Transcript of Episode 463 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 #463 here.

Episode #463

John: All right. So first off, what I’ve got here, ClassicPress options. Well, this week, it has been a quiet week for ClassicPress. I had no time to do any research for ClassicPress. I was working on WordPress sites all week. So that’s what gets moved forward in the queue. Just a quick reminder about ClassicPress, it’s a really great option if you’re looking to get away from WordPress, and you want the same type of environment that you’re used to only without all the fluff and the headache of Gutenberg. There’re lots of great resources for ClassicPress. There is the ClassicPress Club, classicpress.net forums, all kinds of information, lots of listings of plugins. I got all these links in the Show Notes, so make sure you go check that information out if ClassicPress is something you are considering or working in.

WordPress, what do we have for WordPress this week? Well, this week here we’re going to bring you a bunch of plugins provided by you, the Producers. I have not had a chance to review these plugins due to my hectic work schedule over the last week, but I do believe that these plugins are good considering what my listeners there, you the Producers, have provided for me.

The first one-off, I got here is one that was sent in by Angel Lemus, and it’s called Cerber Security, Antispam & Malware Scan. This is a nice malware scanner, it looks to be. It’s very active – over 100,000 users. And what did Angel have to say?

“Yes, I have tried many of the other free security packages, and this one I love because the interface is the easiest to use, and it’s much less confusing than, for example, Wordfence. Another great thing about this one is that once you set it up to your preferred conditions, you can export the config file and upload it to other installations so it saves you a lot of time. Another really cool feature is that it lets you create a “Custom Login URL” (we should all do this to keep the bad guys out) otherwise you would need yet another plugin for this. There is a free version and a paid Pro upgrade.”

So he gives this one a 4-Dragon rating. Thanks, Angel. And it does look pretty good. I may have to test it out on a new installation to see how it works in the setup. I myself have been using Wordfence for years, and it does also offer the same thing. You can export all of your settings. Once you get one site set to perfection, you can export those settings and import them into every site you want going forward. It does save a lot of time with that sort of feature.

Drinking inserts – swallowing and breathing never ever works, trust me.

All right, so thanks a lot, Angel. I greatly appreciate that one. That’s one to go check out, folks. It is Cerber Security, Antispam & Malware Scan.

The next one, I’ve got here for you is another one, again, sent in by Angel Lemus. And this one here is called Happy Files.

“What it’s designed to do for you is it allows you to organize your entire media library via drag & drop in nestable categories, arrange thousands of files as you would do on your computer. Create, rename, delete, and nest your categories to your liking.

This plugin has a PLUS that makes it better than most media organizers. You can also create directories to organize your pages and posts. The plugin creates a sidebar in your media, pages, and posts so you can create your category directories. This is really nice if your website has many pages and/or posts. Organizing your pages and posts is optional.

This is the best organizer I have found yet.

The free version lets you make up to 10 Categories. For many, this may be enough. The PRO version lets you make unlimited categories. The Pro version is only a one-time payment of 19 bucks.”

So that’s not a bad deal. There is a link to a video here which shows you how to use it works.

He sent me a followup to this a few days later.

He found a really cool feature of this plugin that he wanted to add to the review. And what it does, you can organize your pages in categories like you can do in the media files. It’s pretty awesome. If you have a page with many pages, it helps you clean up the mess and get your pages much quicker. So this looks like a plugin to check out. He has given it a 4-Dragon rating. So thank you very much to Angel Lemus for that one there.

Okay, the final one I’ve got for you here was sent in by George Plana, and it’s called the Amazon Affiliate Product Availability Tracker. Now, what this one does is if you are frustrated with Amazon products links – like if you’ve built a website that’s got lots of Amazon product links – and I do have a couple of clients that do that, they make a living doing that, so I imagine they spent a lot of time making sure those product links are up to date.

Well, if you’re frustrated with the Amazon product links pointing to products that are no longer available, this is a simple plugin that checks all your posts and pages for Amazon product links and checks for their availability. In a matter of minutes, you get a report of all your expired product links. And they’ve used this thing to diagnose a bunch of affiliate link sites and replace the links that were no longer converted. This would be a great tool if you are an Amazon affiliate link person off of your website. This is a tool you will probably want to look at, adding to your repertoire. They do have a free version, but they also have a premium version. I don’t know the difference. They didn’t talk about the difference, but it’s obvious that it does do a great job just from the descriptions here. So go check this plugin out if you’re doing Amazon affiliate work. And they give this one a 4-Dragon rating. So thank you very much, George. I greatly appreciate it.

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John: Absolutely. Go check that one out. As I have mentioned dozens of times now, I’ve been using this plugin for over – actually, it’s not a plugin, it’s a program for over nine years and a fantastic tool. Please use wppluginsatoz.com/cmscommander. As it is an affiliate link, they don’t actually pay me for that ad. It’s just a way for me to promote my affiliate link with them.

Okay, listener feedback, I do have a little bit of listener feedback. Well, last week, we sent out a message on the podcast, and it was sent out through Twitter asking people to give us some feedback on plugins that work together really well for the task that they are trying to accomplish. We got one feedback from that. This came in from Nancy Houle. It’s via Twitter. You can find a link in the Show Notes @ BusinessLocker. And she mentioned three plugins. I haven’t had time to check them out, but you might want to.

