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 #429 here.
It’s Episode 429 and I’ve got plugins for Form Caching, Plugin Compatibility, Elementor Addon and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!
Episode #429
John: It’s Episode 429 and I’ve got plugins for Form Caching, Plugin Compatibility, Elementor Addon 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, you can get all the Show Notes over at wppluginsatoz.com. And take a minute or two, subscribe to the Newsletter. Get out there and hit everyone in the mouth, spread the word about WP Plugins A-Z and catch it live every Thursday at noon on our YouTube channel.
With all that being said, let’s just dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
All right, well we’ve got some plugins this week and it’s slightly a little different but we’re going to go with it anyway. First off, I’ve got a great plugin for you. This one here is dealing with forms, Gravity Forms, and caching issues. Now, this plugin is called Fresh Forms for Gravity, and what it’s for is if you use Gravity Forms and I highly recommend it.
I’ve probably reviewed Gravity Forms a couple of times over the years. And what can happen is if you also use a caching plugin and you have a form that’s dynamic or depends on certain actions, etc., it can sometimes not work very well with the caching plugin.
Now, you can go into most caching plugins and exempt the page you put it on. But if say you created a new page and you forget or things get lost in the shuffle, it may not work the way it’s supposed to, and the form won’t do what it’s supposed to. Well, what this plugin does is it eliminates you having to worry about that issue. What it does is it works with the caching plugins that honor the Do Not Cache Page directive, and the ones that it works with that it says is WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket, Auto Optimize, Comic Cache, Lightspeed Cache, Hummingbird, WP Optimize, WP Fastest Cache, WP Engine System, and it even will work with CloudFlare and a couple of others along the way.
So this is one you can set up and basically forget. It goes through and it helps you get it organized so you don’t have to worry about your forms getting caught in the cache and not functioning the way they’re supposed to – if you’re using Gravity Forms. Keep that in mind; this is for Gravity Forms. All in all, a pretty fantastic plugin. I like the way it works. I like the simplicity of it, which is of course set and forget, and it is a free plugin, so where do we go with those? Right to the top of the list with a 5-Dragon rating.
So go check it out: Fresh Forms for Gravity.
Okay, WordPress news, information – well, you know, not all bad for the WordPress world right now. (Well, maybe it is.) There’s a nice article here you’ll want to go check out. It says, “It’s Not All Bad for WordPress Themes, or Is It?” and this is a good article discussing the issues around where Gutenberg is going and what some of the theme developers are going to have to think about dealing with over the next coming years, and how they’re going to handle Gutenberg, which is working its way to being basically a page builder built into WordPress. So this is something to think about, and if you’re a theme developer or you know someone who is, maybe send them down to take a look at this and see what this plugin is all about – or see what this article is all about, not plugin.
For those of you who worry about SEO and other things out there or your website performance, and this is an article from the Tavern and there’s lots been said about this over the last week. Google Chrome has been announcing that it is rolling out plans for blocking mixed content. Now, this impacts you if you’ve not done a proper conversion of your website from HTTP to HTTPS, and older sites, many people use the cheater methods. I did back in the beginning until I realized my mistake and I had to go back and redo a bunch of work. But I went back, and I’ve converted all my sites properly, going through the database and making sure I got all the conversion links correct.
So what’s going to happen though is Chrome is going to start blocking the delivery of HTTP content. Now, this can impact you in another way if you show ads on your site from ad delivery networks, because some networks will sometimes deliver HTTP ads and while they deliver HTTPS ads. So this is something you’re going to want to be aware of, look out for, and make sure you’re up to speed on it for your website, so make sure you get in there. Go check out the article, go check out some of the other information that’s out there on the web for this.
Another little piece of information that was rather interesting was a discussion between Matt Mullenweg and David Heinmeier Hanssen. They were discussing the WordPress market share, monopolies, and power and open source community. I guess I kind of missed this. It would’ve been entertaining to have seen it. But they were having a good Twitter discussion, I understand, about the differences in the powers and monopolies and how open source works and whether or not getting into the system – it’s really quite an interesting read. You’ll want to go check this out. It gives you a little bit more insights into Automatic CEO Matt Mullenweg and his thoughts on being the dictator for life, which is basically what he is for WordPress, dictator until whenever.
One last article, I’ll give you a little bit of fun. This is from WPMU Dev and it’s “16 Fun WordPress Plugins You’ve Never Heard Of.” Well, some of them you would’ve heard of if you’ve been listening to my show for a while, in that some of these plugins I’ve actually covered on the show. A few of them are new to me, which of course is going to happen, but there’s a nice list of interesting plugins here. So go check this article out. It gives you some idea on some additional plugins out there.
