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 #436 here.
It’s Episode 436 and I’ve got plugins for Instant Audio, Auto Referring, Clinical Help and ClassicPress Options, all coming up on WordPress Plugins from A-Z!
Episode #436
John: It’s Episode 436 and I’ve got plugins for Instant Audio, Auto Referring, Clinical Help 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.
John: And this is the WP Plugins A-Z show. 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 take a minute or two, get out there and 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 or just go to wppluginsatoz.com/live.
And real quickly, a big Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my American listeners out there. I hope you’re thoroughly enjoying your holiday. I’m sure everyone is off goofing off somewhere, which is one of the reasons why the livestream is so quiet today, but that’s quite all right. I don’t mind. But if in case you get bored and you want to check it out, go check out the livestream or just listen when it comes in through your downloads.
All right, well with all of that being said, let’s dive right into the meat and potatoes of the show.
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There we go.
All right. First off, I have a great plugin for you. This is one that I briefly covered a while back and um, nope, not this one. Sorry. The other one’s coming up or that. This one here’s another one that was sent into me. I briefly used it, set it up on the WP Plugins A-Z site and seeing how it worked. I was having some issues, but it’s — I had it tested. It seems to work very well. It’s called Trinity Audio and what Trinity Audio does for you, this is a plugin to set up and have auto basically transcribe your webpage into audio instantly, and it works not half bad from what I’ve heard so far.
You install it, activate it, uh, go through the setup process, which is a relatively straight forward. It adds a player to every post, or you can have it just add to a specific post if you go and manually do it.
It’s got some adjustments for the player position I didn’t quite figure out. You can determine whether you’ve got a male or a female voice. You can determine what language it’s in. It’s a got a powered by label for Trinity, the audio, and there’s a few other little tweaks and quirks to it.
All in all, not really a bad little plugin and gives a pretty decent audio. It’s a nice way to add instant audio to your website and it works pretty decently from what I can tell and surprisingly working on WP Plugins A-Z, it works with ClassicPress of course, cause anything that goes on WP plugins eight is that is under ClassicPress. Anyway, go check out this plugin. If you’re looking for a way to add some instant audio to your website, this might be a plugin for you to go and check out. So go check out Trinity Audio and I give it a 4-dragon rating.
All right, WordPress news this week. Well, it’s pretty much a quiet week in WordPress news, and it’s probably just due simply to the fact that everybody and their brother out there is having Black Friday sales and everybody’s off preparing for the holidays. You know, they get Thursday off, you know, all the Americans get Thursday off and some of them even get Friday off, so they get themselves this nice four-day weekend. You know, nobody’s really doing anything during the holidays, but I did find a couple of little tidbits for you.
First off, we’ve got one here: “Five Tips to Keep Your WordPress Site Secure During the Cyber Security Awareness Month”. Would that be November? Hmm, I was not. Oh, October. Wow. Wait a sec. This is an old article. I must’ve missed it entirely during cybersecurity awareness month. To me, every month is cybersecurity awareness, so you always want to do that.
Anyway, they’ve got, they’ve got a few tips in here. They’re all pretty basic tips such as, you know, protect your sight, man, use strong passwords, have a web application firewall, backup your site, CDNs and choose a trusted hosting company. Now that’s probably one of the biggest ones you’ll want to pay attention to, choosing a good quality hosting company. And a perfect point for me to plug myself JohnOverall.com web hosting. Very good quality, fast hosting. You won’t go wrong. You won’t be unhappy. And uh, give me a contact for that. Always up for it.
What else do we got for you? One other article here, “Five WordPress Trends Publishers Should Keep in Mind for 2020,” and these are trends that they’re predicting for 2020, because just around the corner. You know, building a recognizable brand name. Well that’s, I don’t see that as a trend. I see that as an everyday thing. Additional content formats. Now that’s interesting. There’s going to be additional content type formats coming out, quizzes, you know, carousels, user experience elements, you know, this is going to be kind of interesting. Flexible Gutenberg layouts.
Well, of course Gutenberg is going to keep growing unfortunately and uh, fortunately I think they’re just going to lose market share as they move. Headless WordPress and amp, continuous battle of malicious ads. And this is an interesting bit, is that the malicious ads are still a problem out there. As they learn, the hackers learn more in unique ways to code into those. So go read this article up. It’s got a little bit of news and information that might be of value to you.
News from me, not a whole lot of this month. We’re coming into one of my quieter months and basically, I’m just getting myself outdoors as much as I can. I’ve got myself a gold claim up in the, inner interior Island and I’m heading out to that every weekend or every other weekend as often as I can get away from here just so I can get out into the wilderness and escape. You want to follow that information? Just join me at theroguestavern.com.
