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All transcripts start from the point in the show where we head off into the meat and potatoes. They are the complete verbatim of John and Amber’s discussion of this weeks plugins that have been reviewed.
WordPress Plugins A to Z Podcast and Transcript for See complete show notes for Episode #510 here.
Not FLoCKing Done Yet It’s Episode 510 – We have plugins for Stopping the Fullscreen, Starting Over, Custom Code, Limiting Admin Bar Access, Getting FLoCKing Excited, and ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #510
John: All right, so first off, ClassicPress options. What do we have for ClassicPress options? I do actually have something today for ClassicPress. I managed to catch it on a Twitter feed this morning, and it seems that there’s a new release of WordLift plugin, and they have made it known that they’re fully compatible with ClassicPress. So if you’re using WordLift, and you’ve been considering going to ClassicPress, and this has been a reason not to go, you might want to look again and make the jump to ClassicPress. I mean, ClassicPress is going to be a big deal in the future. I’m not sure how long. It’s moving not as fast as I’d hoped it would, but it is moving forward. So go check this out. There’s a nice little article on the Twitter — quick link to the tweet that it was all about — and go check that out. Other than that, we don’t really have anything else for ClassicPress this week but go check out the usual links in the show notes to take off to the ClassicPress stuff. And for WordPress, we do have WordPress plugins.
The first one I’ve got for you here today is called WP Reset. And this is one here — this is one of the multiples of reset plugins that are out there. I had need of a reset plugin recently, and you got to be really careful if you use a reset plugin. You need want to just wipe out a site to reset it back to the beginning. And there’s times where you might need to start all over again. Well, you can go grab one of the multiple reset plugins out there, pretty much all of them are about the same. They go in to give you a big warning when you start to do this. It says, “Hey, are you sure you want to do this?” Type reset into this box to make sure — double triple sure you’re going to do this because you’re going to lose everything that was in your database, all your posts, your pages, all of that stuff is gone. Any images and stuff that are uploaded are usually still left behind, but that’s about it. Plugins are usually still there but you’re basically trying to reset the site all the way back to square one, and that’s what this plugin does for you. It just allows you to set it back to square one. Now, this is one that I use only exclusively on my sandbox when I really need to reset my sandbox back because I’m trying to do something different, and I just don’t want to go through the hassle of wiping it out, clean the database, starting all over, doing the five-minute install WordPress. This is even less time than the five-minute install of WordPress. So it’s a really great tool, but use it with care. Go check it out. It’s WP Reset – Most Advanced WordPress Reset Tool, and I give it a four-dragon rating.
Amber: Really good that they make absolutely positively certain that you want to reset.
John: Oh, yeah. Well, they don’t want to, “Well, I hit this thing and it wiped up my site.” “Yeah, did you read anything?” “Oh, well, I just thought it was going to reset my posts. Didn’t know it was going to reset everything and wipe out my database.” It’s like, yeah, the number of really dumb people in the world is astounding, so it’s all good.
Amber: So first one I’ve got is Disable FLoC. It has the same name as the last one that I covered, but it’s definitely different. This one was actually recommended by WordPress themselves, which I thought was kind of neat, so I had to check it out, and they’ve actually got a settings page that gives you a bunch of different options for how you want to set it up. There’s None/Allow, and then there is — I thought I put it into my notes. I guess not. Could you scroll down the page a little bit?
John: Yep.
Amber: There we go. There is a None/Allow FLoC, which stops all FLoCking, Simple/PHP, which works for most WordPress setups, and then there’s Apache/ht access, which I’m not even sure what that does.
John: Apache/ht access. It’s the ht access file on your Apache server, which is the vast majority of servers out there.
Amber: Okay, well, those are the three options, and they also give you the ability to choose which pages you want to stop the FLoC for. It can be just your homepage, just your posts, or it can be for your entire site, which I thought was a really cool addition to it — and totally free. So, I definitely recommend you go and check this one out. I thought I’d rate it at five-dragon. For some reason, my notes are different.