And that’s really all we’ve got there. News from myself, just stay tuned for the end of the year when Plugin Dynamics suddenly leaps out into the world. We’re rolling it up now and we will be coming forth probably in the new year. I’ve already mentioned pretty much everything I can about it, so if you want more about Plugin Dynamics, feel free to send me an email.
Contests – we do have a contest going currently. The contest currently – all our contests are sponsored by the Simple Giveaways plugin and they were kind enough to provide us with the premium plugin which powers all our contests. So if you’re thinking of contests for your site, go check out Simple Giveaways.
Our current contest is sponsored by Social Rabbit. This is a plugin I reviewed in Episode 428, WP Plugins A-Z, and it’s a really great plugin. You might want to go check out the review on it. But this plugin here, what it does is it connects up to your social networks and posts your content out on a regular basis. It works well with Facebook, Twitter, (not LinkedIn), Instagram, and I can’t remember the fourth one right now. But go check this plugin out. It works very, very well and it seems to have been some benefits for me. I had it on my site for about a week and I have seen some increase in traffic to my older content, which it’s been putting out for me. So go check this one out.
And of course, if you want to enter the contest, simply go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests to enter the contest. The contest is running ‘till the end of October. So get in there, enter your name, email address, and you’re done and ready.
All right, next up for you – what do we got for plugins? Well, next up I have for you the Better Plugin Compatibility Control. Now, this is a plugin that is similar to a plugin I covered for ClassicPress back in Episode 423, and what it does for you is when you install it and activate it, it creates a second column in your plugin installation list. And in that second column, it tells you what the plugin’s compatibility is listed as.
Now, the advantage to having this happen for you is that tells you will this plugin work with your version of WordPress – or guaranteed to work with your version of WordPress. It doesn’t necessarily mean it will or wont because of course I run plugins on my site that are like three, four, and five years old and they’ve not been updated since. They still work, but that’s not what they were designed for.
But what this does is this gives you an idea if you’re having some issues with your site or a plugin and you see that oh, hey, it’s only compatible with Version 4.6 of WordPress and we’re now on Version 4.2-something, getting ready to have 4.3, this might be a plugin for you to look into and install to find out what the levels are of your current website.
A really great plugin; it’ll really help you with some diagnostics, give you some insights into what’s happening on your site. Another simple, straightforward plugin that’s free, sets you up, and of course, we do it again! Another 5-Dragon plugin.
So go check it out: the Better Plugin Compatibility Control plugin for WordPress.
Okay, next up we have for you – well, listener feedback. I don’t have any this week, but I would love some! Hit me up on the Contact page at WP Plugins A-Z, lower right-hand corner, hit the little SpeakPipe button. Leave me a voice message, I’ll play it back on the show and give you a response. So get to it, folks! Give me some content. I really could use it.
And this show is supported by you, our Producers as a value-for-value model. That is one way that it is supported. I’m working on other ways to support the show, but the biggest one I’m trying to do is value-for-value, meaning if you get any value out of it, please give some value back by becoming a Producer and helping the show out.
You could do that by donating money to the show. Donations of $50 and over are credited with an Executive
Producer credit in the Show Notes and their note is read out in the show – and I will vouch for you for that Executive Producer one. Submitting artwork at the WP Plugins Art Generator. Submit articles, news, and information. Submit plugin suggestions for reviews. You can also create a monthly donation at Patreon and our Patreon link or anything I may not have thought of.
And in that vein, I like to acknowledge the Producers who have supported the show in various ways. This week, the show’s artwork comes from Angel Lemus of koadigital.com, and he’s provided me with a fair number of art pieces right now I get to work from. But if you’d like to donate some artwork – and the artwork is used every week for the show. I change out the artwork. It’s on the website itself. You can see the great images there that Angel has been producing for the show. They’re really quite nice. The artwork is there; it’s also what goes out in the podcast feed for iTunes and all other podcast players and it shows up on their phones, so it’s really a great thing. Lots of people get to see this artwork.
This week, I would like to acknowledge our Executive Producer who is Jezweb Pty. Ltd., who donated $50 to the show and his note is:
This donation is on behalf of Vital Building and Pest Inspections at https://vitalbuildinginspection.com.au in Australia. It is a WordPress website created by Jezweb https://www.jezweb.com.au built with Elementor.
