Transcript of Episode 459 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 #459 here.

Episode #459

Okay, so ClassicPress Options – I really don’t have ClassicPress Options. I haven’t had time to do any research for ClassicPress in the last couple of weeks. As you’ve noted, the last few shows I haven’t seen anything just float up to the top. They’re in their quiet season I think right now as they prepare to do some things. I know that I did note that they had released a security release patch about, you know, shortly after WordPress released theirs, so keep that in mind. If you’re running ClassicPress, you should have seen that automatically happen.

There is the usual stuff at ClassicPress to carry you through: the ClassicPress Club, ClassicPress forums, CodePotent’s website – all of that stuff there. You know, they’re still moving along at a nice, steady pace. You know, I know that as things expand and they introduce more stuff, it will take sudden jumps out there.

Okay, so let’s talk about WordPress plugins. Now the first one I’ve got to make a quick mention of, we’ll get my person who was supposed to cohost with me to talk about it the next time he comes on, and this is the webform to PDF form, Formidable PRO2PDF. This looks like a really great plugin and I look forward to hearing more about it.

So what did you have for me this week? First off, I have this one called Moving Media Library. This is a plugin to help you move your media library between servers and what it does is it outputs a database as a JSON format file that is then exported and you can use that to reimport the information into another site on another server, and you even get the option to replace all the media user IDs with the current user ID that you’re importing to.

It looks to be a pretty cool plugin. It helps maintain things such as date and time, folder structure, file size dimensions, thumbnails, Exif data, etc. that goes with the media that’s being imported over. This could be a really great tool for those of you who are moving a large media library, so something you’ll want to check out. A really nice looking plugin. Go have a look at it, it is called the Moving Media Library and I give it a 4-Dragon rating.

Okay, next up for you another one for my cohost here who was supposed to appear, and it was called E2Pdf – Export to PDF Tool for WordPress. This looked to be a really great tool for exporting PDFs, and I look forward to hearing more about it when I can get him on the show. If I don’t get him on the show, I’ll dig into it a little deeper and use them. Both of these I’ve never used, and they do look great for dealing with PDFs on your website, so something to keep in mind.

Okay, the last one I got for you – because we only brought four to the table to today’s anticipation of having a cohost, but things change at the last minute and I don’t have to throw a whole much more stuff in. So we’ll go with this one here which I had up, and it’s called Disable Site Health.

Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed – well, maybe you haven’t noticed – there’s many people that haven’t noticed. Ever since I think it was about WordPress 4, somewhere around there, they added a section under the tools called Site Health, which adds a bunch of extra pages for your WordPress site. Now, this is a really cool plugin and it is useful. I do use it a fair amount for helping me diagnose stuff or check quick settings or other miscellaneous stuff. But sometimes you might not need it to appear.

It does create these additional pages and it does create additional content. I’m not certain if it gets any load or not, but just additional stuff that might not be needed. Maybe you’ve got a client who doesn’t need to see this stuff on their site – all sorts of reasons why you might want to disable these pages. And this is a simple plugin that does just that. Install it, activate it, and it disables all the site health stuff for WordPress. That was added in WordPress 5.2. Some reason, I thought it was much older than that.

So it disables all the site health stuff. A nice, simple plugin, does a great job. I give it a 4-Dragon rating. Go check it out, Disable Site Health.

Okay, currently this show brought to you by…

Save time and money managing multiple WordPress websites. If you have several WordPress websites to manage, either for your clients or for yourself, then you know how much time it can take managing them all – time that is spent on mundane administrative tasks and then losing that time for your important business tasks. CMS

Commander is an online service that solves this problem and makes managing multiple WordPress websites fast and easy, as simple as controlling a single site.

By placing all your websites in one powerful dashboard, CMS Commander makes it possible to update, backup, and manage them all at the same time in one place. Features of CMS Commander include one-click updates of plugins, themes, and WordPress Core for all sites, automatic scheduled website backups, website cloning and restoration, uptime monitoring and analytics integration, bulk posting, and automatic content.

Sign up now for your 14-day trial at CMScommander.com and access all the features that will allow you to manage more websites and save time.

Absolutely, and CMS Commander is a great tool. I’ve been using it as I’ve said many times for about nine years now, and it saves me a lot of time in that it helps me identify sites that need updating. It can do bulk posting and there’s a lot you can do with it, so check it out. Please use the link in the Show Notes. It is an affiliate link. They don’t pay me for the ad. But if you ever decide you want to pay for an ad here, please reach out to me. I’ll happily replace this with your ad.

Okay, listener feedback! We do have some listener feedback this week, which is kind of cool. But first, a quick shoutout to my biggest little fan, Johan, who is currently on homeschooling detail. If he does some research and practice, he could be the next great developer of some yet unknown plugin that would make life easy for everyone. It could be a really great one in the WordPress/ClassicPress user universe, so go check it out. Thanks for all you do there, Johan. You’re a bit of an inspiration for kids.

