Transcript of Episode 489 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 #489 here.

Episode #489

John: Okay, it is time for the meat potatoes of the show into the depths of plugin depravity we go. Okay, first off, ClassicPress. I have a couple of things on ClassicPress here, and they’re just general information or links in the Show Notes. There are links to Google Docs that are created to show you and showcase the listing of ClassicPress plugins that are fully ClassicPress compatible. Some people have gone to some really great extents to bring out these – to create these documents for people to find WordPress plugins in the WordPress repository that are ClassicPress compatible at this time. Keep that in mind, ClassicPress is going to change eventually.

And there’re quite a few things here. There’s also a link for – on the WordPress repository itself for ClassicPress compatible plugins. And these are all the plugins here, you can just go in there and look for that. And that’s really all I have for ClassicPress this week. I’m still lacking in ClassicPress; I haven’t had time to go in there and do anything. I’ve been so busy with all my regular clients, and they’re all on WordPress right now, and converting them to ClassicPress, I wasn’t ready for that. They weren’t ready for spending the money for it, so that’s the way it goes. Things may change in the future, but we shall see.

Okay, I have a few plugins for you today. First off, the first one I’ve got for you is called Gray Owl Thumbnail Resize Lite. This is a very interesting plugin. Now, there’s lots of plugins like this out there. I didn’t actually try this plugin. I just sort of watched their review video and checked it out, and it does look like a lot of the other ones. And it’s a great tool if you’re not managing lots of images. If you’re only managing a few images or you’re putting up a post every couple of days or something and oftentimes you’re dealing with an image that’s just not the right size, this plugin will allow you to resize or crop an image to fit precisely what you need fit it into on your website. And it’s a really great tool for you to help manage your images on your website.

And this is the free version of it, so they do have a premium version which offers a bit more controls, which is, you know, par for the course these days. The freemium plugin is giving way to the – not the freeware, I coined a term there, but I don’t remember the coined the term now – and trialware – not the trialware, that’s not the word either. It’s something similar. I had a better term than trialware, but trialware is what’s coming, where they’re going to give you a plugin that will function for X period of time, and then, it will cease to function unless you buy a license for it. And reinstalling it won’t work because it will insert some code somewhere that you’ll have to dig through your database for hours to find, although somebody will find a way to bypass it because there is always a way to bypass this stuff. Okay, the next one I’ve – oh, and that plugin there, the Gray Owl Thumbnail Resize Lite, I give it a 4-Dragon rating. Go check it out; it could be very useful for you.

The next one I’ve got for you, this is one that I’ve needed from time to time across the web. I haven’t needed it recently, but I did find it while on a client’s website where they’re actually using it, and it is a plugin called Widgets on Pages and Posts. And I’ve used similar plugins to this one here. They’re really great tools. This one’s a freebie, and it gives you all the control you need, and what it does is it allows you to create additional sidebars, put in all the widgets you want. That sidebar gets a shortcode, you can then take that shortcode and go dump it on a page or a post.

Very useful, it’s come in handy for me many times over the years to be able to do that because sometimes you need a very specific piece of information that is only available via a widget you need it on a page, which is a real pain in the ass to get there without using this. Great tool, it works exactly as it’s supposed to. This is a freebie one, and well, freebie ones that work exactly the way they’re supposed to. Well, they get a 5-Dragon rating.

Go check it out, Widgets on Pages and Posts.

Okay, and the final plugin I have for you today. This one here almost made me laugh when I found it, but it is called Podcaster Kit – monetization of your podcast. Great idea in theory and practice, yeah, I don’t think so. But I didn’t actually install the plugin, but it’s a really great idea. And in theory, if you happen to have a podcast that is popular enough, hits more of the general audience, brings in a large enough audience, or has some really cool stuff that people just can’t live without and they’ll pay you for, this could be a great tool for you.

It allows you to lock your podcast behind a paywall on your website or lock part of your podcast behind a paywall. I like the ideas behind this. You know, I may have to come up with a way to do this, maybe if you want to get to do – when I finally have membership status, if you want to get to the rest of the podcast, you got to become a member. It doesn’t cost anything, but memberships, that could work on it. But as far as money-wise, there’s got to be something that you people want, and I’ve learned that in my eight years, nine years – how long am I doing this? Let’s say my oldest – my youngest son is — I’ve been doing this freaking almost 11 years, holy crap. So, in my 11 years of doing podcasting here, I’ve seen it in my – the show has been way up, it’s been way down. Now, it’s about mid-range. It comes and goes. It wanes, it falls, it depends on people’s interest, but I’ve been rather focused, and narrowly focused on the WordPress plugins area.

So this is a really good option if you’re running a podcast and you think you can gain the audience, this could be a really good tool to set up and start using. You could use it at first, like I just suggested, instead of trying to collect money, collecting email addresses, because the money is really in your email address. It’s not in people donating. It’s more than email addresses, is if you can learn how to use the marketing and market them the right stuff. At any rate, it seemed like an interesting tool, but yeah, I sort of give it a middle of the road 3-Dragon rating. Go check it out, The Podcaster Kit – monetization of your podcast.

All right. That’s all I got there. This show currently brought to you by…

Are you tired of the same old web hosting, not having the resources you need to run your website properly, having a lack of control, then you need JohnOverall.com web hosting, providing you with all the resources you need to smoothly run your WordPress website or ClassicPress website. With strict limits on the number of clients allowed per server, JohnOverall.com provide high-quality fast server performance. Visit JohnOverall.com for web hosting that won’t slow you down.

