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 #544 here.
It’s Episode 544 and we have plugins for Sticky Admin, Puzzles, Escaping, Testing Chakras, Slidey Review, Ordering tests… and ClassicPress Options. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Episode #544
John: Absolutely, this is where we talk about ClassicPress Options for ClassicPress and I don’t know if there’s anything new on here, aside from ClassicPress has released version 1.4, I believe and you might want to check that out if you’re a ClassicPress user, they got the 1.4 release notes here and it says rc2, which means I’m pretty sure that they released it before, didn’t we say that in the last episode.
Amber: Yeah, this is from last episode. I left it out there because it’s a good link to have in the show notes. Apologies, I forgot to mention this.
John: This is a release candidate, so I don’t know maybe they haven’t released the official 1.4 yet, what release candidate means they’re getting close to 1.4. Other than that, we really don’t have much else for ClassicPress. At any rate, they do have a directory of their plugins and they have their own repository and they’ve got a whole bunch going on here, quite a few. They got 84 plugins in there, so they are moving along, we need to change the number in our show notes, it says 83, so that means they’ve added one since the last time we looked at this.
At any rate, let’s dive into the plugins we have for you this week and the first one I have for you this week is your Chakra Test. I thought this would be an interesting plugin for those of you out there that are looking for ways to drag people into your website and help convert them for whatever you’re trying to do, maybe you run a spiritual website or something and you want to get somebody to come in test their Chakras and then you want to sell them something or hey, we give you the results but you got to give us your email address, you know, much like all those other crazy stupid tests that people take online. This one here is kind of interesting. It does take people out and you have to build out the test but it allows people to go answer a bunch of questions, they can just go answer them all the way down the line and you can do it for all the each and every individual Chakras in the body, create a questionnaire on here. When it fills it out, it tells them how their Chakra is doing based upon the answers to their question.
Amber: That’s kind of cool, does each Chakra individually.
John: Yeah, you got to go through and write out all the questions for each Chakra individually.
Amber: I’m sure there’s help books for that.
John: Oh yeah, absolutely. There is, so I thought it was kind of a cool one to check out. It is a freebie. Go check it out and I give it a four dragon rating and it is the Chakra Test.
Amber: Very nice. First one I have for today is Admin Sticky Bar. I like this one, it’s a pretty nifty idea. Unfortunately, once it’s turned on, it still seems to have a couple of bugs to fix. They are new plugins, so it’s not overly surprising. What I found when I plugged it in to test it out was yes, it makes the sidebar stick, but if you have a long thing, and you’re scrolling down, it does the jump thing, that sidebar sometimes do and it’s got a bug or two going on, and it ends up going from the top, it jumps to the bottom, and then it shows up again as you scroll down. So if you’re working in the middle, you don’t get the sidebar, so yes, awesome idea. I hope they’re able to fix this bug. I look forward to seeing it fix over the next while I rate this at three dragons.
John: Alrighty. The next one I have for you is the Review Slider for WooCommerce and what this one here is if you’re getting reviews on your WooCommerce store, you want to showcase those reviews in a nice pretty manner and that’s what this plugin does. It allows you to create a slider that you can put in multiple places on your website, that’ll give you the image graphic, what people rate you at, and other bits and pieces to showcase your reviews on your website. Very cool tool, very useful, you know, you’ll want to have something like this because of course, for some strange reason, people, well, I sort of trust reviews, but I only trust reviews if there’s not too many fives or not too many negatives, there should be a balance, because you can never make everyone happy and what I do is, I read the reviews and I read the writing and you can generally pick out the scam ones, because they’re too simple or they’re too over exaggerated, so at any rate, I thought it was a cool tool, something that I may eventually end up getting put up on the Rogues Tavern store but other than that, go check it out. It’s the Review Slider for WooCommerce and I give it a four dragon rating.
Amber: Next one up for me is PuzzleMe. This is a cool plugin. What it is, is it’s a plugin designed to make it possible for you to create and publish your own crosswords, Sudoku, word search, code word, crisscross quizzes, and many other puzzle types. It is a third party plugin, though, if you’re looking for something to help you get your puzzles out there, then this is actually a pretty great option.
John: Yep, it is something useful.
Amber: I thought this was just awesome because usually when you see puzzle plugins or something, it’s pre-made puzzles, you can throw them on as they are but you don’t get to create your own, so what were you gonna say?
