– ‘good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today! Coming to you LIVE from …’

Salutations and Some Reminders:

Welcome to Episode 643 – Transform Your WordPress Experience: Top Plugins You Can’t Ignore – WP Plugins A to Z- We’ve got a couple of great in-depth plugins to cover for you, some recent news in both the WordPress World and the Tech World in general, and some awesome WordPress Tips!

Todays episode is brought to you by Sir Choas of Life! This wonderful entity has been visiting us personally for the past week, although I understand he will be moving on soon to pester – I mean to enjoy the company others.

Really though no matter the chaos of life that is going on, remember to take care of yourself with warm dry clothes! Winter seems like it is ending, but really it’s going to stick around for a while yet. I believe the groundhog saw it’s shadow this year – that means 6 more weeks doesn’t it? Be sure to keep warm!

A few reminders before we start the show today….

Reminders:

Show starts at 12:30pm Pacific Time every other week on Monday! Join in for the pre-stream entertainment at about 12:15ish! You’ll find the show notes on the home page of wppluginsatoz.com within 24(ish) hours after every show!

This is a value for value show dear listeners, help us get some loven by hitting some like buttons, sharing an episode or two, or lovingly forcing your family members to listen to us by cranking our show way up! After all, you can’t go wrong helping out the longest running WordPress Podcast!

If you stick around until the end, you will have a chance to hear some good Questions – sometimes meant for the greenies, sometimes meant for the very experienced – and sometimes the questions are just completely random. Stick around and have a listen, might help! Or at least entertain!

...When you see this in the notes, it means we didn’t read this on the show. The only way to find this information out is to read our Show Notes!

…You can send any questions/suggestions or notes saying ‘hi’ over to me at amber@wppro.ca, or hit up our site wpppluginsatoz.com/contact – Be creative with the title so that the spammer eater doesn’t eat your note though!

Let’s start the show with this weeks Featured Artist:

Artist: 

New Artist is Firefly https://firefly.adobe.com/?media=featured

We would love some new art from our Producers out there! If you are so inclined, you can send it into us at https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/. If you need some inspiration, you can always go to our site wppluginsatoz.com and check out our Art Vaults – you will find the link for it on the left hand side.

…We can NEVER have too much art!

Breaking News in the WordPress World at large!! 

This is just a little taste of what will come out on Wednesday for everyone! Send anything in to me at amber@wppro.ca that you think should go into the Wed’s N3W$ 4 Y0U!

News this week:

WordPress Vulnerability Report
(https://solidwp.com/blog/wordpress-vulnerability-report-february-12-2025/) – In this report there are 155 vulnerabilities. 151 of these are Plugins, 4 are Themes.
51 of the 151 Plugins have been patched at the time of writing this.
3 of the 4 Themes have bee patched.

WordPress Vulnerability Report from PatchStack
(https://patchstack.com/database/) – These guys always have the latest information on what is going on regarding the latest in vulnerabilities. At the time of writing this, most recent issue was 4 hours ago and was an ‘unauthenticated SQLi vulnerability’ for the plugin Themes Coder.

WordPress 6.7.2 Maintenance Release
(https://wordpress.org/news/2025/02/wordpress-6-7-2-maintenance-release/) – Have a look through this to see what was in the most recent Maintenance Release – and I would suggest you start preparing yourselves and your sites for the next major release set for April 15th. This will be version 6.8 – although as always I suggest you wait until 6.8.1 or 6.8.2 before updating your own site to this major release as there are more often then not bugs that tend to crash sites. Or at the very least make sure you have a development site to test things out on before you try anything on your live site. Big releases are always a gamble for your live site.

WordPress Report in 2025 (https://wordpress.org/news/2025/02/wordpress-in-2025-report/)
And a fantastic break down of this report by WP SHOUT! (https://wpshout.com/official-wordpress-in-2025-report/) – Always read the proper report first so that you know what is being talked about in any breakdown is my recommendation. In this breakdown we have a great explanation and some opinions on where the report is going with the layout and information written down. Remember to always make up your own mind though – your brain meats will thank you for it later.

Best Practices for using Gutenberg Patterns and Blocks in custom themes (https://wplift.com/best-practices-for-using-gutenberg/) – This is an article that walks you through what Gutenberg Patterns and Blocks are, and offers some fantastic suggestions on various practices you can use with your Gutenberg Patterns and Blocks while building your site. I would love to hear back from some of our listeners out there on whether these practices mentioned here were helpful for them or not!

Black holes vibe together in a cosmic love story for Valentine’s Day written in the stars
(https://www.space.com/black-hole-vibing-valentines-day) – I thought this was a really neat story – and it follows well for this time of year! The artivle has an absolutely terrible poem to start it out – although it does go through and explain how these two black holes were found ‘dancing’ with one another, vibeing out and forming in a dense star cluster. There are a lot of discoveries made here with the viewing of these two black holes, including the fact that both black holes merging together this way counteracts the previous ideology that they would each keep their own spins that are random and chaotic even after coming together. This is definitely an article worth reading.