John: No, they’re exactly the same as you wrote them.
Amber: Okay.
John: Do you want to rate it five dragons? You can do that.
Amber: Yes, I want to rate it five dragons.
John: Okay. All right.
Amber: I think you didn’t save. I think that’s the issue.
John: Yeah, well, that’s you, not me. All right, the next one I’ve got here, this one is something that was sent in to us by one of our listeners out there. He sent a little note along and talking about his plugins, so I decided to review his plugin. Let’s read out the note first. John and Amber slowly getting back into listening to the podcast after a while on hiatus. And I was just listening to Episode 506, where you mentioned the full-screen editor issue that WordPress 5.4 brought in. At that time, April 2021, I found a blog post that told me how to disable full-screen editor. Link in the show notes for that. Rather than putting it in my functions.php, I wrote a quick and dirty plugin to do the same thing. It has around 20 active installs and no ratings, so I’m not sure anyone actually likes it. But does what it says, but actually likes it — but does what it says. Although I haven’t tested it with 5.7 or 5.71 as I’ve been busy this weekend if my real paying job permits, have a look at it, link in the show notes to it. Love the show, keep on doing what you guys do best, Martin.
So thanks a lot, Martin. Greatly appreciate the note, and I decided to go take a look at your plugin. And before I do that, just let you know, it’s not that no one likes it that they don’t leave ratings. It could be someone like me that’s been banned from WordPress, so I can’t leave ratings there at all on WordPress anymore. They don’t like me there. So that’s why I still leave my ratings here. Or it could just be that they don’t haven’t got around to rating it. And 20 installs on a new plugin, that’s actually not too bad. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get a few more installs after a few folks that listen to this show hear about it. At any rate, the plugin is called Disable WordPress Block Editor Fullscreen Mode. And if you know back in that, I was bitching about this new full-screen editor that our illustrious dictator-in-charge has pronounced that it should be automatic now and not an option. And that’s if you’re using the Gutenberg Editor anyway. I still haven’t gotten there yet. But this is a plugin here that will allow you to go in and disable that Block Editor Fullscreen Mode so that it’s not activated by default. Really cool, simple plugin, straightforward, does what it needs to do, and it’s free. And, of course, it’s a listener to the show, hey, we’re going to really give some special treatment. So go check out this plugin. It’s Disable WordPress Block Editor Fullscreen Mode, and I give it a five-dragon rating
Amber: Oh, I love when we get our listener feedback.
John: Yeah, well, I agree to it. A little bit listener feedback and a little bit of, you know, self-promotion, which I’m good with. But all the self-promotion you want into your notes, folks, all the self-promotion you want, I will read it all out unless it gets totally ludicrous. Then we got to draw the line somewhere.
Amber: Next one I have is Hide Admin Bar For User Roles, so I thought this was a really good idea. The automatic thing for WordPress is to have the admin bar for all users. And what this one does is it actually gives the option to remove the admin bar for all the users except for the admin themselves. It’s very nice, simple, and effective. Once you activate it, this one also gives you the option of which user roles to hide the admin bar for. So you can hide it for all, which is a toggle at the top, or you can just hide it for certain ones. Just click Save and there you go. It’s very nice, very easy, totally free. And I rate it five dragons.
John: Yeah, it’s cool. I’ve used a lot of different types of plugins, different plugins doing the exact thing over the years because there’s times when you have a membership site and you don’t need your users to see the admin bar at all, and you want to make sure your admin bar doesn’t show. And that’s what this is for is to eliminate that problem. Okay, the last one I’ve got for you today is another one of those FLoCking plugins. Except I love the name on this one, so I just had to bring it along. It’s Flic FLoC, so go Flic your FLoC. There was just too many things that this one here — I liked it mainly because of the name. You can do all sorts of things with it. If you Flic the FLoC, doesn’t get excited and still want you to share your secrets, or you can Flic the FLoC out of here, or you can even flip the FLoC to turn it on and off, play with that one wherever you want to do, so go Flic with your FLoC. All right, enough FLoCking around. This is actually another one of those ones that helps you turn off flock on your website, prevent FLoC from coming in. It seems that FLoC is not very popular at all.
