It’s Episode 273 and we’ve got plugins for Custom Logins, Captcha , User Managers, Scratch & win cards, Staff and Team Displays and A new Multi-Column layout for Gravity Forms. It’s all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
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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
Thanks to Benjamin who donated $50 no message though.
$50 donation Thanks to Jez at JezWeb Pty Ltd https://www.jezweb.com.au/ on behalf of Jezweb client AllPride Signs and Marketing at https://www.allpride.com.au a signwriter company based in Newcastle, Australia.
Thanks to all donors who came in under $50
thank you
You can now donate though Patreon at https://patreon.com/wppluginsatoz where you can donate on a monthly basis. As an incentive if you donate $40 a month you will gain access to the exclusive plugin tutorial videos on how to setup and use the plugins we review and use.
John’s Rant: What to rant about?
There will be a bit of a rant at this place so if you feel the need to jump ahead to the meat and potatoes please do so now.
As you know Marcus sent out a letter last week with his thoughts on support for the show and while I might not have been as blunt (ok maybe I would have been as any longtime listener would know I can get on a high horse) Marcus did have a point and it was a bit of an eye opener for me as to how the community supports things. I know I send money to and support devs when I can.
What surprised me was the sudden number of unsubscribes to the email list almost like people did not like being called out for not giving value for value.
Was it offensive that depends on how easily you are offended, did it hit home Pretty sure it did.
And to those that sent emails saying “I was thinking of donating but won’t now” I say yea well you might have been thinking but you took no action and if you are still listening then you still think this show has value and you should donate
Here is the thing I think most people do not think about for the 20 to 30 min show that we create every week, I have to invest a min of 3 hrs. into it. I often spend more on it. In the beginning it was not so bad but about this time last year I realized that my business had grown to the point where I needed to make some choices and do a better job of managing my time and justifying the time spent on the show.
In that light I had attempted to do a kickstarter to make this show a full time business but was only able to raise 10% of the needed funds. That told me 2 things one the audience while big enough to support the show, only 10% cared the other is that the 10% might support it enough to allow me to dedicate one day a week to the show and website and start down the road of improvements.
And it has (sort of), since we started asking you our listeners for donations 7 months ago, we have raised only $1100, $460 from Jezweb and the rest from smaller donations. We have also raised $800 from advertisers on the show. So what has been done with that money? New recording software, microphone, and mixer to improve the sound, software to start doing screen casts again, transcripts of the show which are starting to appear on the site now. Allowing me to justify one day a week to work on the show and its website.
I am not sure people think about how much work goes into producing a podcast, if you do not believe they are hard just look at how many abandoned shows there are in iTunes, where you will see many people had started a podcast and abandoned it only to find out they require time and money to keep them alive. We are the oldest active WordPress Podcast by time, the second oldest is Website engineer and the reason he has more shows is for a few months I was inconsistent with getting shows out. Yes my first show went live about 2 months before his. My first show was Oct 18. 2010, his was Dec 3, 2010
The show is not going away anytime soon and I will continue with the show as long as there are supporters of it. But keep in mind while this has mostly been a labour of love over the past 6 years, and it has been of benefit to me and has brought me some of my best clients. The show has to evolve, it needs to get to the point of being self sufficient. This is rapidly becoming a value for value item, meaning that if you get value out of it please provide some value back and donate to the show.
WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:
Some #WPDrama this week https://purposethemes.com/367913/everything-to-know-about-headway-themes-crisis/
Headway themes seems to be having some issues, too bad they make a pretty good theme and were one of the pioneers in the theme business.
Moving a single site to Multisite https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/moving-wordpress-site-into-multisite/
A tongue in cheek article on how to make your WordPress site slow https://wpgeodirectory.com/making-your-wordpress-site-slow/
Listener Feedback / Audio Clips
Remember you can leave us a Speakpipe message and you can submit their own recorded review.
