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 #518 here.
It’s Episode 518 – Happy Canada Day! We have no plugins for today, just news and a chat about what’s coming up for the show… and ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #518
John: All right. Well, we don’t have plugins.
Amber: Not today?
John: Well, it was kind of like, okay, well, we could do a regular kind of show, but it’s not a regular kind of day. This is the first time we’ve done a pre-recorded show and — well, you’ve been on the show for just over a year now.
Amber: And we’ve never done a pre-recorded show since I’ve been here.
John: I haven’t done a pre-recorded show in about three or four years now since last time I did a pre-recorded show. So I’ve worked every Thursday since. I’ve not taken a holiday since. So this is a holiday. I think it’s a well (crosstalk).
Amber: Well, no, we took one Thursday off last (crosstalk).
John: Oh, we took an entire day off, yes, didn’t we? We took entire day off. We just didn’t have a show; we skipped the day. All right, well, okay, then. Well, this is still okay. All right, but let’s talk a little bit about ClassicPress. We touched on it a few minutes ago here. ClassicPress itself is starting to grow. The community is still growing a bit. They’ve added — you know, as I’ve mentioned once or twice, they’ve added their plugin repository. I don’t think they’ve got a good handle on how to implement it yet, but once they get that implemented along with a Theme Repository, that’ll help them leap ahead by bounds.
Amber: That makes sense.
John: You know, because those are two of the things to bring in, because what they have to bring in, they are not going to bring in to the developers, which is all that are — for mostly, that’s all ClassicPress’, now as the hardcore developers. You need the ones that don’t write their own code. Know how to read code, know how to work with code, but don’t write their own code. I fall into that category because I can read it, I can debug it. I just have problems writing it. I think it falls into my typing skills. You got to have really premium typing skills to be a code writer.
Amber: Yes, I’ve noticed. Even my typing skills aren’t quite up to par.
John: Yeah, it’s like I can’t do it. I’ve tried over the years. I’ve taken typing classes and everything else. I think I only managed ever get myself up to like, 33 words a minute in typing.
Amber: Really?
John: Yeah, really — well, I had to get up to 32 words a minute to take the course I needed to take in college. And it took me a month-and-a-half of practicing on the keyboard with my three-finger typing to get up to up over 32 words a minute. And that’s without mistakes. I think they give you like, a small percentage of mistakes during the testing. So, I worked really hard to get there and I promptly went, yeah, I don’t need it anymore. I’ll just continue with my typing the way it is. And, of course, my typing skills have dropped back down. I’m lucky if I can type 15 words a minute now.
Amber: Well, you have made it though. So you can do it. You just got to concentrate.
John: I have to concentrate. And the big thing is because I have to actually have to watch my fingers. What it took me was, it took me reading a screen, memorizing entire sentences of text and typing paragraphs of text and typing it all out, and look up, memorize a block of text and type it down. Because still, I cannot do touch typing. I tried; I just can’t do it. I can’t look at the screen and type.
Amber: As far as if you don’t learn with touch typing, you can’t really do touch typing.
John: Oh, well, see I think I was taught back in high school back on an IBM Selectric typewriter, but I barely passed that typing class too. So, hey, it’s all good. All right, so, ClassicPress though, I believe they have potential. I’ve always believed them since the beginning. They haven’t given up. They’ve still got a community around them. Things are working for them. They did lose one of their major people in there. He backed out of the community for whatever reasons he chose, and has given off his plugins to good people to manage and maintain. But I think things will come around from them. I mean, even WordPress, like I started WordPress over 12 years ago now, and they were only — while they turn 17 this year, so they were only five years old. And I ran into them and they were such a rough system to use. It was so hard to understand. At that time, I used to — I wrote a course on how to use WordPress and taught WordPress in classrooms. And so, I didn’t think that through when I — ClassicPress –because ClassicPress is about that stage of WordPress now at its two to four-year stage before things started breaking through for them. And that’s what will happen to them eventually.
Amber: So, essentially keep an eye on it.
John: Keep an eye on it. Keep an eye on it, look at it from time to time, try to install one ClassicPress from time to time, see how it’s improved, see how the functionality has improved, see what plugins are available for it. Because, you know, in another year or two, you know, currently a lot of plugins for WordPress working in ClassicPress without any problem, but their codebases are starting to drift apart. So as their codebases drift apart, none of their stuff will be compatible with the other fully. All right.
Amber: And that kind of brings up the fact that we’re not really going to be doing much in ClassicPress. We’re not going to be trying to bring in plugins and where someone writes it out. Well, we’ll put it up, credit, but we’re not really going to be doing much, just keeping the information that you need in order to get to it to the understandings that you should look at. We’re not really going to be doing much else with it this time, not for a while.