Amber: No, I’ve seen six plugins that were recently developed to block this.
John: Oh, that’s only — the first week it came out, I swear there was a dozen plugins dumped into the WordPress repository for it, and it’s like it’s been talked about everywhere. I think Google really misunderstood people on this one, and they’ve taken a pretty bad hit. Nobody is liking their FLoC. Nobody’s giving a FLoC about FLoC. All right. That’s all I got. Oh, this one here, I have to give it — did I give it rating already? We’ll call it five dragons again.
Just so we can hear the dragon roar some more. After all, we flicked his FLoC and got him excited.
Amber: And the last one I’ve got is Code Generate. This is a really cool plugin. It’s designed to create custom and high-quality code for your WordPress site using the latest WordPress coding standards and API’s. I can see this being very useful. And it’s brand new hot off the press as well, so very exciting. I only really know just enough to have a basic understanding of what this plug is doing and how it’s doing it. And filling out these forms was rather straightforward. And with my basic understanding of it all, I was able to fill them out and test it out, and it works pretty easy. Once you’re done, you copy the code that it gives you and use it wherever you need it. If you don’t have much of an understanding of code, you will probably spending a lot of time researching what you’re supposed to put into each one, but as long as you don’t mind doing that, it’s a great learning curve. I also rate this one at five dragons.
John: That can be a pretty useful way. Even if you do you understand codes, sometimes it’s always nice to have a tool like this to help you write that code out faster, you know, by just filling in some fields and saying, okay, I need this, this and this, and that generates the code, and they do give you a sample of what they do. They just generate some stuff up that you need to help you see what’s going on. So it’s a useful tool, very useful tool if you’re writing code or using snippets of code. Just remember, when you’re writing code or snippets of code, learn how to not stick it in your functions.php file. Create your own custom plugin for the site you’re working on, and dump all your code snippets into that custom plugin. The reason for that is often because, you know, somewhere down the line, they may ask — your client may come back and ask you to change out the theme, and you’ve completely forgotten. You’ve put all that code in the functions file, and you change out the theme, and all that code is gone, and now all your custom functions are gone, and you got all crap, and you got to go dig it up. But if you put it in a plugin, it’s always going to be in that plugin, and easily accessible. And it can be turned on and off for instant debugging too. So, lots of great uses in that aspect. All right.
Amber: I just want to say Hemdian. Hi, Hemdian. He says you can also hide admin bar based on user in the user admin simplifier plugin. And it also has some other features.
John: Oh cool. Well, that’s another plugin. We’ll have to check out and bring to the table for other folks to read about and hear about. All right. Well, this show is still currently brought to you by…
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John: Absolutely, nothing, but the best quality web host. I still have some spaces left on one server, folks. So no spaces are starting to sell out, so you’ll want to get to them as soon as you can get into hosting that is tailor-made for WordPress and doesn’t put limits on what you’re going to do. All right. Now, we are still heading towards the contest times. Let’s play the jingle just for fun.
I think we’re still on target right now for bringing the contest back in June, and so that’s when we’re expecting to bring them back for folks. We’ll have some more freebies to give away, premium licenses, and all that sort of jazz for all you listeners out there. Hey, it’s a great thing to do, you know, enter the contest, get yourself a free license. Lots of cool things there. So make sure you stay tuned that is coming down the line.
Amber: Hemdian has a pretty good question.