Thanks, Jez. Well, thank you, Jez. I really appreciate you supporting the show as much as you have over the last couple of years. You’ve been one of the great supporters, so thank you very much. It is so appreciated.
And I do want to make another callout for Jez in that I’ve talked about it last week, but his theme for Elementor, his Jello theme, it’s a really great, simple theme that works with Elementor. It is plain, strips away all the unessential junk, and leaves you with a very fast functioning Elementor theme. You’ll want to go check it out. Links are in the Show Notes. You can download it from his GitHub repository and check out that theme.
And if you’d like to get your note read out here, just donate $50 or more. For those below $50, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much.
All right, this show is normally brought to you by , but I don’t have one right now. I’m holding off on the commercials while we revamp it and we’ve a couple of new offers there. Go check out the Show Notes for what is coming down the pike.
Okay, the next plugin I have for you is Download Button for Elementor. This is a nice, simple addon plugin for Elementor. This one is only good if you use Elementor (which of course I do now), and what it adds into the Elementor blocks for you is it adds a button that you can add that is for downloading. Instead of having just that plain download link when you offer files for download, etc., this is a fancified button that you can change the colours, the layout, customize it up, to make it a little bit more stand out on your page than a regular download link does.
A really simple plugin; install it, activate it, go find it in your elements for Elementor. Add it to your page, customize it up, add the link to your download item. You can set it up to download any file you want – really simple and straightforward. I’m working with it right now to adjust up the Art Generator page where people want to create art, you want to grab the logos that are there so you can use and integrate them into the art, so I don’t have to put them in. You might want to put them in in very specific places, but I would like you to use my correct logos. So this is where we’re going with this.
It’s a really great plugin, something you will want to check out if you’re using Elementor. Free plugin, works the way it’s supposed to. Where else does it go but to the top.
Five-dragon rating for Download Button for Elementor.
ClassicPress Options – what do I have for ClassicPress this week? Well, it’s been a light week for ClassicPress. I didn’t find a whole lot here. I still don’t have anymore new plugins for ClassicPress-specific, but I am looking for them. If you know anyone out there that’s using ClassicPress or developing plugins for ClassicPress, send them my way. I will happily get them on the show and showcase their items.
A couple of general pieces of information thought, make sure you go check into the forums from time to time at ClassicPress Forums at forums.classicpress.net. I’ve got a couple of random links this week. A website I tripped across for Cliff Graves, a developer who’s developing in WordPress and ClassicPress and other things. If you want to send somebody to find a developer, go check him out. It sounds like it’s really interesting. And I found another WordPresser that heads into the ClassicPress world, and this is from Danielle – I’m not gonna try that. So at any rate, go read this article.
It’s really interesting. This is from a person who has been a core contributor in the WordPress community, and they’re talking about why they’re moving into the ClassicPress world and their reasons around it and what’s driven them to do that. It’s really quite interesting; it’s an interesting article that talks about it and I just thought this should be brought to be light and more people should know about it. So you’ll want to go read this article up, a really great article talking about another person from the WordPress core community that is heading into ClassicPress and why they have chosen to do that. It may be like me right now, working in both worlds, but eventually they’ll probably have to land in one or the other, because eventually the two project are going to diverge enough that they – we have no choice.
More up-to-date information on ClassicPress, you can go check out ClassicPress Club, an alternative place with news and information and tips in it. Must-have plugins list, this is a list of plugins that are must-have plugins for ClassicPress and whether or not the plugin exists, or if there’s something that works with it. Of course, the dedicated ClassicPress-specific plugin list, which is maintained by CodePotent, and this list here has got 41 plugins on it currently and they keep it up-to-date with plugins that have passed the test for ClassicPress.
So these are the things that I’ve got for ClassicPress – not a whole lot this week. It’s just been one of those weeks but go check this stuff out at any rate.
All right, well that pretty much wraps up everything I’ve got this week, and I covered up for plugins this week Fresh Forms for Gravity, which I gave a 5 to; Better Plugin Compatibility Control, which I gave a 5 to; and Download Button for Elementor, which I gave a 5 to.
And that’s pretty much all I’ve got. A couple of quick reminders though, the next WordPress Meetup in Victoria will be October 28th in Victoria and it’s covering site security and will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel. So if you can make it down live, we’d really appreciate you’d come down and check it out. It’s only $5; it basically helps cover the cost of the room. Location information, you can get that by going to wppluginsatoz.com/meetup.
And that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you, so I’m gonna 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.