Transcript of Episode 462 WP Plugins A to Z

All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. This is complete verbatim of John’s discussion on the weekly plugins that have been reviewed.

WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #462 here.

Episode #462

John: Okay, off we go. First off, ClassicPress Options. What do we have for ClassicPress this week? We got a couple of small things, of course. For those of you who don’t know or are new to the show, ClassicPress is the fork of WordPress as it stood at WordPress 4.9 just before Gutenberg was introduced to it. So if you don’t want all the Gutenberg crap and you want to stay with a nice, smooth operating system, drop into ClassicPress. It might be just for you. The problem with it right now is there’s not a lot of plugins specifically made for ClassicPress, although that is changing. I’ve noticed the numbers are starting to come up and we’ll see more and more as time moves along. I mean, after all, ClassicPress is only a year-and-a-half old, moving towards its second year.

So this week I do have a couple of quick things for you. First off, I have something from AzureCurve, and this is the Open Graph tag plugin that AzureCurve has produced. Well, I don’t know much about the plugin, and it is something that could be of value. And if you know what Open Graph is, this is a plugin for you to check out for your ClassicPress website.

The other thing here is at ZigPress, they have made multiple plugins that are ClassicPress usable or ClassicPress-specific. They’ve got dashboard notes, image control, media taxonomies, media multiple roles. They have actually got quite a few there that I hadn’t seen. So this is something for me to check out further and individually check out these plugins.

But for you, go check it out. If you’re looking for some plugins for ClassicPress, ZigPress looks to be supporting it quite nicely. So you want to stay on top of that.

Of course, there is the usual stuff for ClassicPress being the ClassicPress Club website, which puts out articles and their related articles talking about Classic Commerce, which of course is a fork I believe of WooCommerce for ClassicPress. These sorts of things will be game-changers for ClassicPress as people start to move forward with everything that’s needed.

Must-have ClassicPress list over at the formus.classicpress.net. And this is a list of plugins that people need on their website and whether an alternative or something that’s ClassicPress-specific or works in ClassicPress has been found. So you want to check this one out.

And finally, you can go check out the CodePotent plugin directory for ClassicPress. This is some more stuff from CodePotent and what he’s been doing and his plugins. It looks like he has added a new one in there. So I need to get in there and dig into these ClassicPress plugins again. It’s been a little bit since I’ve had time for that.

Okay, so let’s move into WordPress plugins. What do I have for WordPress because that’s where I’ve been at for the last couple of weeks? The first one I’ve got for you here is called Bulk Delete. This is a plugin specifically for deleting in bulk all the junk that’s on your website. Now, there’re multiple reasons why you might want Bulk Delete. I mean, it deletes all your posts by category, tag, custom post type. It deletes pages, draft posts. It deletes duplicate content, posts by users, pages. It goes after multiple things for bulk deletion.

The reason you might do this is, for example, what I used it for is I had a project from a client. He wanted to duplicate his current site as it stood with the theme design layout, but he didn’t want all the posts and content and images and all the other stuff. He wanted to start a fresh site, but he didn’t want to have to go through the hassles of re-laying out a website.

So this plugin here came in real handy for cleaning it up after I’d moved it and duplicated it.

So this is a plugin that is very excellent. It can save you tons of time. Now, they do have some premium options which I didn’t need, but some folks may need it. And the premium options are deleting attachments, scheduled deletions, deleting all pages from the trash, deleting posts by a user or user role et cetera, stuff I didn’t need but stuff that could be important to you. So because, of course, while it is a fantastic plugin because it’s got premium options, that knocks it down a point, and so we give Bulk Delete a 4-Dragon rating. Go check it out. It could save you tons of time when just cleaning up a website or when doing what I did, duplicating and moving, copying a website.

Okay, the next item I’ve got for you here is called Smart Attachment Page Remove. Now, I haven’t tested this one out, but this one is kind of cool in that what it can do for you as you might – may or may not know, every time you upload an image to your website, what it does is it creates an additional attachment page for that image. Now, that may or may not be useful for you. Most of the time, it’s kind of a useless item. It can accidentally get indexed by Google, creating problems, adding in content that has no real value, et cetera.

This plugin goes in and removes all the attachment pages for all your media items, and it will even set up a 404 error or a 410 error that tells the search engines the content doesn’t exist, don’t index this anymore. And in case it’s already been indexed, please get it out of the index. A really great tool to help clean up your site and get rid of unnecessary extra crap.

Excellent little plugin, and this one is worthy of a 5-Dragon rating.

John: Okay, and the final one I’ve got for you here is called Post Types Order. Now, this one here is a plugin that helps you – if you’ve got multiple posts in different categories and other areas on your site, this plugin helps you rearrange the order of those posts. Now, you might ask, “Why would I want to do that? What do I need to rearrange them for?” Well, in some cases – in the case I needed this for – I was setting up a photo gallery that was pulling posts and pulling the featured image from the post to create a photo gallery. And the client wanted the images in a specific order versus the order that the posts were published in.