John: I’m waiting for you to give it a rating.
Amber: I rate it at four dragons.
John: Okay. Well, it was interesting on this one is there were, they might still be in the WordPress repository, because I’ve used them in the past when I used to do a lot of newspaper websites in the beginning and, of course, crossword puzzles were a big way to keep people on there and there were several really good WordPress plugins that you could actually create your own crosswords and embed them on a website for people to do. It’s been ages but I do remember there was one or two plugins that were really good at it and allows you to create those puzzles, crosswords, and Sudoku puzzles. Alright, the next one I have for you is Order Test for WooCommerce. Now this is just a plugin, so when you’re building out your WooCommerce website, of course, eventually you have to test it, you know, and test to make sure the process goes smoothly, that they check out just fine, but you don’t want to charge yourself to whatever your payment process is and I used to use the checking thing, I turned that one on and pay by cheque to do it but this is another one and what it is, is it’s just an option that you click on it and it automatically pays to nowhere. It’s a paid to nowhere plugin so that you can fully test the functionality of your website all the way up to the point of payment, you know, it doesn’t help you test going through the payment process, so you got to do that with your payment processor. There are ways to do it with Pay Pal and almost every payment processor has a test portal that you set up when you’re first testing it to make sure it’s all working and it’s processing properly, but this is a nice quick and dirty way to make sure everything is working before you start finalizing the payment processor. I thought it was a cool tool, something useful for those developing WooCommerce websites. Go check it out, it is the Order Test For All WooCommerce and I give it a four dragon rating.
Amber: That’s pretty brilliant. Have you come across plugins like that before?
John: Oh, yeah, there’s been a few.
Amber: Yeah. Okay, cool. Last one I have for today is called Escape Button. This is a free plug-and-play plugin that creates a floating safety exit button on your site for you. This button was designed with sites for survivors of sexual and domestic violence in mind and it can handle both situations where the user or browser does not have JavaScript enabled and when it does. It is totally free and I’m really stoked to see stuff like this, pop it up. I rate this at five dragons.
John: Okay, I saw this one, thought it might be interesting. Read the description. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they meant from it because it was just like, so what you’re telling me is you’re building a website that is going to be something that you’re worried people are going to be triggered on they need a big button to push escape, instead of knowing how to push the back button on their computer.
Amber: No, building a website that violence survivors are going to try and get help to find a way out and they’re terrified that their partner or whatever is going to come in and see it and if they see it, then they’re going to end up suffering for it. So this exit button makes it possible that if the person who’s looking for the help hears the footsteps, they can hit that exit button and they’re out of there.
John: Oh, okay.
Amber: That’s what the button is for.
John: That makes a little more sense than what the description describes it as.
Amber: It makes sense to me but —
John: It makes sense to me, so. Alright, well, that’s all we have for the plugins. Alright, we don’t have any listener feedback or listener questions right now and we are not set up for a contest currently, we will bring one as soon as we can, we’ll get another new contest in here as quickly as possible. We got to reach out to Charlie, see how he’s doing, see if he can pull us something together or maybe have to hunt down someone else to help us out with the contest, either way something else will happen. We do got to cover up a couple of quick things before we head into the Q&A segment following. I covered up the following plugins in this episode The Chakra Test which I gave a four to, the Review Slider for WooCommerce which I gave a four to, the Order Test For All WooCommerce which I gave a four to.
Amber: And I covered Admin Sticky Sidebar which I rated at three, PuzzleMe which I rated at four, and Escape Button which I rated at five dragons.
John: Alright, and I’m still in the process of thinking of when I can have a meetup plan, you know, I realized I might have to do some serious moving of a shed which will take three or four people. I might get everything ready, plan a meet up, so people can come help me move that shed.
Amber: That is actually a really good idea.
John: You know, come to the Oasis help move the shed and then enjoy a meetup, so I think I’ll probably do something like that. Also if you’d like to be interviewed, you’re a plugin developer and not a plugin developer would like to be on an interview show this a separate show, apart from the regular podcast goes into the podcast stream people listen to him and I’ve heard really good things from the people I have interviewed. I haven’t interviewed anyone in a while but if you’d like to be interviewed, reach out to me at wppluginsatoz.com/interview to be on an interview show and if you’ve got any plugins for suggestions, go to wppluginsatoz.com/submit to submit plugin reviews. You can suggest plugins to us or submit your own review that we can just add into the show. Alright, well, all of that, I think it is time for us to wander into
It’s question and answer time.