Okay, and next up here I’ve got for you – this was a piece of feedback from Martin and we’ll hear more from him in a bit.

John,
Since you mentioned about the WordPress block editor being full screen by default, and I must admit I don’t like it either I went looking for a solution.
I found this blog post by one of the WordPress Core Developers on how to disable the default FullScreen mode.
It’s a really great article. The link is in the Show Notes.
I’m incorporating it in my plugins that I’m developing as it is confusing when you first see it.
Keep up the good work.
By the way I’m not sure that I will have any use for the Event Expresso Plugin that I won in the last contest that you had running. If you could use it keep the key.
Martin

Thanks a lot, Martin. I greatly appreciate the note and the sharing of this information with the rest of the community. So you gotta may wonder though when they actually have to build something to disable something, that’s when you know that what they might have created might not be overly popular.

Okay, this next item going out is a request going out to you, the Producers. Okay, and this one here comes in from Marv and it’s:

Hi John.
Been a while, and hopefully everything is going well for you over there.
Wondering if I could pick your brain on a plugin needed for a client? They want to be able to send a quote from WordPress for some products and service, and have the client able to log into WP to approve/question/pay for the quote.
I didn’t see anything in Woocommerce to manage something of this scope, and was wondering if you had any other recommendations?
Keep the faith on the podcast, man. We’re still listening!
Marv

So thanks a lot, Marv. I really greatly appreciate that folks are still listening out there, and it’s really great to start hearing from you folks that are listening because I’m beginning to wonder if nobody was listening and I’m just broadcasting into the void.

All right, so about this thing on the – as I’ve sent an email back to Marv and told him, I recall seeing something maybe even briefly talking about something like what he’s looking for for WooCommerce, but I can’t remember it and I haven’t had time to go do the re-research to find out about it. But I’ll put it out to you the listeners. If you know of something like this, please reach out to me so I can get it to Marv, and I can get it on a show for other listeners who could benefit from that knowledge. So thanks a lot, I greatly appreciate it. Keep this stuff coming, folks. I really am excited to see stuff coming in this last week.

And contests – we do have a contest. Thanks to Martin who had won the contest previously last time. As he said in his note to me, he realized there’s no projects he could use it for, so he has recycled that key back into the show. So we once again have a contest running to give away the key for Event Espresso. This time, I don’t think Martin will enter because we really don’t want him to win. So everyone could reenter the contest again, win that Espresso key, which is valued at $300.00. This is a chance for you. You can win the Event Espresso 4 everything license, the Event Espresso 4 developer license. You know, it’s a very flexible plugin. I’ve talked about it many times over the last month, so I’ll talk about it again.

Now, the contest we are going to be running is going to start tomorrow, May 8th, on VE Day and it’s going to run until June 5, and that will be a one month long for everyone to get in there, enter the contest, get their name entered win this key. It is a very valuable key and we’ll try to make sure that we get this notified to everywhere and everyone we can to get lots of people involved in it. So make sure you check this out and we’ll bring you more details about it in next week’s show. But starting tomorrow on VE Day, you can enter the contest.

Okay, and that’s pretty much it. So closing out this episode the plugins that were covered were Formidable PRO2PDF, Moving Media Library, which I gave a 4 to, the E2PDF Export to PDF Tool for WordPress, and Disable Site Health, which I gave a 4 to.

Of course a couple of quick reminders…. The next WordPress Meetup in Victoria is scheduled for May 21st and they’re probably not going to let us have the direct meet on that one there because I’ll need a group larger than six. So we’ll do this one live again. We’ll stream this one one more time. The topic is coming. Any suggestions for topics from people are completely welcome. It will be broadcast live on YouTube and any other information you can find out at wppluginsatoz.com/meetup.

I do have a couple of interview that I’ve recorded in the last couple of weeks. I just haven’t had time to get the editing done, the notes made, and get them published. They are coming up, a couple of really great interviews with developers from across the globe. So look to those coming real soon in your podcast feed.

If you want to be on an interview, simply contact me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview. And if you want to find out a little bit more information about my particular brand of crazy, go check out theroguestavern.com, where I am doing all kinds of interesting things and I’ve been putting up videos there lately about me converting a plain, simple, horrible backyard of grass into an edible forest. It’s quite the amazing journey as I’ve gotten into it only for the last few months, but it’s made some dramatic jumps. So check that stuff out.

And that’s pretty much everything I’ve got for you, so I’m going to let my girl take us on out of here. And if anyone has any questions, pop em into the thing – into the chat – the YouTube chat – and I will get them answered.

Otherwise, shortly after that, I will just close this one down for today. So let’s 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.

I forgot, it’s Tequila Time!

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.

Help us make the show better for you by subscribing and reviewing to the show at Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and in the iTunes Store. You can also leave us a review on our Facebook page using wppluginsatoz.com/facebook.

You can also watch the show live on YouTube, check out the screencasts and training videos, and remember to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications of all new videos. Follow the show on Twitter @wppluginsatoz.

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.