John: If you use child themes, you already got separate functions? Well, yes, you do. But if you change out that child theme later, you still will lose the functions file. As I get — it’s not uncommon for me to down the line change out my child theme at a later point in time when I change themes. So, if you stay with the same theme builder system like I do with Elementor — but even Elementor I’ve changed my root theme four times over the last two years. I still use Elementor, but Elementor doesn’t contain the functions file in the child theme. I’ve always used the child theme ever since they were first created back six or seven years ago. When they first created the child theme, I’ve been using that because of the custom functions.php file. And also the way you can build out custom pages in your child theme too. Child themes are really handy for a lot of stuff. Now they’ve got grandchildren themes, which are an interesting concept, which I’ve only seen once. I think I talked about grandchild themes once on the show. And never went — it’s been a long while back. You may or may not have joined the show when I talked about the grandchild themes. But that was something that I think sort of was attempted and it went by the wayside because it was getting too complicated. I really don’t know. I didn’t follow it. I thought it was an interesting concept, and I promptly forgot about it because I didn’t use it.
All right. So we got to wrap up a couple of quick things before we jump into the Q&A segment because we close out the show partway through the Q&A segment. So covering up in this episode, the following plugins I did. WP Reset – Most Advanced WordPress Reset Tool, which I rated with a four dragons, the Disable WordPress Block Editor Fullscreen Mode, which I rated at five dragons, and then go Flic FLoC, which I rated at five dragons.
Amber: And I covered Disable FLoC, which I gave a five, Hide Admin Bar For User Roles, which I gave a five, and Code Generate, which I also gave a five. I’m surprised you didn’t catch them with that one jingle you have there.
John: Which one, Code Generate?
Amber: No, the five — I gave five .
John: Oh, yeah, you’re right. I wasn’t even paying attention. That’s because you had the one there that I was still stuck in my brain as a four. There we go. We got to play it anyway. Now you browsed my brain, I actually got to play it. All right, a couple of quick reminders is that, of course, we are trying to figure out a way to create a WordPress meetup right now, not working very well. If you don’t get enough of Amber and I, and if you want to hear us when we’re out at the pub having a good time, come join us over at the tavern on Tuesday evenings at 8 pm over at the roguestavern.com/live. And if you’re ever interested in being on one of my interview shows, I haven’t done one of those for a couple of months either. It’s a separate complete show from the WP plugins. It’s an interview direct one-on-one with plugin developers, or marketing people, or anything to do with WordPress or the development community. I do the interviews; put them up as a separate podcast or a separate show in the same feed with the podcast, so all the same listeners get them. So, if you’re interested in that, just go over to wppluginsatoz.com/interview. Meetup is the meetup group. Sorry, you know, too many URLs here. All right, it is time for…
It’s question and answer time.
John: With Amber.
Amber: Yes, the cricket happened again.
John: Yes, I know.
Amber: It seems to happen most often whenever I’m talking.
John: I think it’s like an email notification or something on my old phone. My old phone still gets a lot of stuff on it. I basically use it around the house for miscellaneous things. I didn’t put any of the apps on my new phone when I got it. I decided that we’ll just keep all the junk off the new phone.
Amber: So, if anyone out there has any questions that they’d like to have asked and answered on here, send them in to me at amber@wppro.ca, and I will throw them up and get some answers for you. My first question for you is, why would someone want to create a static server of their site on their own computer? What would the benefits be for that?
John: Okay. I think the question is slightly misnamed as static server on their site. You’re talking about making a copy of your site or a local development copy of your website on your local computer.
Amber: Well, I think so. The question came up when I was looking at your plugin, and there’s a plugin for creating a static server. And apparently, it copies it directly onto your computer. And I’m just wondering, why would you want to do that?
