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 #420 here.
It’s Episode 420 and I’ve got plugins for Managing Multiple WP Sites, Zombie Hunting, Invaders from Space, Classic Gaming and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #420
John: It’s Episode 420 and I’ve got plugins for Managing Multiple WP Sites, Zombie Hunting, Invaders from Space, Classic Gaming and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins 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, where of course they have the best bud in the world. Just ask any British Columbian; they’ll tell you. I am here at Episode 420 has finally arrived and I have some great stoner fun plugins for your website. Most of this is just going to be fun and entertaining this time around; no real serious plugins, but I did get a great lineup on it.
But of course right off the top, don’t forget you can get all the Show Notes over at wppluginsatoz.com and get out there and spread the word, hit people in the mouth, tell them to listen to WP Plugins A-Z or catch it live every Thursday at noon.
With all that out of the way, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
All right, I did have to, you know, take a little bit of seriousness right off the top just to get it out of the way. I thought I’d bring a semi-serious plugin for you to start off. This was a plugin that was sent in by a listener and it was recommended to us. It was sent in by Angel Lemus and it is called WP Suite and I did take a look at this plugin and what they have to say about it of course. It’s another central dashboard area for managing your WordPress websites.
You can get there and manage all of your sites, update themes and plugins in one place. You can install the plugins, remove them, manage users, content, manage media images, etc., all from one dashboard. It’s much like most of them.
I investigated this one just a little bit – dug into it a little bit – and from looking it over, I don’t think it’s any improvements over things like CMS Commander or the WP Manage. I don’t think it’s much of an improvement over those. Reading it through I couldn’t find much documentation on the site. The site that you go to for the site, it’s a one-page but well-done sales page on it. I tripped across a couple of reviews on it where people hadn’t given it all that much. But all in all, it looks like it could be something. The biggest benefit I saw to this plugin if you wanted a central platform is it’s a one-time fee for the license to use it. I don’t know if it’s accessed through a third-party platform or if it’s something on your website; they don’t make that clear. But that could be a benefit versus paying CMS Commander like I do once a month or WP Manage once a month, so I hem and haw on it. Other than that, it could be something to look into if you’re still digging around for a central management system. Go check it out, WP Suite, and I give it a 3-Dragon rating.
Okay, a little bit of news before we get into the fun stuff. I’ve got an article here this week from WP Engine. They’re talking about the first look at PHP 7.4, because of course it tends to be scheduled to be pushed out on November 28th of this year and it’s supposed to be an improvement over 7.3, I hope. And of course 7.1 is coming to an end, so you’ve got to think about looking at it. You might want to read this article over. It does have some good information about what to expect with 7.4 and how it’s going to do some things, some things that are being depreciated, it’s performance enhancements, etc. So go check this article out. The link is in the Show Notes.
I do have a couple of articles here on some security issues – a major security issue, actually. A malicious plugin used to encrypt WordPress posts. Now, this is a misnomer. When I read these articles over, we’ve got one from Security Boulevard, we’ve got another one from threatpost.com. It’s talking about the same plugin. We’ll call it “plugin” because what’s happened here is hackers and spammers have managed to find a way to inject a plugin into a site and get it active and it’s called (of all things) WP Security.
So what it’s actually doing in there is it gets in and it encrypts all of your posts on your site – every one of your posts getting encrypted. I don’t know if they’re asking for money back, but if you have a backup of your database, you can just wipe your database, reinstall your database, and it’s fixed. So this is another good reason why you want backups. Backup, backup, and backup again. And then when you’re done backing it up, back it up some more. So make sure you do that, because that could help protect you from this particular type of threat.
Some people who might not know about that little bit of information that it could be restored that easily could be, you know, threatened to pay a fee to get all their post back. And if you’ve got a big website with lots of posts and they were suddenly encrypted, yeah, that could be a panic for people. So this is something you’ll want to read, you want to check these out, and you’ll want to start looking for this because that’s getting pretty sneaking. Calling a piece of malware in there “WP Security” makes it pretty innocuous and most users wouldn’t even think twice about it. I’d think twice because I’ve never seen one called WP Security, but that’s just me. So anyway, go check that one out.
And another article, this one from the Tech Genius and this is an article on the “The Top 7 Speed Optimization Mistakes to be Avoided on Your Website.” It’s good tips and tricks on what things to avoid doing when you’re optimizing up your WordPress website. Go check out that article.