The first one is called Groundhogg WP, and it’s used for marketing automation. The second one was Mailhawk WP, and this is for email delivery, and with that was Lifter LMS. And I do know Lifter LMS. You can go back years ago when Marcus was my co-host, and we interviewed or had the guy from Lifter LMS on the show. I don’t remember his name right now, but I know Lifter LMS, a great plugin, and it’s used for the membership section of the site. She said they all play well together.

So go check this out. Links are in the Show Notes to all the stuff. So go check this out and thank you very much. And anyone else out there that has a set of plugins that they used that worked together for building projects, send them to us and we’ll showcase them here on the show and get that information out. I may or may not get a chance to test them, but if you give me more detailed information, I will even spread that information out for folks to hear. So thank you very much for that.

Okay, so what we have got here next? This was something sent in by Angel Lemus again. Angel is a really great guy who provides me with a lot of content for the show. I greatly appreciate it for those weeks when I just don’t have time to get anything done. And what he sent us was a thing called localwp.com. Now, I don’t use that. I use a program called DesktopServer for my local development. But this one here looks like to be similar to DesktopServer.

He goes off here:

“This is not a plug-in, it is a desktop app. And it became one of my favorite tools. It’s a local environment to install WordPress and work locally. It’s easy to use and a huge time saver over creating a subdomain on your hosting plan and installing WordPress developing it that way. Local automatically installs fresh vanilla install of WordPress, which is not full of your hosting provider’s bloatware.”

Well, you need to come to me at johnoverall.com hosting. I don’t put bloatware on your WordPress install. It’s nothing.

“One of the main downfalls of working locally has always been though that you and your clients can never see your progress.”

In other words, it’s hard to share a local development with your client. This one here like ServerPress actually allows you to create a special link that you can send to your client and they can log in. They’ll get into your computer through a tunneling, and they can see what you are developing, so they can see what’s happening. So local allows you to create that tunnel also.

Great little tool and he doesn’t think he will develop with anything else online. This tool saved a lot of time. Local development does save a lot of time. I have found that sometimes local development interferes with what I want to do on the hosting provider because the hosting provider may have a different setup of the server software than what gets set up on your local environment. Sometimes that has to be taken into consideration when developing.

Really great tool. As he says available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. He gives this one 5 stars or greater for the plugin. So go check this out, Local WP, if you haven’t already settled on a tool for local development. So thanks again, Angel. I greatly appreciate that. And hey, information like that is always great. It won’t go into the plugin section. It will go into this section here, of information provided from you, the Producers of this show.

You know I do have a contest out right now, and there is one week left in the contest. Our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin who were kind enough to provide the premium version of their tool, their plugin to manage and maintain the contest over wppluginsatoz.com.

Currently, I am giving away a license for Event Espresso. This is a recycled one. So one more thanks out to Martin who won this in the last contest, realized he didn’t need it, so he recycled it back for us to re-give it out to you. One week left to get out there and enter the contest. This is a license that will get you the Event Espresso for everything license or the Event Espresso for a developer license. This is a $300 value.

This is an excellent plugin. If you are building out a website for conferences or for music instruction, or for classrooms, or for meetings, or for anything where you’re trying to charge for or not charge for, this plugin does a fantastic job. I’ve spoken its praises many, many times now. And at the moment, all I can say is go check it out. You want to get a free license?

Get in here, enter the contest; you might just get that free license for one year.

More information out about the plugin though, you can go check out my interview with Seth Shoults, the developer of this plugin. I’ve interviewed him twice over the years, back years ago when he was brand new with this plugin, and I was relatively new with my podcast, and recently when I interviewed him earlier this year. So go check that information out. Go into the contest. All you need is your name and email address to enter the contest.

So finally, closing out this show I covered up the plugins which were provided for me: the Cerber Security, Antispam & Malware Scan, which was given a 4; the Happy Files, which was given a 4; the Amazon Affiliate Product – let’s take that tongue out, throw it out, and wrap in a new one. Okay, the Amazon Affiliate Product Availability Tracker, which was given a 4.

Okay, and a couple of quick reminders, the next WordPress Meetup for Victoria is set for June 21st though it’s looking like it’s not going to be in Victoria and it’s going to be in an outdoor environment. And I’m going to have to cap a limit on the number of people to attend it. So I will have more information next week after I have confirmed that this is going to happen. It looks like I might have it out in the yard.

And if you want to know what the yard is all about, go check out my TheRougesTavern website, and you will find out more information. So it’s going to be an afternoon out in the yard enjoying beers, maybe a bit of a barbeque, and then enjoy ourselves. I just got to confirm information, so actually be mid-island up in the Duncan Lake, Cowichan area, just for folks to know. And it would be a limited number of people. I’ve got to confirm the information. So if you’re wanting to come out to that, you might want to get a hold of me or wait till next week when I announce it for certain.

Okay, and there is a new interview out right now with Sabrina Zeiban, and there is another interview that was due out this week, but my help got ill and couldn’t get into work. And ill?

They had a rough day. So it will be out next week. There is another interview coming out next week. So go check out the one that’s out. And if you would like to be on an interview show, simply connect with me john@wppro.ca or go to wppluginsatoz.com/interview.

And as I said, if you want to find out what the yard is, go check out the TheRoguesTavern.com. Check out all of my other adventures there.

That’s pretty much everything I’ve got for you. So before I let my girl take us out of here, it is tequila shot time. Yes, I’m enjoying my tequila shots on a weekly basis now. So off we go. It smells so good. That’s it. 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 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, good afternoon, or a good evening, wherever you happen to be out there on the globe today.