John: There’re lots of tools to do it. I’m trying to remember the name of the one that I use most. And I used to do a lot of the things. And the reason you’d want to create a local development copy on your computer is because you can do a lot of testing, and seeing what you’re going to do, and you don’t impact your live site. And if you use a tool, like — what’s the name of this tool I used to use? It began with an S. Desktop Server. Desktop Server is what I used to use, and Desktop Server actually creates a local server on your computer with a PHP install and a MySQL install, everything you need on your local computer. And you can install and work on a website right there on your computer. The developments a lot faster, all your files are local. You don’t have to wait for FTP uploads and downloads to do a whole lot of stuff. It’s just instant pretty much. And then, when it’s all done, you can actually connect it to your live site with another plugin, and then, you can push that data to your live site. So basically, you have your development server on your local computer, and you have your live site out there on the Internet, and you can do a lot of tests there. The nice thing about having it on your local computer, if you’re testing something, no one else can see it. They can’t get to it on your local computer because it’s just not accessible. It’s not a public IP address so it can be found. So there’s lots of reasons why you want to do a local development. And that’s why I said the question is a little oddly worded because Static Server, you know, create a Static Server of your site, that’s, you know — Static Server to me is, you know, something local because, you know — and Static Servers just means a local server to me.
Amber: Like I said, the question came out when I was looking at plugins, and the plugin was called create your own Static Server. So that’s why I figured it was called a Static Server. That’s why I was confused.
John: Well, I don’t know, maybe they’re talking about a way to make something on your local computer, live to the Internet. And you could do that, but that’s a very dangerous thing to do. At any rate, it gives lots of advantages by having a local copy on your computer. And there are some disadvantages to it, and you got to be doing — like I used to do a lot of development that way, but for some reason, I find it better if I do the development directly on the server that the site’s going to be on.
Amber: Okay. Yeah, I could definitely see all the benefit to that. Now I understand what it means. My next question is, what is code division multiple access or CDMA?
John: You know what? I don’t know, let me look. This one here, I don’t recall this ever. Channel access messages by various radio communications, CDMA, code division, multiple access is a competing cell phone service technology. It sounds like a cell phone service technology, CDMA. I don’t think that has anything to do with web development.
Amber: I came across it when I was reading about doing podcasts and radios and stuff, and you need to have the right CDMA in order to get your podcasts out there from your computer without using a thing like YouTube.
John: Okay.
Amber: So that’s why I was wondering what it was.
John: Okay, I’ve never heard such thing because if you want to get your podcast out there to anyone, you record your podcast, you turn it into an mp3 file, you upload it to your website. Then you go list that — you go list your RSS feed at the podcast 2.0 directory because Apple has just killed their directory. So you listed the podcast 2.0 directory, and you’ll be golden because, over the next year, every app developer for podcast is going to be switching to using the podcast 2.0 directory versus the apple directory they used to use. Or you can then list your podcast over at one of the other places such as Blueberry, or Podbean, or — god, there’s dozens of them, so I can’t think of them all.
Amber: Can you do it live on those?
John: Can you do it live? Live stream it?
Amber: Yeah, I was looking at the live options. Yeah, like a live stream, like, what we’re doing on YouTube right now?
John: Well, live stream, you can actually — there’re actually programs you can set up on your own local server — on your server to do live streams. I mean, No Agenda has their own live streaming platform. They have their own live streaming platform. It’s a program that you set up, and then you send a feed from your computer, much like you’d use something such as OBS for creating your podcast or some other program on your computer, which sends out the stream directly. I mean, I would probably — if I was trying to live stream just a plain audio podcast, I would use OBS for it because OBS streams audio and video. But if you’re going to stream audio, you may as well stream video, and there’s so many options now for streaming that. So I don’t know what they’re talking about CDMA. They must have found some other random acronym that works because if you –went looked up that acronym, you found the CDMA keeps talking about everything I’ve looked up for. Now, it’s a cell phone spectrum thing.
Amber: It was just something I came across when I was doing research. My last question is, what is the difference between NAS and SAN in computer network?
John: All right. Well, we’ll split it off right here. We’ll let my girl take us out of here. I’ll enjoy my shot, and we’ll come back to this question after the credits.
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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.