Rogue’s Corner News and Extras

New unique plugins Available from WPProAtoz.com

New trend I am seeing in free plugins is a menu link to an admin page promoting and selling the services of the plugin developer.

How to lower your DOM size
https://rabbitloader.com/articles/avoid-an-excessive-dom-size/

Alternate repo
https://notwp.org/plugins/

Update plugin from github
https://notwp.org/plugins/duanestorey/juniper-author/

Setting up a healthy github repo
https://joost.blog/healthy-github-repository/

If you’re new to web development or just need a refresher read this
https://elementor.com/blog/principles-of-website-design/

Some SEO info:
Some good SEO tips from this article
https://underconstructionpage.com/seo-the-art-the-science-and-the-utterly-unforgiving-algorithm/

SEO Myths Busted
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-seo-myths-busted/

Microsoft admits PCs are clogged
https://jasondeegan.com/windows-10-and-11-users-can-now-clean-and-refresh-their-pcs-with-microsofts-free-tool-2/

Late breaking news:
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2025/02/creative-svg-file-upload-to-local-file-inclusion-vulnerability-affecting-90000-sites-patched-in-jupiter-x-core-wordpress-plugin/

Tip of the day

Don’t eat the yellow snow.
Pay cheap, pay twice
Tip for keyword research and PPC terms
Enter this into a Google search: site: reddit. com [your topic of interest]

Some Extras – check out the N3W$ 4 Y0U coming out on Weds for more, or you can check out our Facebook or Twitter!

Enterprises choose WordPress for CMS, citing better functionality
(https://thewpminute.com/enterprises-choose-wordpress-for-cms-citing-better-functionality/)

Google Chrome’s AI-powered security feature rolls out to everyone
(https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chromes-ai-powered-security-feature-rolls-out-to-everyone/)

Microsoft spots XCSSET macOS malware variant used for crypto theft
(https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-spots-xcsset-macos-malware-variant-used-for-crypto-theft/)

Google Gemini just got a memory upgrade
(https://www.howtogeek.com/google-gemini-conversation-memory-upgrades/)

Scientists accidentally discover Earth’s inner core is less solid than expected
(https://www.space.com/the-universe/earth/scientists-accidentally-discover-earths-inner-core-is-less-solid-than-expected)

Northern lights forecasts, alerts, and geomagnetic storm warnings
(https://www.space.com/live/aurora-forecast-will-the-northern-lights-be-visible-tonight)

How to prevent PPC from cannibalizing your SEO efforts
(https://searchengineland.com/prevent-ppc-cannibalizing-seo-efforts-451920)

Google confirms most review count bugs fixed but some still to go
(https://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-most-review-count-bugs-fixed-but-some-still-to-go-451917)

Computer science papers every developer should read
(https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer-science-papers-every-developer)

11 free must-know websites for every developer
(https://dev.to/kafeel_ahmad/11-free-must-know-websites-for-every-developer-22g6)

Procrastinator’s guide to glory: Open source projects that turn wasted time into career gold
(https://dev.to/fast/procrastinators-guide-to-glory-open-source-projects-that-turn-wasted-time-into-career-gold-10l4)

Dragon Rating Time!

John’s Plugin

Unlimited Elements For Elementor and more

https://wordpress.org/plugins/unlimited-elements-for-elementor/

The Lowdown:
Elevate your web design experience with Unlimited Elements for Elementor. An all in one plugin that instantly gives you the most advanced widgets and tools to make better Elementor websites faster. Take your WordPress website to the next level.
Unlimited Elements for Elementor is a plugin that allows you to expand beyond what all of those added elements for Elementor plugins do for you. This one here has a widget library that is really impressive. For starters, it also will bring you the ability to create your own widgets from code you’ve created or borrowed or stolen or wherever you’ve gotten it from the Internet. You can use that code to then create your own version of an element that you can then use and duplicate and push out there using unlimited elements. All people have to do is install the free version of the plug in.
Now they do have a pro version, and the pro version fantastic because it has access to the 3/4 of their widget library. The 1/4 of the widget library that’s available, pretty good. A lot of really good things in there. The other 3/4 even more impressive. But the most impressive thing about it is the ability to create their own widgets and and then to use those widgets on other websites or to sell them or give them away or whatever you want to do with them so other people can benefit from those. So anyway, this is just a fantastic plugin. I found it to be so useful.

Rating 5 Dragons

WordPress Tips

We would love to hear some tid bit tips from some of our producers out there – what did you figure out by breaking something? Or what did you need to learn in order to help someone? You can send these tid bits into me at amber@wppro.ca

My tip to you today…

Don’t trade sleep for what you think is more productivity.

If you feel you are behind and so decide to just not sleep, and try to work all night instead – your work is going to suffer. You may think you will be fine, but what about the next day?