John: Oh, yeah, absolutely — which is a shame because, you know, ClassicPress is really a great thing. All right, and plugins, like I said, we don’t have plugins this week. We’re just going to skip right over the plugins. We will be back next week with all our usual slew of plugins and all kinds of great stuff for you. And I think we’ll just skip the ad for this week. Questions, well, you don’t have questions. We got to talk about the contest. The contest is still up and running. We have a contest, so we need the jingle.
Amber: I love that jingle.
John: Absolutely. Great jingle. Thanks to Steve Goodtime and Brett Matthews who created the jingle for us. Thanks to Simple Giveaways who powers our contests for us. They are kind enough to provide us with the premium version of their plugin. I did pay for it for a couple of years, but then they opted to provide it to me just so I can mention their name, tell you all about them. I do like the plugin. I’ve been using it since it was brand new, and it works fantastic. And a big thank you again out to Charlie for helping the show out and getting the contest all organized, contacting the developers, getting the licenses. Not only just getting a license, but he’s getting these amazing premium licenses for winners.
Amber: Yeah, he’s doing brilliantly.
John: These are not your average, you know, annual license. These are lifetime licenses. You know you get it, you’ve got it permanently. You don’t have to renew it or nothing. He’s giving us some great stuff. I do have an interview with a developer this next week for another plugin that’s going to be our next contest. We’ll let that one come up later, but — and so lots going there. You know, the last contest was for the Bloksy plugin, the Bloksy license, which we gave away a personal, professional, and an agency license, all three licenses. And they were again lifetime licenses, and Bloksy, really great plugin. I haven’t used it yet, but Charlie has, and he gave us a review of it in Episode 515. So make sure you go check out that review in Episode 515 to hear all about that plugin. And one more time, congratulations out to the winners of that contest for Luis, Martin, and Elson. And don’t forget guys, enter our current contest. Our current contest is for Orderable. It’s for making online ordering a breeze and profitable where you can accept pickup or delivery orders for food, goods, products, or services from your business location. It’s a really interesting plugin. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to use it myself, but this is a single-site lifetime license valued at 599 bucks. So you can go in and make your orders for ordering products and people do pick up stuff, you know, adjust order layouts, products, order bumps, order flow, time slots, cart widgets, a whole lot of stuff in this plugin. It looks to be a very interesting plugin, make sure you go check it out. It’s orderable.com. And enter the contest to win the license.
Amber: Definitely something that would be very useful in the current market.
John: Yeah, great little plugin. All right.
Amber: I think that’s it because I can’t think of any question.
John: That pretty much wraps everything for the show. You got no questions. I’m surprised. You always have questions.
Amber: The gears, they’re rusty from all the humidity, and they’re not turning in the right direction for curiosity this week.
John: I can’t get my humidity up. My humidity keeps dropping in my apartment.
Amber: Well, you live by the ocean, but you don’t live surrounded by the forest that’s losing all of its moisture right now.
John: Yeah. Well, I guess that problem.
Amber: Yeah, I’m surrounded by the forest. And you look outside and you can see this whitish haze over all the trees, and I know all that moisture is coming right into my Valley here. My hair is really curly because of it though. It’s great.
John: It is definitely warm, and it’s expected to last for several more days, though the temperature is supposed to be dropping. I’m hoping Canada Day is a little better. (Crosstalk)
Amber: Oh, today is close to be the worst of it.
John: Well, we’ll see how it goes. Yeah, this is coming to you a couple of days early. And since that pretty much wraps it all up. We’ll call it a show at that point there. We don’t have any Q&A segment. Remember folks, reach out to us, questions, answers, comments, likes, dislikes, whatever, any suggestions for the show, all that good stuff.
Amber: You can just say hi.
John: Absolutely, just to say hi, I listen to the show. We did have somebody contact us last week that I missed. She’d sent me a SpeakPipe shortly before the show asking about the show. And whenever I see a SpeakPipe, I assume it’s a regular comment, and I didn’t listen to it till this morning and expecting to use it for the show, and it was just her asking what was happening to the show because she couldn’t find it. So I’ll fix that. Thank you very much. I appreciate SpeakPipe. That’s the other thing you can do is the SpeakPipe obviously still works. Little button in the lower right-hand corner of the website, click on that, you can record us a message. Send us a message and we’ll play it on the show.
Amber: Perfect.
John: All right, we’ll hold that. Let’s just have a Days of Thunder carry us on out of here.
Amber: All right.
John: Oops, you know what I forgot to do?
Amber: What?
John: I forgot to play the show credits.
Amber: Oh, yes.
John: Show credits.
Amber: Yeah, we’re having an awesome day today.
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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.
John: Always got to get the creepy laugh in there. All right, now, for a little Days of Thunder to close it out.
John: Alrighty. That’s all we got for you now. Take care and bye-bye.
Amber: Take care.
Adios, Mofo.