using it. So a little bit this week here, a couple of quick articles.

We got another article in from CodePotent – wow, I keep wanting to mess that one up badly. From Code Potent and it’s an article on dealing with the ClassicPress media library, “Tips to Improve the Searchability of the Library,” so it’s a really good article. And truthfully, if you’re still in WordPress, you could apply some of this information to your WordPress website also to make your WordPress media library as good, so we’ll go with ClassicPress and improve it for ClassicPress. So get in there and check it out. He’s also got a lot of other articles there and more information is coming. I don’t expect it’s going to be too much longer before I start seeing ClassicPress plugins again from multiple developers.

An update on my experiment with migrating to ClassicPress – and what I’ve been migrating, I’ve alluded to it, I’ve mentioned it and it went out in the Twitter feed of course last week. I have migrated the WP Plugins A-Z website to ClassicPress. The actual live site is not ClassicPress yet, but the new site in development is now ClassicPress and we’re working through it. It worked better than I had expected. I was really expecting plugins to break or something to go wrong, but it actually took me more effort to create the video. I created a video that you can go check out that walks through the process I went through showing that yeah, I have over 50 plugins running on my website. I have I whole lot of other things I’m converting from the theme I’m currently using to Elementor, to rebuild the site in Elementor, and I wanted to make sure all of these things were going to work well under ClassicPress, and so far, they do. I spent more time on the video than I did in the conversion.

So if you’re thinking of converting to ClassicPress, don’t fear, don’t run away; it’s probably going to be more painless than you think. Just be sure as usual when you’re doing anything crazy or risky, make a good backup of your website before you begin, so that way you can always revert back.

All right, check out the ClassicPress resources at the ClassicPress Club, the forms at ClassicPress.net, and you can find a list of ClassicPress-specific plugins on their forums. Links are in the Show Notes for all of these things here.
All right, and that covers up this show here. I covered up the WP Link Bio plugin, which I gave a 3 to; the Check Email, which I gave a 5 to, and the Email Log, which I gave a 5 to.

Remember to check out the interview from Russ Mate from Mate Media. The next WordPress Meetup in Victoria will be in September. Dates will be announced. Just go to wppluginsatoz.com/meetup to check it all out. And be sure to check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel for WP Plugins A-Z, where you find training videos, screencasts, and of course, the live show every week.

That’s all I’ve got for you, so I’m going to let my girl take us on 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 newsletter for more useful information directly to your inbox. WP Plugins A-Z 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, JohnOverall.com, or email him directly at 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.

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