Well, you can go through each individual post and adjust the date of the post to make sure that one is before the other. But in the case of this plugin, once you install and activate it, you just go in. It allows you to drag and drop the posts in the post listing up and down thus adjusting the order so that when you’re using ascending or descending display, the posts appear in a different order; very fantastic plugin, works excellently, does the job.

The only caveat to it that I did find is it doesn’t work on a category basis. It only works on the total post basis, a little bit of a pain in that aspect, but other than that, a fantastic plugin.

It worked very well, solved my problem, saved me having to figure out the date and times of posts that were published on the same day. Just drag and drop and move it. Excellent plugin. Go check it out. Post Types Order, and I give it a 5-Dragon rating.

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Okay, so this is the part where I would love to fill up for the listener feedback, producer feedback, telling me what’s good, bad, indifferent about this show, what you would like to see more of, what you would like to see less of, you know, any sort of information to help this show grow and thrive. Anything folks, send it out. I will get it in here good, bad, indifferent, I really don’t care. It’s just something to tell me that people are actually listening. I know at least a handful of people are listening, but it would be nice to know that all the other three or four downloads I see per week are actually listening to the show.

All right, well this show is we do – squirrel! – absolutely, that’s where my brain went. Okay, we do have a contest running right now. And our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin who were kind enough to provide us with the premium version of their plugin to run our contests on, really great plugin. I’ve been using it since it was brand new and first introduced. It’s about three or four years old I think now, and they have improved it dramatically. It makes running a giveaway contest on your website a breeze. So go check it out.

I’d like to continue to give thanks back to Martin who had won this license in the last contest, and then, re-donated it back after he realized he had nothing to use it on. So we are giving away a license for Event Espresso. And we are giving away a license valued at $300 and you get a choice, either the Developer Support License or the Everything License.

So if you’re looking to build out a website that requires conference-style, people to register for stuff, classes, events where you want people to register or pay for the events online, this is a plugin for you. It makes setting up of that stuff a heck of a lot easier and it makes collecting the money relatively straightforward. Great plugin, it’s great for hosting art, painting classes, planning an event, raise money for a nonprofit, anything you want to do. Great plugin, go check it out Event Espresso, and enter the contest. Just go to wppluginsatoz.com/contests to enter. Enter your name, email address, and you might be the big winner of this license. And the contest is running from now until June 10th. So another week-and-a-half I believe maybe two weeks, give or take two weeks. So get in there and signup for the contest.

And if you want to find out more about that, check out the interview I did with Seth Shoults, the developer of this plugin. I’ve actually got two interviews of him somewhere on my site, one from when it was way back brand new plugin and one from recently. So go check out Event Espresso and go sign up for the contest.

Okay, so closing out this episode, I covered up the following plugins: Post Types Order, which I gave a 5 to; Smart Attachment Page Remover, which I gave a 5 to; and Bulk Delete, which I gave a 4 to.

A couple of quick reminders… The next WordPress Meetup in Victoria is scheduled for June 21, 2020. This is not an actual presentation meetup. This is just a get-together. It was going to be at like the local pizza place and have a beer afternoon. It is on a Sunday afternoon and it is on the longest day of the year. So stay tuned. I’m going to give you more details about that. I might have to figure out how I can bend or break the rules under these new Rona restrictions we have so we can gather more people. We’ll get some outdoor environment going, maybe people can show up. Maybe we can find a place where people can bring their own beers and gather around, have fun, have a beer, chat at each other within whatever reasonable distances people consider relevant. So we’ll see what happens. We’ll try and figure out what is going to go on with it and I do want to have this happen because it is just a social event. And well, people have been pretty isolated for a few months and they need some socialization. So stay tuned for that. That is coming down the pike. More information as I get it figured out.

There is a new interview out right now with Sabrina Zeiban, a developer who specializes in speedimization of your WordPress website. Go check out that interview. It’s a really great interview. I’d lots of fun chatting with her, and it is up and online now. And I do have another interview coming out which will be out and online next week now that I have an additional office assistant who can handle all these small tasks that I never seem to get accomplished.

If you would like to be on an interview show, simply contact me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview.

You want to find a bit more about me and what I do with my life outside of in front of computer screens, go check out the therougestavern.com, lots of stuff happening there, my adventures into the wild. Currently, my adventure is into converting a backyard full of grass into an edible urban forest. So go check that out.

That’s pretty much all I got for you. So let’s wrap it up there and we’ll call that a show. Before I do that so that I don’t talk over my girl, it’s tequila shot time. Let’s take my tequila shot gag and then let my girl take us on out of here. Off we go.

Reminders for the show: All Show Notes can be found at wppluginsatoz.com, and while you’re there, subscribe to the newsletter for more useful information delivered 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 also 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, a good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.