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 #455 here.
It’s Episode 455 with plugins for Collecting Tithes Controlling the Elements, Sticking it to the Top, and ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #455
All right, first off, we have ClassicPress Options. Well, ClassicPress is still very light on news and plugins currently.
I’m not spending much time in ClassicPress areas at the moment, so I’m having to rely on what comes through newsletters or I catch on Twitter or Facebook feeds, which the last few weeks haven’t been a whole lot. But I did pick up a couple of pieces this week of interest.
First off, plugins for ClassicPress. This here is called cpforks.com – sorry, this is an article about plugins for ClassicPress from ClassicPress.club. Now, this is so hard to deal with. I’ve been in the internet for so long and once they introduced all these unusual domain names, I still get messed up by them. So it’s classicpress.club is what it is.
This is an article from them talking about plugins for ClassicPress from the cpforks.com website. Now, it’s a really good article. It talks about what’s happening here. The CP team, they are starting to fork some plugins for ClassicPress, and as they talk about on their own website over at cpforks.com, they’re starting by forking plugins that they need for themselves initially.
Now, this could grow. I imagine it will eventually grow and it’s a really good thing. And what they do is they’ve got a listing and it’s started right now with two plugins. The Elementor Page Builder has been forked for ClassicPress and TablePress has been forked for ClassicPress. So these are going to be interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how this grows. I’m going to have to check in with it from time to time, but of course one great thing is I check in with
ClassicPress Club on a semiregular basis to see if they’ve got any news, articles, and information. I’m pretty sure they can establish themselves as the ClassicPress news area go-to place for ClassicPress. They could become another Tavern if they want; all they’ve got to do is get some work going. I mean, ClassicPress is still new. They haven’t even hit their second birthday yet, so there’s a lot of growth for ClassicPress. It’s going to be happening.
All right, so that’s pretty much all I’ve got here for ClassicPress this week, aside from the usual stuff about checking in at the ClassicPress forums for the ClassicPress must-have list of plugins, the ClassicPress-specific plugins that are built. The list is maintained by CodePotent. There’s just not a lot there. But if you’re a ClassicPress user listening to the show, send me information. I will get it into the show. I really will; I just need the information to arrive in my inbox in some way. The best way is through the Contact form at wppluginsatoz.com.
Okay, so what have we got for WordPress? Now, I do have a few plugins for WordPress this week and the first one I’ve got for you – this one here is of course due to the Wuhan Flu, everyone’s in lockdown. People are being told not to go to church, not to go to groups, not to do lots of things. Well, many, many churches had not yet fully gotten onboard with the technical age. They were still depending on their people to show up every Monday and Wednesday, you know, and drop a couple of bucks into the collection plate that was passed around to help support their church.
Well, what’s happening now, they’re not getting that money. They’ve gone now three weeks without having any meetings, nobody there, nobody to collect the plate from.
So I’ve been approached a couple of times over the last couple of weeks to get things set up on their websites. Yes, I do work for church websites. I really do enjoy them. They’re lots of fun, different types of churches, different types of viewpoints. Always keep your mind open all the time. Well, of course what I suggested was, you know, “Do you got a PayPal account?” and they’re like, “A what?” I said okay, give them some information. They can go set up a PayPal account.
It’s really straightforward because this is the easiest way to begin taking donations without having to go through a whole lot of headache and they’re also one of the least expensive ways to take money, you know, and setting up a merchant account for MasterCard and Visa is a nightmare for the internet. It’s a whole lot of work. PayPal, nice and simple, and there’s so many applications that all you need is that basic PayPal email address, plop it in – boom, you’re connected – and they start donating money to your cause.
This is a very simple plugin to use. It’s called PayPal Donation. You just simply install it, set it up, go through and configure up your different buttons. You can configure up multiple buttons with multiple styles and place those multiple buttons in multiple places throughout your site and your sidebars, etc. Make them big, make them small – you know, showcase them to encourage people to donate to your cause. A really great plugin for taking donations. I really like this one. It’s similar to one I used to use years ago. It might even be a fork, or it might be a continuation of that one. I didn’t dig that deep into it, but it is really good, a really excellent plugin that just works and does what you need to collect that money. So of course being free, we give this one a top…
… 5-Dragon rating.
Okay, next one I have for you. This one was sent in to me by Angel Lemus and this one is called Granular Controls for Elementor. Now, this is a pretty old plugin. It hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, but it does still seem to work. If you are a developer out there or you like to fork plugins, hey, this one might be for you.
At any rate, this one allows you to get in there and set up some granular controls for dealing with your Elementor elements and your Elementor UI, help clean it up, organize it, make it drag-able. Basically, make it more usable when you’re working through your Elementor website. It looks like a pretty decent plugin for the most part, probably not something I’m going to use, but it does look like something that may be of interest to other folks.
So based on everything I could read about it, check it out. I’ll give it a 4-Dragon rating, so go check it out, Granular Controls for Elementor.
Okay, and the final one I’ve got for you is called Sticky Menu or Sticky Anything – everyone likes sticky, especially on a hot summer day. All right, Sticky Menu or Anything on Scroll. Now, this one reminded me of a plugin I used years ago before theme developers started incorporating sticky headers into their theme developments. And if you’re still working with something like that, this is a really good plugin. If you’re looking, this plugin can also be used to stick your sidebar scroll to the top also, and that’s what I mainly used it for. Not this one, but I used another one that was similar to this.