All right, next one. Next plugin I have for you here. Now this one here is one I have covered before. This was sent in again to me by Alexander Kadrov, and this is the Remove No Refer from Post Links on the Front End. Now I covered this plugin up in episode 404 of WP Plugins A-Z. You can go back, the link is in the Show Notes. Go read that, read that little article there. Basically what he’s done is he sent me a note saying, “Hey, I’ve done some updates to my plugin. You want to check it out again?” So I said, “Sure, why not?”
And this plugin, it’s a new version. It now supports the latest version of WordPress and he fixed a couple of bugs that were in it. The rest of it, what I said about it still holds true.
There’s a really great article; link is in the Show Notes as to why this plugin is of value. And what it is is whenever you create a link in WordPress, WordPress has added some default coding in there so that all external links leaving your site have the no refer options set. Now, while this is partly good for security, they add no opener, no refer. It’s not really good for your SEO tracking. And this is something you may want to think about before using or setting up just because there is a possibility of a security problem. But in the end, you’ll want to check out this article in here that discusses the reasons why you want to have the no refer not set on your site. And that article is taking a long time to open. I wonder if it’s still there. Couldn’t be gone already. Could be. Yeah, you never know.
Anyway, go check the link. If not, go look up other articles on it and you’ll want to go check this out. It’s still a good plugin. Still works very well. The rating on it, still going to leave it at a 4-Dragon rating, so go check it out. The No Refer Plugin, Remove No Refer from Posts Links in the Front End.
Listener feedback. I really haven’t had any in a while. Please folks, if you’ve got anything to say about the show, I don’t care if it’s good, bad, indifferent, anything, I’ll take it. I haven’t had any feedback on it in a while, so as far as I know I’m doing fantastic job. I mean the show’s still getting downloaded lots and ah, well if you’ve got complaints or values or anything, please let me know. I’m always up for it.
This show also supported by you, the 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 and helping this show out. You can do that by donating money to help the show. Just go to wppluginsatoz.com/donate. Anything $50 or over, they’re credited with an Executive Producer credit in the Show Notes and their note is read out on the show.
You can submit artwork to the WP Plugins Art Generator, such as the artwork that we use in the iTunes repository, the artwork that goes out on the show, the artwork that showed with the Show Notes, all of that. It’s the artwork that’s put in and Angel Lemus has been donating a vast amount of artwork. So thank you very much Angel, and we’ll talk about that one real briefly some more in a moment.
You can submit articles, news, and information. You can submit plugin suggestions for reviews. You can also create a monthly donation at Patreon. Yes, I still have Patreon running. Don’t know why, but it still works. You know, a few bucks come in there. I’m all happy, you know, I’ve got a few people still supporting me, so thank you very much to everyone who is supporting the show in those lower amounts.
Now, I want to acknowledge the producers who have supported the show and this week here, all the artwork comes from Angel Lemus of Koa Digital. So thank you very much, Angel. Greatly appreciate your artwork. It really livens it up and it saves me one step I have to go through. So a big thank you to everyone who came in under $50 and those of you who set up weekly subscriptions, they remain anonymous and I thank you very much for that.
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Absolutely. So please, if you do use that or sign up for it go use my link in the Show Notes. I’d greatly appreciate it. It is an affiliate link and it is a fantastic system. I’ve been using it now for about nine years myself to manage my sites and all my client’s sites that I manage. All in all, I think I’ve got about 60 or 70 sites in there, so I’ve also got a legacy license, so that’s what happens when you’re one of the early providers or early supporters of something and they honor their legacy stuff as long as you keep paying them month after month. I really appreciate those developers that have done that over the years because there’s many times I started to support a developer I got in for their legacy license that their original license that they said they would honor. They get a couple of years into it. Of course they have to change their, their, their pricing format. I understand that, but they don’t honor it for all of their there people who help support them in the beginning. Sad that happens.
All right, well next up I’ve got for you plug in here that was sent in by Phil Healey and this is a revisit to a plugin. This is for Clinical WP Core and Phil had sent in to me after I’d done a really brief review of this plugin back in Episode 416. I gave it a quick once-over, you know, looked at it, checked it out, and looked really good. It had a lot of stuff that was in a pro version that you couldn’t access. So what he’s done is he’s rolled all the pro items into the core plugin and the core plugin itself with the pro items accessible really makes a quite nice plugin for the free portion of it.
He’s still got some premium features to it, but the free premium features are in additions and items. You could have another plugin to run those that’s already free, so they really have no impact on the plugin. So I did a double check and actually installed it this time and checked it all out. And when I installed it on a site for testing, I discovered it did need an additional plugin, the Titan Framework, which is a free plugin. So not a big deal, just an extra step along the way that it’s using a depending on another chunk of plugin, and it also has a step of an email verification for the plugin that you have to click through to activate on the site. That one there, I’m really not quite sure about why because you’re not setting up an account with him or anything. And when you click through the air mail verification, it takes you back to your website to activate the plugin.