Rich Underwood
Hi guys, I am looking for a plug in that would allow me to create a site that would list alternatives/substitions for certain products. Something along the lines of the site AlternativeTo.net, but for vegan food! I need the user to search for a non-vegan food (e.g. milk) and the site provide a list of products that would be a good alternative (e.g. in this case, soy milk, coconut milk, etc).
I can modify a plugin that would do something similar for software or whatever, but i cant find a plugin to help, do you have any ideas?Thanks guys, love the show, and keep up the good work!
I can modify a plugin that would do something similar for software or whatever, but i cant find a plugin to help, do you have any ideas?Thanks guys, love the show, and keep up the good work!
Rich
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John Overall**
Custom Login
- Version: 3.2.5
- Author: Austin Passy
- Last Updated: 5 months ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 4.0 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.5.4
- Active Installs: 90,000+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
- Plugin Homepage »
The Lowdown:
There are time when you want to make some customization’s to your login page this plugin makes that task an easy one. Allowing you to customize the logo, background and add custom html or css. This is all done without all the hassle of having to add it to your css file and functions file. It does have a couple premium options avail to extend it out for things such as stealth login, login redirects and more.
Rating 4 Dragons
Login No Captcha reCAPTCHA
- Version: 1.1.7
- Author: Robert Peake
- Last Updated: 6 months ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 3.0.0 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.5.4
- Active Installs: 6,000+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
- Plugin Homepage »
The Lowdown:
CAPTCHA is my least favourite thing as many people know, but as I was asked by a client to place a CAPTCHA on a login page I wanted the simplest form of it to use. This plugin fits the bill perfectly, it uses the “I am not a robot” check box no hard to read letters no math ect just a simple mouse click and done. Setup is easy just install activate and they even provide a link to Google to get the api code.
Rating 5 Dragons
Cimy User Manager
- Version: 1.5.0
- Author: Marco Cimmino
- Last Updated: 7 months ago
- Requires WordPress Version: 4.3.1 or higher
- Compatible up to: 4.4.5
- Active Installs: 4,000+
- WordPress.org Plugin Page »
- Plugin Homepage »
The Lowdown:
Moving a site can sometime take a little while especially if your making improvements, and if that site has an active user base that is always being added to it can be a pain to get all the new users into your new site. The plugin make exporting and importing the uses an easy task. Just install activate and export the file, then install the plugin on the new site and import the file and your done. It gives options to reset the users passwords also.
Rating 5 Dragons
**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus Couch**
Scratch & win giveaways for Website & Facebook
Reward users who sign up to your campaign with a hidden scratchcard prize. Easy setup. No coding & No design skills required. Free for 10 entries.
Users fill out a form and accept contest t&c. They can then scratch away the top image with their cursor to reveal their prize. This plugin is a fun way to increase engagement, get Leads and win Customers!
Rating: 4 out of 5
AWSM Team
AWSM Team is the most versatile and lite-weight WordPress plugin available to create and manage a team showcase. The lite version comes with 3 presets and a number of style options. You can create a great looking team section on your WordPress site in a few minutes after installing the plugin.
Rating: 4 out of 5
GravityForms Multi Column
This plugin allows modification of Gravity Forms by splitting a form into columns. Columns are specified by creating ‘starting’ and ‘closing’ Section elements that surround other elements in the form. Each opening and closing set of Sections define a column.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Plugins Overview:
John’s Plugins: Custom Login – 4, Login No Captcha reCAPTCHA – 5, Cimy User Manager – 5
Marcus’ Plugins: Scratch & win giveaways for Website & Facebook – 4, AWSM Team – 4, GravityForms Multi Column – 4
Commercial:
Time to share this space with others, so currently I would like to let others know about a great non profit society that is just starting out in Washington State called Kitsap Advocacy Resources Education Services which help with advocacy for those in need. Tier Mission: The mission statement of K.A.R.E.S is to provide, advocacy and support for victims of trauma and their family members. While promoting self-sufficiency and personal wellness, through mentoring,resources and education.
Visit them at https://kitsapadvocacykares.org/
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