That’s what we’ve got for news for you. Still a little bit of news from me, the Plugin Dynamics is coming together. We had a decent update today for our Tabular plugin. I’ll be testing that out in the next couple of days and that one there is getting closer and closer to being able to give out as a beta version to other users out there that might be interested in it. So if you’re interested in any of the plugins we’re developing which right now we have a Date Calculator, a Metric Conversions, a Clock de Resistance, and a Tabular Dynamics plugin. So if you’re interested in them, feel free to email me, john@wppro.ca. I’ll happily hook you up with the beta version testing stuff, so they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. They might even still be partly alpha, so keep that in mind.
Okay, this show currently brought to you by…
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Absolutely, and if you’re hacked, cracked, or anything else goes wrong with your website, come see me and also if you want to know what’s going on in there, come check me out for a site audit on your website and get in-depth into the problems that you might be having that you didn’t even know about.
Okay, contests – we do have a contest running right now. Our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin, who kindly provided us with a premium version for our contests. The winner of the last contest for the WP Pay Per View was Ed. Thank you to everyone who entered.
The current contest running until August 14th, we are giving away a license for the Magic Tool Tips for Gravity Forms plugin. This is a really cool plugin to add to your Gravity Forms to add tool tips around your Gravity Forms, making it easier for your users to submit the forms. So come check this one out and hey, enter the contest. You could win a one-year license to this plugin.
For more information about it, check out the interview I did with Russ Mate from WP Pay Per View, talking about this plugin and the others that they make, so go check out all that information. And to enter the contest, simply go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests.
All right, ready for the plugins? Here they come! Here comes all the really great plugins.
Okay, what have we got here? The first one up is called Shoot the Zombie, just a fun little plugin, and this is a pretty old plugin, and these are actually really old plugins, but I’m rather impressed they still actually function quite well. This one’s really quite simple and fun. You can go check out how well it works over at my testing website for things at 2030countdown.com and it’s running on ClassicPress, so these plugins are also running on ClassicPress, so that adds a little bit more fun to them.
This one here is quite simple. You get in there – it adds nothing to your site aside from a button that activates zombies as they come running across your screen. You shoot the zombie, it shoots, and he comes running across, and you shoot him. There we go, got him. All right, so that’s all that one does for you. A nice, cool plugin, fun, useless, pointless, but of course we’re just going to rack it right to the top for a 5-Dragon rating.
The next one I’ve got for you, this one here is one that well, those of us who have been around a while will remember the arcade classic games such as Space Invaders. Well, this one here produces the same little green men. They call it Jellyfish Invaders, and the little green men do nothing but wander around your screen. They’re rather quite irritating. You can see them here; they float around, everywhere, someone clicks a mouse, the little green men runs toward the mouse or you can do other things with them across the screen. They’re little 8-bit characters with the little lines in them, so it gives you a scan line effect of the old Space Invaders from way back when.
Kind of a cool plugin. Again, it doesn’t do anything for you but waste time, which is what you want to do when you’re 420-ing it away. Go check it out and again, at 2030countdown you can go check out these little plugins. They do a whole lot of nothing for you and of course, still a great plugin. As you can see, this plugin is five years old in the
Repository and to still be working quite well with no updates, we’ve still got to give this one a fantastic 5-Dragon rating.
All right, let’s move on to something else for a couple of minutes before we hit you with the final plugin of the day.
All right, I do – this show is supported by you, our Producers as a value-for-value model, meaning if you get any value out of it, then please give some value back by becoming a Producer, helping the show out. You can do that by donating money to help the show out or by submitting artwork at the WP Plugins Art Generator, submit articles, news, and information, submit plugin suggestions for reviews, or anything I may not have thought about. We’ll acknowledge you here for the contributions you make, if it be a monetary or otherwise, I try to make sure everyone gets acknowledged for all the help they give this show.
Currently, I’d like to acknowledge all the Producers who have supported the show in various ways. This week’s show art – wow, that was a tongue-twister for no apparent reason. This week’s show art comes from Angel Lemus over at koadigital.com. It’s really quite a piece of art – beautiful, beautiful bud art. You’ll have to check it out in the Show Notes and also if you get the show through a podcast app, it should show up in the podcast app. We have changing art on a regular, weekly basis now.
Donations $50 and over are credited with Executive Producer and their note is read out in the show. For those who come below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much. So a big thank you this week to all our Producers who came in under $50 and those who have set up small, weekly subscriptions. Those small subscriptions really help the show out and I greatly appreciate the support, showing that you appreciate the show is still being produced week after week. So if you’d like to help in any other ways, please do.
I’d like to give a big thank you to the Producers out there who have hired me because of the podcast. Thank you very much. That is as good as supporting the show, so thanks again for that. So there’s many ways in the show, lots of links there to show how you can support the show.