When you skip that night of sleep, you still need to make it through the next day. Do you need to drive? How well are you going to be able to do this?

And when you are up all night, your work the next day is going to suffer as well.

And when you finally get to sleep the following night, you will be rather tired for the next 3 days or so, meaning your work will likely suffer for those next 3 days.

Unless of course you don’t need much brain for your job, in which case you should be fine.

If you need your brain for working though, might want to try just sleeping instead.

Try going to sleep early and waking up early rather then trying to stay awake all night. You may feel like you are not going to get enough work done that way, although honestly you are likely to get more work done that way, both short term and long term.

Amber’s Plugin

Outdated Plugin Notifier

https://wordpress.org/plugins/outdated-plugin-notifier/

The Lowdown:

Once you download and activate this plugin, your plugin page will refresh itself and at the end of the row of information you will see a column appear called ‘Last Dev Update’. And in this column, you will see the information for each plugin on when the plugin was last updated by the developer.

There is no plugin dashboard, there are no customizations. This plugin is a plug and go style plugin that is lightweight and plays well with others! And just to to add to the awesome it is a freebie.

The information of when a plugin was last updated is a very handy thing to have as after 12 months if there is no update, you will want to reach out to the developer to ask is this plugin is still being maintained – and if not begin your search for a new plugin that does basically the same thing.

I know that we can sometimes overlook how long it has been since the last update on a plugin – especially when we have more than a few sites to keep updated, and many many plugins to go through. This plugin will help you to keep on top of which plugins need attention and perhaps replacing.

Perhaps this same creator will be able to find a way to create something like this for the plugins that are no longer part of the WordPress Repository.

Rating: 5 Dragon

Earn yourself a Producership Credit!

Producership Credits are a thing that do actually exist – we offer them up to those who donate through Time, Talent or Treasure. You can use these credits to boost up your resume, add to your LinkedIn file, so on and so forth!

Even if you are not interested in receiving a Producership Credit, check out how you can use us as your own stepping ladder in the world of the internets – get yourself an interview, get us to make your announcement for you, let the world know you have something to say or a company worth checking out!

Have a look through our site wppluginsatoz.com. Check out the Time, Talent and Treasure pages.

Miscellaneous Announcements from all:

Have an announcement like a meetup, or to announce you’ll be on stage at a WordCamp? Let us know and we will add it here and help get your news out to the world!

WordCamp Asia – February 20-22

WordPress Developer Day San José – February 22

Voces que inspiran: Women’s Day 2025 Latam – March 1

WordCamp Madrid, Spain – March 7-8

Women WordPress Day 2025 Ajmer, India – March 8

To see the entire list you can follow the link here in the show notes, then click on ‘More WordCamps’ right below the list of the next 5. https://central.wordcamp.org/

If you are interested in finding a WordPress Meetup somewhere around the world you can go check out the places here: https://www.meetup.com/pro/wordpress/

Keep checking back every week to find out what else is going on!

And remember, the show notes found at wppluginsatoz.com have a whole lot of extra information to grab up that we don’t read on air so be sure to check them out!

How to reach us:

Feel like sending us something through the snail mail system? You can do that thanks to our brick and mortar address that we provide for you!

You can also reach us the more common way of the internets – have both of our internets available down below for ya!

WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall 
20-754 E Fairview Rd. 
Victoria, BC  V9A 5T9  
Canada

John:

My website:http://www.johnoverall.com/

WordPress Emergency Support:http://wppro.ca/wpemergency

email:john@wppro.ca

Amber:

email: amber@wppro.ca

Today’s Plugins we covered were:

John’s Plugin:

Unlimited Elements for Elementor and More By Unlimited Elements

Over 200 free widgets

Offers a Widget Creator

Compatible and integrates well with Woo, ACF, and many more.

Rating: 5 Dragons

Amber’s Plugin: 

Outdated Plugin Notifier By Carl Gross

Easy to use and lightweight

No configuration required

Tells you if the plugin has been expelled from the WordPress Repository

Rating: 5 Dragon

Q & A Time with Amber – Catch this info on our YouTube Channel

If you have questions you would like to have asked on the show, send them in to me atAmber@WPPro.ca – we may never stump my dad, but we can get some good conversation out of him at least!

• What are some common mistakes that those new to the WordPress world make during startup, and how can they be avoided? – sometimes people who are not new to the world of WordPress make these mistakes too I am sure.
• What are some common security vulnerabilities that are often and easily overlooked by the newer users of WordPress?
  • How can these be fixed?

Questions asked after closing credits:

**Question from our regular listener Hemdian:

Recently, for some reason, most of the file permissions on one of my sites changed from 644 to 755 (‘execute’ on all levels). How much should I worry?

So you don’t need ‘execute’ on a PHP file?

Listen to the show to hear the answer to the above question from Hemdian.

• When building a site, what are some suggestions to make the site more user friendly, and appear more accessible to the human eye?
• When building a site, what can one do to help keep their viewers on the site longer?

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