John: With Amber.
Amber: Before I start my questions, if anybody out there has any questions they’d like to have asked here on the show, send your questions into me at amber@wppro.ca and we’ll get them onto the show and we’ll try to stump my dad. My first question today is when a client or anyone else on the server gets logged out; can you fix it from anywhere? Or do you have to be on your main computer in your own home? Or you set up the server and everything?
John: Oh, this one here has multiple answers and that yeah, if someone’s getting locked out from there, say they’re logging into their cPanel or, you know, if they’re locked out of their WordPress website, that’s a whole nother animal, we’re gonna go with being locked out from the server, that usually means a failed cPanel login or failed FTP login or a failed email login after X number of tries and the Server Manager such as myself running my own servers, I can log in those servers anywhere. I have programs set up, well I don’t have it on my phone anymore, I used to have one on my phone for when I was out and about, I could actually login from my phone and go in and fix it, so you can literally fix it from anywhere. You don’t have to be on your main computer, unless, of course, you’re foolish enough to lock your servers to a single IP that can access it and that would be a real fool’s errand because if something happens to your IP or your internet, you won’t be able to get into your servers and you couldn’t have a support team, I have a support team that I reach out to that helps me with my servers, so lots of things on that, so it can pretty much be fixed from anywhere and yeah, that pretty much answers that one.
Amber: Yes it does. My next question is Can you set up a server so that people have a certain amount of times they can put the wrong information into the sign in before getting logged out or is that an automatic setting?
John: Okay, when you set up a server you actually go in and determine how many failed login attempts are allowed before they’re thrown in to the firewall and it varies from company to company, the average is three to five. It’s between three and five on most servers, you know, and what’s funny is people think well I only hit it twice no truthfully you hit it several times especially like I look at the logs I can see how many failed login attempts came from your IP address and it’s because people don’t realize that they might double-click the submit button or they might hit it couple of times, they’ll try it different ways and it’s like the third try you are out, you know, it’s all these different things but yeah it’s set up and it’s determined by the person configuring the server, you know, sometimes you might have it too tight, like I’ve had mine down to two failed login attempts and they were locked and yeah that’s just a little too tight, you know, you got to find that balance and of course the reason for that balance is to prevent the bots out there from doing mass attacks on your server, you want them locked as quick as possible, so yeah it’s determined by the person setting up the server.
Amber: Alright. My last question is what is the main thing you need to know before owning and running a server where you host other people’s websites?
John: Alright, the will be an interesting question folks. Before we got to that answer we are going to let my girl play us on out of here and for those of you listening on the podcast pop back into the YouTube version and check it out, the answer is going to be good. Alright, so let’s take it on out.
Amber: Yes it does. My next question is Can you set up a server so that people have a certain amount of times they can put the wrong information into the sign in before getting logged out or is that an automatic setting?
John: Okay, when you set up a server you actually go in and determine how many failed login attempts are allowed before they’re thrown in to the firewall and it varies from company to company, the average is three to five. It’s between three and five on most servers, you know, and what’s funny is people think well I only hit it twice no truthfully you hit it several times especially like I look at the logs I can see how many failed login attempts came from your IP address and it’s because people don’t realize that they might double-click the submit button or they might hit it couple of times, they’ll try it different ways and it’s like the third try you are out, you know, it’s all these different things but yeah it’s set up and it’s determined by the person configuring the server, you know, sometimes you might have it too tight, like I’ve had mine down to two failed login attempts and they were locked and yeah that’s just a little too tight, you know, you got to find that balance and of course the reason for that balance is to prevent the bots out there from doing mass attacks on your server, you want them locked as quick as possible, so yeah it’s determined by the person setting up the server.
Amber: Alright. My last question is what is the main thing you need to know before owning and running a server where you host other people’s websites?
John: Alright, that will be an interesting question folks. Before we got to that answer we are going to let my girl play us on out of here and for those of you listening on the podcast pop back into the YouTube version and check it out, the answer is going to be good. Alright, so let’s take it on out.
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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.
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