All right, the big review! Ugh – reveal. I need to slow my brain down. Moving faster than I should. I need a little bit of that 420, I think.
Okay, the last plugin I’ve got here for you before I hit ClassicPress stuff is the Asteroids Widget. Now, this one here – anyone who’s been around a long while and I remember playing the original arcade classic back when I was a kid, wasting hours and quarters playing this one game. This plugin has also been in the Repository so long without an update, it might be one of the first 9,000 I saw back when I started this show almost nine years ago – 10 years ago, actually – close to that – eight years. Eight years, 2011. 2011, so eight years ago I started this.
It’s still great; it even works on ClassicPress on an install using Elementor. A fantastic little plugin. You set it up as a widget, you do some minor customization’s to it. And then once you get there is you get a chance to blast away at your website. You give people some instructions on how to use it. Once it does that, a little asteroid shows up on the fire site here and you can just start shooting your website to pieces. And if you put those little green aliens in there at the same time, that gives you even more targets. Yeehaw! It makes for some fun. There they are, little green aliens to shoot.
So this is it. This has been the stoner edition of WP Plugins A-Z and the Asteroids Widget of course, because it’s been around so long and it actually still works, fantastic 5-Dragon rating.
All right, so that takes up all that, so what do we got next? We’ve got a little bit of ClassicPress information and news this week. You know, we touch ClassicPress along the way, showing that all the plugins I had today and displayed them a little bit for you were on a ClassicPress install using Elementor. ClassicPress right now is still moving forward at a decent pace. The community is still fairly active. They are getting closer to their milestone release. It’s a little overdue, but it’s a heck of a lot further down the line when I checked in on it today than it was last week. So I imagine it won’t be too long before that comes rolling out.
I have the interview out there with James Nyland and Michelle Coe from ClassicPress, two of the leads from ClassicPress, talking about ClassicPress, where it’s going, where it’s been, what their ideas are for it, so come check that information out.
I do have one article this week up from CodePotent and it’s a great article for creating static widgets in ClassicPress dashboard. It’s a really good article if you deal with creating a static widget in the ClassicPress dashboard, something that you can put in there to when you hand off the information to a client. It’s a widget of information, places for them to contact you, etc. Very useful thing; he talks about static versus dynamic widgets and lots of other information in this article. So if you’re working on development, go check this one out.
You want to get some up-to-date information and news? Go check out the ClassicPress Club or go check out the forums at ClassicPress, where they’ve got a lot going on, discussions. They have ClassicPress a list of must-have plugins that are being worked on and developed by people and showing the ones that have been created and exist.
There’s a lot going on there and I’m looking forward to when ClassicPress gets moving forward and adds a bit more information to the two, and I imagine that’ll happen as more people adopt it. ClassicPress got an initial boost of adoption and of course it levelled out and it’ll get even more boost of adoption as more and more things come to a head in WordPress, I believe.
So keep that in mind and with that all done, make sure you tune in for the next episode of WP Plugins. And covering up quickly, the plugins I covered up in this episode were the WP Suite, which I gave a 3 to; the Shoot the Zombie, which I gave a 5 to; the Jellyfish Invaders, which I gave a 5 to; and the Asteroids Widget, which I gave a 5 to.
And a couple of quick reminders… I do have a new interview coming up next week with, and I interviewed Kathy Zant from Wordfence. It was a really great interview. I got a lot of information about Wordfence and what it can do. I even learned a couple of new things about Wordfence myself, even though I’ve been using it for a while. So make sure you tune in for that interview; that’ll be released next week.
The new WordPress Meetup in Victoria will be in September. Dates have not been set. All the dates for the coming year will be set in the next couple of weeks, so make sure you go check out wppluginsatoz.com/meetup for all of that information.
And as the final bit, if you have suggestions for things, please hit the links in the Show Notes to go donate plugins, submit plugin reviews, enter the plugin contest – everything that we’ve got going on. This is stuff – I don’t do it for me, folks. I do it for you because I want you guys to really enjoy the show. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re not getting any value out of this show, please let me know. I have no idea. I’m speaking into a microphone here and I go live through YouTube. I get occasional feedback from the YouTube channel, but most of you out there are listening via the podcast feed. So if you’ve got something to say about the show, good, bad, indifferent, you’ve got to let me know, because I have no way of knowing. Unfortunately, I can’t read minds. If I could, I would be retired on a beach – no, I’d be retired on a ranch somewhere in the middle of nowhere with a 2,000-acre moat around it so nobody could find me.
So at any rate, that covers up this show. I’m gonna let our girl take us on out of here, and make sure you get out there and support the show, hit ‘em all in the mouth.
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.