Transcript of Episode 447 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 #447 here.

Episode #447

Okay, so what do we have this week for you? I have ClassicPress Options. ClassicPress, a fast-growing fork of WordPress of course, has been coming into its own. It hasn’t been as busy in ClassicPress World the last couple of weeks as I had hoped. It’s been kind of quiet in the news front. There’s been no real news this week. It seems to be just a bit of a general lull, but I expect it’ll pick back up again; it always does. Every time it slows down, it picks back up.

But I do have for you a ClassicPress-specific plugin. This one here is called Insult Generator and it’s from AzureCurve and it’s really quite a nice plugin for the most part. It’s a great little plugin, you can have some fun with it on your site. And it is to me lacking a couple of things, because what the plugin does for you is it – with a couple of shortcodes, it allows you to create a button to generate modern insults or Medieval insults, and then with another shortcode, where it’s going to display that insult on your webpage for you, so you use those to set it up.

The thing I found with it while setting it up is the instructions could’ve been a bit more clear in the usage of it. Many users out there don’t always know the complete formatting for shortcodes. Maybe in the notes you could include the brackets that are there for creating shortcodes so that those are new to it or just figuring things out won’t have to try and remember what they’re doing. Also, the Readme doc should also contain some of the necessary formatting for the uses to the plugin. It could also use an easy place to get in and do some editing of the insults, maybe add your own specialized insults in your own flare and format.

So other than that, it’s a pretty decent little plugin. It’s just a little fun thing that you can add to your website to have a little fun with. Once you get it installed it works quite well and does add a bit of fun to your website. So go check it out. It’s the Insult Generator from AzureCurve and I give it a 3-Dragon rating.

And a little bit other bits and pieces for ClassicPress for you, up-to-date ClassicPress news, check out the ClassicPress Club at classicpress.club – I’m not used to all those extended domains. There’s the must-have plugin list and of course to find a listing of ClassicPress-specific plugins, go check out the forums where there is a listing that is maintained there by CodePotent, and it looks like they came up a little bit. Now they’re up to 50 plugins on that list, so Woo-hoo! It’s growing! It’s getting much better.

I mean, the first time I started this thing, it only had 37, so it’s growing up little by little, so keep checking this thing out on a regular basis. The hard part is that when a new one appears because they seem to be alphabetized, you’re not sure where the next new one is, so you have to read them or figure out what’s going on with them. I need to put them in a spreadsheet so I can monitor them as they come up, so I don’t get lost figuring out which one is the new one.

All right, so that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you in ClassicPress this week.

So what have I got for you for WordPress? Well, I’ve got several plugins for you for WordPress this week, and a couple of them are just for fun. And of course, being Valentine’s Day tomorrow, maybe you’ll want to have a little fun with your website and add hearts and music notes to your website. Well, I’ve got a couple of plugins that allow you to do that.

Now, these are older plugins and haven’t been updated in several years. One of them is the Valentine’s Day Hearts and the other one is the Valentine’s Day Floating Hearts and Music Notes – oops, the Hearts is the music notes and the Floating Hearts is the hearts – sorry, they’re confusing. I understand it. They do pretty much the same thing.

They do both work. They actually work in ClassicPress too, which is kind of cool. They haven’t been updated in a while, so who knows how good the code is in them or how much longer they will last. But if you want to just have one day where you have some fun and have hearts floating down your page, raining down like snow, go check these plugins out. They’re really simple to install. Just activate them and boom, they start floating hearts and music notes down your website for you. It does get a bit messy and it’s kind of irritating at times, but you might not keep them there very long, but go check it out.

Anyway, that’s Valentine’s Day and the Valentine’s Day Hearts plugins. For both these plugins, I give them a 3-Dragon rating. Go check ‘em out.

Okay, next up I have for you a file manager plugin. Now, this is the first of several file manager plugins I am going to be looking at over the next week or two as I have been contracted for a new project to set up a site to allow my client to be able to upload a single file, a video, or a batch of files that need to be run together inside a subfolder. They needed an easy way to upload them aside from FTP. I mean, FTP is a great way to do it but not everybody understands or uses FTP very well.

But they also needed – there’s always one main file in this that is the Run file, and they wanted to have an easy way to share out the link for that one main file via an email, and that’s what I’m looking for and so I’m investigating several of these file manager plugins – the ones you know that I’ve seen and maybe reviewed in the past and kind of warned you against. Yeah, then you’ve got to be aware of what you’re doing here and how you set them up.

