It’s Episode 268 and we’ve got plugins for Post Shortcodes, Affiliate Links, Emailing Your Users, WooCommerce Product Tabs, Order Testing, and a new way to skip the dashboard on login.. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-
Audio Player
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe to WPPlugins A to Z on Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | Email | RSS
Thank Our Donors
We would like to thank our donors to the show, everyone who donates $50 or more will be acknowledged here with a mention and a link back to their page and all those below will be anonymous
$55 from Jez at Jezweb Pty Ltd.
Happy to hear the new mic which sounds great and to support your work, sounds crisp and perfect. This weeks donation is on behalf of Chainwire Fencing Specialist https://www.fencingspecialist.com.au who construct industrial chainwire fences and is a client of Jezweb in Australia. Cheers, Jez.
Thanks to all donors who cam in under $50
For those who have asked about Patreon we will have a Patreon account launching in a couple weeks where you can donate on a monthly basis. We will be offing as an incentive plugin tutorial videos on how to setup and use the plugins we review and use.
WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:
It looks like WordPress 4.6 will be out this week RC is out and done so what can you expect from 4.6? Check out WP Begginner’s article to find out what they have to say https://www.wpbeginner.com/news/whats-coming-in-wordpress-4-6-features-and-screenshots/
You can now see out YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAPf9semc868_wMFiQWvlrg
Additional News
WordPress.com Launches Browser Notifications
WordPress.com launched browser notifications this week, a feature that delivers instant notifications of site activity to Chrome and Firefox users. Notifications are opt-in, so users will need to enable them before they will be active. Fortunately, they are also configurable on a per-site and per-activity basis, otherwise users with a larger volume of notifications might be overloaded. WordPress.com Launches Browser Notifications – WordPress Tavern
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John Overall**
Post Shortcode
sent in by Sachin Jadhav at https://sachin8600.wordpress.com/
- Version: 2.0.7
- Author: Sachin Jadhav
- Last Updated: 1 month ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 3.8 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.5.3
- Active Installs: 600+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
The Lowdown:
This is a pretty nice plugin that will allow you to include post snippets in multiple places in your website. You can use it to build a shortcode you can place on any page or post or you can use the widget to add to a sidebar. The process of building the widgets and short codes is pretty complete and easy to use. all in all a pretty good plugin.
Rating 4 Dragons
Affiliate Links Lite
sent in by Ni Ky at https://www.teamdev.com/
- Version: 2.0
- Author: TeamDev Ltd
- Last Updated: 1 month ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 4.0 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.5.3
- Active Installs: 2,000+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
- Plugin Homepage »
The Lowdown:
This is a plugin to create your own redirect links, it bills itself as a great way to mask affiliate links, it looks to be a useful way to create redirects but it has a quirk I am not too sure of the usefulness. That is it add an additional word and the end for your URL the default one being “go” while you can change it I am not sure of its use.
It does do tracking and you can create 301 redirects ect if you want Google analytics you will need to upgrade to the premium version. It uses custom post types for the redirection which is a different way of doing things. All in all not too bad of a plugin for creating links a pretty good way to get the job done but if you really want and need link creation I would recommend pretty links even their free version offers more than this one.
Rating 3 Dragons
WP Email Users
Sent in by Siddharth B at https://techspawn.com/
- Version: 1.2.8
- Author: techspawn1
- Last Updated: 7 days ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.5.3
- Active Installs: 800+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
- Plugin Homepage »
The Lowdown:
This is a plugin to create your own local email/Newsletter system from your own website. You can send your emails out via any SMTP service you may have, Gmail, sendgrid, amazon and more. You can create your own templates for newsletters and more. The one feature I see of most value here is the auto responder that will allow you to send out messages for such things as registration welcomes emails, comment notifications and other events on your site people might want to be notified about.
This could be a pretty useful plugin when used correctly, but as far as replacing a newsletter system like Mailchimp not so sure of that with all the issues these days of getting around IP Blacklists.
Rating 4 Dragons
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus Couch**
Product Tabs Manager for WooCommerce
With Product Tabs Manager for WooCommerce You can create any tabs for products that you want. Create one tab for all products or custom tabs for each products. Sort default WooCommerce and custom product tabs as You want. Use WordPress native WYSIWYG editor for create custom product tabs.
Features:
Infinite Tabs for WooCommerce products , Global Tabs , Sort and rename default WooCommerce tabs , Sort custom product tabs , Shortcodes and html in tabs , Sort tabs using drag and drop interface . Additional Features in Paid Plugin: Tabs for specific products , Tabs for specific categories , Question/Answer type of tabs , Products type of tabs .
Rating: 4 out of 5
WooCommerce Order Test
Make sure your checkout works. Test your WooCommerce order process in seconds. To enable, you simply check a box in the WooCommerce Settings page. You will enable the order text gateway, which does not actually authorize any sales or transactions. A good way to test the entire sales process within WooCommerce from top to bottom.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Skip Dashboard
This lightweight plugin allows WP admin user to skip default WordPress dashboard after login and jump straight to specific page. This is great for clients that may need to login to the site. If you can make their path easier, it’s a much better experience for them and less stuff for them to break.
Rating: 5 out of 5
—–
John’s discussion this week about a project.
Plugins Overview:
John’s Plugins: Post Shortcode – 4, Affiliate Links Lite – 3, WP Email Users – 4
Marcus’ Plugins: WooCommerce Product Tabs – 4, WooCommerce Order Test – 4, Skip Dashboard – 5
Commercial:
Time to share this space with others, so currently I would like to let others know about a great non profit society here in the Victoria area Heritage Acres https://heritageacresbc.ca/ they help preserve our history for everyone. You can see steam engines from the 1800’s ride the model railroad. If you become a member you even gain access to the Blacksmith shop and more check them out at https://heritageacresbc.ca/
Interact with your Hosts