It’s episode 221 and we’ve got plugins for Curated Search, Zoomed Images, Multisite Theme Management, Global Search, and a great new address verification plugin for WooCommerce. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
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Love This Podcast—practical and useful
iTunes Review by Joubert Pascal from Canada on May 18, 2015
As a newbie WordPress blogger (Francetraveltips.com) I listen to this podcast every week to get ideas on how to improve my website. I like how you rate different plugins and also give advice on running websites. Keep up the great work! Janice Chung Toronto
SPEAKPIPE from Randolph Phillips
*WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John Overall**
Multisite Theme Manager
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/multisite-theme-manager/
The Lowdown:
This is a great plugin that allows you to customize your themes page for your users. You can adjust the description, the thumbnails and the layout of the page and more. pretty easy to use check it out.
Rating 4 Dragons
Global Site Search
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/global-site-search/
The Lowdown:
This plugin allows you to setup a search box that will do a global search of all the sites on your MU network. Pretty easy to get up and running and a great way to help promote the materials for your entire network not just the individual sites.
Rating 4 Dragons
Anti-Splog
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/anti-splog/
The Lowdown:
One of the biggest issues with runnning a WordPress Multiuser site and allowing the public to create thier own sites is dealing with the spammers or sploggers. This plug help you gain control of that by making checkes that prevents the sploggers from sigingin up. It will block signs ups per hour, by IP and more.
Rating 5 Dragons
*WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus Couch**
Curated Search
https://wordpress.org/plugins/curated-search/
Specify a search term for which you would like to control the results, then use the following features to curate the content displayed to your visitors:
Pinned results: Want to make sure your 10k word article on vaporwave vs. chillwave shows up every time users search for “seapunk”? Pin it for the search term and make sure it’s the first result they see.
Synonyms: Create search term “synonyms” to show desired search results on less common terms or common misspellings. Make sure users see results for “soda” when they search for “pop” and people searching for “resturaunt” get the results for “restaurant”.
Contextual search content: Build content in the standard WordPress WYSIWYG editor and display it above the search results for specific terms. Want to provide a special download link for people searching for “ebooks”, or coupon codes for people searching for “handbags”? No problem.
Redirect specific search terms: If you have 1,000 articles about vinyl records on your site, a search for “vinyl” will be practically useless for the user. Send the user to a more useful page (landing page, topic center, archive, etc.)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Woocommerce USPS Address Verification API
https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-usps-address-verification/
This plugin is using USPS API to verify the address customer entered on woocommerce checkout page, without disturbing the customer and blocking payment. If USPS API can correct and standardize the address it does just that, if not then it puts the order ON-HOLD and sends an email to the admin that order is waiting for manual inspection after the paypal order is processed. For now it only works with PayPal. If you need with some other payment gateway contact me I’ll develop it for you.
We were getting 1 mistake out of 20 orders. What this plugin does is simple. It takes the address written like this:
205 bagwel ave (bagwel is spelled bagwell, I intentionally made a mistake) nutter fort ZIP: 26301
and converts it to: 205 BAGWELL AVE NUTTER FORT 26301
Rating: 4 out of 5
WP Image Zoooom
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-image-zoooom/
Add zoom effect over the an image, whether it is an image in a post/page or the featured image of a product in a WooCommerce shop. The zoom will be applied by default to all feature images of products in the WooCommerce shop. It will override the “lightbox” that comes with WooCommerce. If you want to add the zoom effect on an image in a post/page, then in the edit page you can click on the “Image Zoooom” button in the editor while the image is selected. In the admin side you can configure the zooming effect, which can be tested live on the image provided in the form. Once you hit the “Save” button, the effect will be applied to the entire website.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Plugins Overview:
John’s Plugins: Multisite Theme Manager – 4, Global Site Search – 4, Anti-Splog – 5
Marcus’ Plugins: Curated Search – 5, Woocommerce USPS Address Verification – 4, WP Image Zoooom – 5
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