And I’ve discovered by digging into these plugins is that a couple of them have setups in them that you can go in and limit who can access those plugins, permission levels, usernames, etc. – many different ways to control the access to them. Some of them, you can even control specifically what directory they can access. So these are what I’m looking at and I’m bringing them to you.

The first one here I’ve checked out is File Manager, and this one here seems to work very well. The free version has very limited usage; they do have a pro version and virtually all of them have a pro version. But from the free version, I’m able to get some of the basic functionality that I’m chasing here. The ability to upload a bunch of files in bulk by just grabbing them and dropping them and boom, they’re uploaded, and then finding that main file, right-clicking on it, and click “Share as” and it pops up in email, automatically puts the link in the email, and you just have to write the email around the link, and away you go. Really great for that.

It fits most of the bill so far on what I’m going to need. From what I’ve examined through their pro version, it might have what I need, so right now this one’s running first place. But of course because this is the free version I’m checking out for you, I’m only giving it a 4-Dragon rating. So go check this one out if you’re looking for a file manager plugin for your website – File Manager, 4-Dragon rating, go check it out.

Okay, next up I have for you something to use if you’re an Elementor user. If you’re using the Elementor plugin for creating your websites, this is something you may want to look at. It’s a simple plugin, Lazy Load Elementor Background Images. Now, if you’re not using Elementor, you might not know what I’m talking about, but you’ll still have a vague notion of what I’m talking about here.

In Elementor, when you’re building it out, you can put background images in multiple places on your layouts. You can put them in columns and sections and blocks and put in individual background images, and I’ve built out a couple of websites like that using background images in multiple places on the page. Well, what this plugin does for you is it slows down the loading of those images, therefore increasing the speed that your webpage loads initially. So it only loads the images for the backgrounds as people scroll down the page and get to them.

It’s a great way to improve the speed of your website by just adding a simple plugin. It just adds a simple JavaScript to the site that helps deal with that issue of loading images. So go check it out, Lazy Load Elementor Background Images, and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

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All right, and listener feedback this week. Well, it was a quiet week; I don’t have any feedback for you this week from you, the listeners out there, the Producers of the show. Please, send me some feedback, man. All good, bad, indifferent – I take it all. I’m more than happy to share what you have to share with the world.

And of course, the contest this week, the contest is still in production because I get sidetracked easily, you know. It’s

just –

Squirrel!

And another – and another —

Squirrel!

There we go. Yeah, just squirrels everywhere, man. It’s like I get sidetracked and I lose track of the things I’ve got to get done. What I need is a staff. I need a staff of about 10 people to manage me and then I do really, really well.

So anyway, there’s no contest this week but with a little luck, I will have the contest up for next week.

And for all you developers who want to support the show, send me an email – direct email to john@wppro.ca and tell me you want to support a contest. Hey, it’s free advertising for you, pretty much.

Okay, well that pretty much wraps up everything I’ve got for this week. I covered up in this episode the Valentine’s Day plugin, which I gave a 3 to; the Valentine’s Day Hearts plugin, which I gave a 3 to; the File Manager plugin, which I gave a 4 to; the Lazy Load Elementor Background Images, which I gave a 4 to; and the Insult Generator, which I gave a 3 to.

Okay, and a couple of quick reminders. The WordPress Meetup in Victoria will be February 25, 2020 in Victoria, and it will be about assessing your website host. And you get to learn how to assess your website host. Find out if your hosting company is filling all of your needs. Learn how to compare hosting companies. Learn about their packages. Decide what services they’re offering. Do you need that? Do you need something better? What do you need? How do you know how much space you need, etc.? It will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel with everything else. For location information, go check out wppluginsatoz.com/meetup.

And if you want to be on an interview show, simply connect with me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview.

And if you want to find out more about me, follow my journey over at theroguestavern.com. Check out my adventures into the wild, searching for gold, hiking, camping, out on the gun range, and more.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got, so I’m gonna let my girl take us on out of here, and then I’ve got a little treat for you after the credits, so hang around after those.

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.

John: And here we go, a little treat, courtesy of the No Agenda Show…

Just buy those facemasks off the shelf
I bought 10 boxes of ‘em for myself
Didn’t help me much, now I’m totally screwed
Oh no, I’ve got the Wuhan Flu

I’ve got myself a case of Wuhan Flu
I don’t know what I am supposed to do
Didn’t know I had it when I gave it to you
Now we all got the Wuhan Flu

John: All righty and there we go, a little treat for everyone. Okay, what do we got next? That pretty much wraps it all up, so take care now. Bye-bye. And if anyone wants to chat, I’ll give it the 30-second usual and see if anyone has anything to say that’s hanging in on the viewership.