Now, this one does require you to have a little bit of HTML/CSS knowledge, because you’ve got to go look up some CSS rules and other things and elements and you’ve got to place this into the plugin itself. Because what you can do is you can choose any element to be the element that is stuck to the top. Most often as I said, it’s used for sticky menus at the top. But nowadays, most themes have a sticky menu option built into them. They don’t all have a sticky sidebar option.
And now why would you want a sticky sidebar option? Well, what you want is a sticky sidebar as they scroll down and when they get to the bottom, you know, you can look on the screen here and you can see the sidebar. As I scroll down, the sidebar keep disappearing right off the top and then there’s nothing left. But if you stick that sidebar to the top, you can have it always stay in appearance for people if you’ve got important information in that sidebar. You just can’t make the sidebar too long. If you have it too long, nobody will ever see the bottom because they wouldn’t be able to scroll to it.
So anyway, this is a very useful plugin in many aspects. It’s nice, it’s up to date, it’s a relatively recently updated plugin, and it looks like it works pretty well. Again, it looks like a great plugin, something to check out. I’ll give the Sticky Menu a 4-Dragon rating.
Okay, so that covers up those plugins and this show, currently brought to you by…
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Absolutely. CMS Commander, a fantastic system. And if you want to check it out, please use the links in the Show Notes or just go to wppluginsatoz.com/CMSCommander, and that’ll take you right to them and using my affiliate link. This isn’t an affiliate ad; it is not paid by them. So if you want to pay for an ad here though, feel free to get a hold of me. I’ll happily replace it with that.
Okay, so again, listener feedback. This is a place where I want to put listener feedback. I want to hear from folks. I want questions. I want people to ask me things. I want people to say whether I’m doing good, bad, indifferent. Just all kinds of things, you know. I would even happily put…
Warning! Warning! Unlawful content!
… in here, you know. Anything man, really – just something to help out. You know, add a little bit to the show. Please reach out, contact me, john@wppro.ca or the Contact page at wppluginsatoz.com.
Okay, and contests – we do have a contest right now. And currently yes, our contests are sponsored by the Simple Giveaways plugin. I really greatly appreciate them. They donated a premium version of their plugin, which runs all the contests on WP Plugins. A great plugin; I’ve been using it since it was brand new about two or three years ago back when I reviewed it. Go check out the review. Just look for the review in the Show Notes somewhere.
Okay, and we do have a new contest for you. We are giving away a license for Event Espresso and the contest is running from now until April 22, 2020. I’m going to try and read this through and see if I can get through it with a straight face.
All right – Enter for your chance to win the Event Espresso 4 Everything License or the Event Espresso 4 Developer License. Event Espresso is a flexible event registration, ticketing, and calendar plugin for WordPress. This plugin can handle a variety of events from organizing an annual conference for your company, holding training courses to teach CPR, hosting art or painting classes, or planning an event to raise money for a nonprofit. Event Espresso can make your event registration and ticketing with WordPress enjoyable, easy, and profitable. The best events registration and ticketing features comes standard in the core WordPress Events plugin, plus fantastic support. Both support licenses are valued at $300 and the coupon is good for one redemption. You choose which version best suits your needs.
How about that? I made it through in one shot. All right, well basically it’s a fantastic plugin. As I’ve said before, I’ve used it once before in the past and didn’t use it for years, and then I had to use it last summer. Of course, it is excellent. I do like it. I recently did an interview with Seth Schultz for Event Espresso and I re-reviewed the plugin and it’s really quite good, so go check it out. And think of it, it’s a $300 license here, folks.
It’s a really excellent plugin and not only is it good for in-person events, but virtual events and virtual classes and other things we want people to sign up. It’s got built-in PayPal functionality. It can work with Stripe – all kinds of payment processors. A really excellent tool for you running events. Go check it out. You get a choice whether you get everything you need or a developer license, which allows you I believe to use it on multiple sites.
Okay, and that’s all I’ve got there. So – oh, and to enter the contest, go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests.
Okay, so closing out I covered up the following plugins: PayPal Donation, which I gave a 5 to; the Granular Controls for Elementor, which I gave a 4 to; the Sticky Menu or Anything on Scroll, which I gave a 4 to.
Okay, and for those of you that aren’t listening to the YouTube version, make sure you stick around or come back to the YouTube version. Stick around after the YouTube version, listen to a couple of songs from the No Agenda Nation, man. They get some pretty good ditties from there, and I’m trying to spread ‘em out into different areas. I cut them out of their show, and I bring them here.
Okay, a couple of quick reminders. The next WordPress Meetup in Victoria will be April 28th. Now, it’s not looking like we’re going to be able to do an in-person meetup. I’m thinking they’re going to keep us on lockdown and prevent us from having groups of five or more, three or more, or 10 or more – I don’t know – it’s constantly changing. They can’t make up their minds. At any rate, we won’t be able to have group meetings, but I will probably do it as a live seminar direct from the Brewery Overlook, so everyone can see what I’ve got. At least I can keep this up and keep it going.
I do have a new interview coming out, which I was supposed to get out earlier this week, but I got caught up in work and actually forgot to get it published. But I have a new interview with Kevin Brent from WP Data Sync, talking about his new plugin, and that interview will be out next Tuesday for certain. So make sure you check out the podcast feed for that because it only goes into the podcast theme.
Okay, and if you want to be interviewed, just go check out wppluginsatoz.com/interview. If you want to find out a bit more about me, go check out theroguestavern.com, where you can check out all the things I do.
Okay, and that pretty much wraps it up, so I’m 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.