So I’m not entirely certain about the why that’s working the way it is, but just an extra step, not that big a deal. Now the list of the items in a previous review still hold true and yes you have now, you now have access to all the cool features such as setting up your email addresses, removing the default WordPress email address. That’s always a big one to me, because I’ve always done that through code and if I can save myself that headache with a plugin, I’m more than happy to in one that works. You can change the default email stuff in there, change it from where it’s sent from, the name it sent from, et cetera. You can override that. You can play short codes and widgets. It’s got some SEO tweaks. You can go in and adjust the memory usage settings. Whereas normally you’d put a chunk of code into the WP config file to increase the memory limits. You can do that with this plugin.
There is a whole lot more in there and all of that premium stuff is now included in the plugin itself. So this is actually really quite a nice plugin now and you’ll want to go check this out. They do. Like I said, it’s still offers some addons, but like I said, they have no impact on the plugin core functionality and their items to expand it out such as an access firewall, and a couple of other items to it. So go check this out. It is a really great plugin, Clinical WFP Core, and we get to move it up from a four to a five dragon rating.
All right, so that’s what we got for you today.
Hey, ClassicPress options then. Still a quiet weekend, ClassicPress. Although there is something really cool that CodePotent tweeted out earlier this week. It was a really great article and it helped inspire me for the presentation I’m going to be giving tonight. It’s an article – and of course the original articles in French. But I use the Google translate and I’ve got a link through the Google translate to the article cause my French is really, really rusty and my kids, I can get them to translate for me. But you know, getting junior high kids to translate takes a little bit of pushing and effort. So anyway, it’s a really good analysis on the promise of ClassicPress as they title says, “The little brother of WordPress,” I think it’s actually just going to be – you know, it’s WordPress is twin who’s going to grow up in and outdoing.
So this is a really good article talking about how the problems Gutenberg introduced into the ecosystem, what it looks like they’re going forward with Gutenberg and then the introduction of ClassicPress and what ClassicPress is doing and how ClassicPress is focusing on its particular segment of the community, which is more business based.
But I think bloggers and other average users are going to find ClassicPress more welcoming and more usable than WordPress is going to be. I know that the more I work with it and the more I work in between both worlds right now, I’m finding ClassicPress seems to be better and better. And as more and more stuff gets developed for ClassicPress, that’s going to happen.
Now, an article I forgot to get included in here and I just remembered about his ClassicPress is now included in the installer system that is used for one-click installing on many, website hosting companies. So ClassicPresses now hit the one click install button system and the more that happens, the more ClassicPress will become an actual option for people to use. So look for more and more things coming from ClassicPress in the coming months. And I believe a lot is going to happen in the next year since they’ve closed out their first year and they’ve actually moved forward with many, many things. So go check it out.
As usual, the usual stuff from ClassicPress, the ClassicPress club, the ClassicPress forums, the must-have plugin lists, et cetera. So there’s a lot of stuff in here that is going to be coming out more and more. So stay tuned and I will try and find more ClassicPress information for next week.
All right, so that closes out this episode here and the plugins I covered up was Trinity Audio, which I gave a 4 to, the Remove No Refer, which I gave a 4 to, and the clinical WP Core, which I gave a 5 to.
A couple of quick reminders. The next WordPress meetup is tonight, November 28th, 2019 in Victoria. The topic is all about WordPress and ClassicPress; The benefits of using each one and the pitfalls of using each one. That will be broadcast live on this YouTube channel. So if you’re interested, tune in at 6:30 Pacific time and check out the streaming of my presentation, which should be rather interesting.
Also, because I’m like self promotions so much, you can follow my journey at the roguestavern.com as you can, as my adventures of heading out into the forest panning for gold, going out to the gun range, shooting, you know, getting out camping. Basically, getting away from my computer and sharing what I do out in the wilderness and the outdoors and everything with the world via YouTube to see how it goes. This could be fun. It could be entertaining.
It’s definitely going to be cringy at times, but hey, come in and enjoy the fun.
And a brief off-topic rant, and this is something that I’ve just seen. I’m starting to see more of, especially as I get questions from people and how do they escape it and what do they do. Especially as a company grows, they start out with these managed WordPress web hosting environments, and I’m not going to name particular companies. There’s just so many of them. Most of them that I’ve come across have been such a pain. If someone wants to leave that particular managed hosting environment, escaping it to a regular hosting environment takes a bit of work.
You’ve got to export stuff, you’ve got to import it. It doesn’t always export and clean. It’s just so much more difficult than if they had just set themselves up on a good quality web hosting environment where they can do anything and everything they want to do without the restrictions. So if they’re looking for something like that, if you’re looking for something like that, make sure you come visit JohnOverall.com hosting and I can set you up with it.
All right. That’s pretty much everything I’ve got this week, so I am going to let my girl take us on out of here.
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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.