John: Absolutely, nothing but the highest quality web hosting, and one that actually blocks indexes, so you might want to check out my hosting. I do have room. I’m cleaning up a server right now making some space, and it’s going to allow me to take an additional 50 clients, and that will be it. Once I hit those clients, nobody will be allowed into my hosting services. I will peak out, and that’s where I’m standing. I don’t want to be the next Bluehost or some other giant people. I’m more than happy to stay small and provide the highest quality service to all my clients. So go check it out, JohnOverall.com, not everyone can get in there. You do have to email me and talk to me before you can become a hosting client.

All right, let’s take it along here. Questions, no I don’t have any questions here. What do I got? I’ve got no feedback, got no listener questions this week. I really would like some listener feedback. It’d be great, some listener questions, anything along that line. We haven’t had that in quite a while. I know people are downloading and listening to the show. You know, I see the downloads every week. They’re not huge. They’re not massive. They’re not tens of thousands, but they are in the thousands. So someone’s listening to the show, or at least they’re downloading. I don’t know, maybe they’re never listening, they just like to download the show. But if you’re downloading, you’re actually listening to the show, if you got any feedback, send it my way. If you got any questions you’d like to have answered, send them my way. I’ll do my best to get them all answered for you, and feedback, I always enjoy good, bad, indifferent. I don’t really care.

Hey, we do have contests, and our contests are powered by the Simple Giveaways plugin. They have kindly provided us with a premium version of their plugin for running all our contests. So thank you very much, guys. It is a fantastic plugin. I’ve been using it since it was brand new literally. I think I found it when it was in the repository in its first couple of weeks. So great plugin. It has grown up very nicely over the last three years. Go check it out.

I do want to thank Charlie for all his support and getting our contests all organized and up and running. And we did note that we had a winner last week for Cart Lift for WooCommerce. The winner was Jess C. or Jess S. You know, Jess, if you’re listening to this show, I haven’t heard back from you yet. It’s time for you to reach out to me and get your license. I know I’ve sent you an email. I will send you another one. I’ll send you two more emails. If I don’t hear back, well, we will recycle the license much as – we have an unclaimed prize from the contest where we gave away a license for WP Admin Pages Pro. We’re going to be recycling that license in due course.

There is a new interview out right now with Arindo Duque from WP Admin Pages Pro, WP Ultimo, which is – and that was reviewed in – and the plugin was reviewed in Episode 484. The review is out right now, Interview Number 53, and the plugin was reviewed in Episode 484, and that is the contest we are currently running. We are giving away an unlimited lifetime license of WP Ultimo; easily create your fully automated website as a service business.

Now, this is a really amazing plugin. You need to go listen to the interview with him because he talks about how this plugin works in the WordPress MU Environment and how you can actually do something I’ve tried to do little three or four times over the last 10 years and been almost had zero success at it, but I think this plugin could make that a success. If I had time to go after that kind of project again, I probably would, and I would use this plugin to solve all the problems I had in those times. This is an unlimited lifetime license. It is valued at $499. Well worth the time to enter the contest. Go check it out. And don’t forget the interview.

All right, if you’re a developer, you want to support the show, you want to donate premium licenses, reach out to me at wppluginsatoz.com/plugin contest.

All right, so the plugins I covered in this episode here was the Podcaster Kit – monetization of your podcast, which I gave a 3 to, The Widgets on Pages and Post, which I gave a 5 to, and the Gray Owl Thumbnail Resize Lite, which I gave a 4 to.

And since we don’t have a Q&A segment this week, we’re just going to move right into closing out the show. And yeah, it’s a bit shorter this week, but it’s a good thing for me. I actually have a massive appointment I got to keep at 1 o’clock, so good for me to get done early. I was really stressing that I wouldn’t make it, but now I’m not so overly worried about that. At any rate, closing out this week, there still is no meetup planned. I’d really want to plan some. I just haven’t had the wherewithal to get around to getting them planned yet. And if you want to be in an interview show, contact me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview.

If you want to follow my journey, find out more about me, go check out the roguestavern.com, and that’s where I have all my adventures and the other stuff and my new e-store, which will be opening there probably the first week of January. I have been working on it. I’ve been working on my products for it, all those little bits and pieces slowly coming together. It’s going to be a really great thing. You can go check out my hunting videos, my searching for gold, hiking, camping, out on the gun range, all kinds of crazy stuff from me. That’s what I do with my weekends. If nothing else, the Rona has granted me my free time back again to do the things I wanted to do instead of all these events I was involved in.

I think that’s the one beautiful thing that’s come from this is that I no longer had myself tied up in mass amounts of crazy stuff. It’s what it is. All right. So I got a crazy question from myself. What do you enjoy the most about doing the show? What do you mean what do I enjoy most about doing the show? Okay, I’ll catch that after the credits. I’ve got questions here in the chat window. I’ll catch these after the credits. I’m wrapping up the credits. So I’m going to let my girl take us on out of here. That’s really all I’ve got, and let my girl take us on out of here, and then, I’ll come back after that and talk to everybody real briefly. Oh, it is tequila shooter time. Yeehaw! Let’s have a shot on the house, off we go.

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.

Help us make the show better for you by subscribing and reviewing 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 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.