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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today! Coming to you LIVE from…
We’ve got a couple of great in-depth plugins to cover for you: hub2wp, where you can create a direct line from plugins hosted on GitHub to your site so your plugin’s and themes can get the updates they need directly!
And Describr – Membership, User Profile, Content Restriction & Role Editor Plugin, where you can create a fantastic multi-membership site with more ease than one would expect!
And of course we’ve also got some recent news in both the WordPress World and the Tech World in general with additional WordPress Tips!
I do believe that Spring is finally clawing it’s way into this side of the world – snow and ice are not melting as of yet, but the snowbells are peeking up and trying hard to bloom already! Don’t forget that while it feels warmer, it is STILL only about 5 over here on the West Coast, so I am sure it is colder in the rest of Canada – do NOT give up your extra layers yet! Keep them close!
A few reminders before we start the show today….
Reminders:
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Join us here in person every Monday at 12:00 pm Pacific Time to enjoy our show!
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Show notes are added to wppluginsatoz.com within 24 hours of the show airing; you can find them either on the home page, or in the Podcast Vaults!
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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 just turn our show on really loudly. We will catch somebodies attention!
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!
(Don’t feel shy about sending in a message just to say hi! Send along suggestions, questions, recommendations, news, art – we always love to hear from our listeners!)
Let’s start the show with this weeks Featured Artist:
Artist:
Who is our artist today?!?
Today is…. Grok! He appears to be coming back to himself after the most recent lobotomy!
We would love some new art from our Producers out there! If you are so inclined, you can send it into us at amber@wppro.ca or john@wppro.ca. 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 menu.
We can NEVER have too much art!
Breaking News in the WordPress World at large!!
If you have anything you think should be added please send it into me at amber@wppro.ca!
News this week:
WordPress Vulnerability Report
(https://solidwp.com/blog/wordpress-vulnerability-report-february-25-2026/) – In this report there are 244 vulnerabilities. 205 are plugins this week, with 39 Themes.
Plugins: 156 patched, 49 left to go!
Themes: 8 patched, 31 left to go!
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.
Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi step away from the FAIR as project pivots to TYPO3
(https://www.therepository.email/joost-de-valk-and-karim-marucchi-step-away-from-fair-as-project-pivots-to-typo3) – This is something to be aware of. We have all been keeping an eye on the FAIR project, hoping it will manage to do what they say they will – however, due to their inability to gain ‘secure meaningful financial and structural support from major hosting companies and other large players in WordPress ecosystem’, they are two are stepping away. FAIR says that this will not change their initiative or the direction they are going, although from the outside it does appear that perhaps FAIR is not going to quite do as well as we were hoping…
WordPress 7.0 Beta 2 ships with Connectors UI, delivering on Mullenweg’s AI vision
(https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-7-0-beta-2-ships-with-connectors-ui-delivering-on-mullenwegs-ai-vision) – The Beta is on schedule! Despite Beta 1 being a little delayed, Beta 2 is bringing with it the feature that is dominating the conversation this last week: a Connectors UI that gives users a central place in WP-admin to manage external AI connections. For those who are interested in the security, extensibility, and everything around this be sure to check out this article – and be sure to go and test it yourself!
Human Made to Host WP:26 Virtual Event, releases 2026 enterprise report
(https://www.therepository.email/human-made-to-host-wp26-virtual-event-releases-2026-enterprise-report) – Releasing on March 12, Human Made will host WP:26 is returning with its annual virtual event focused on the future of WordPress. The conference will be live-streamed on YouTube and will feature a keynote from CGO Noel Tock, alongside a panel discussion including WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard and senior leaders from WordPress VIP, News UK, PMC, and CERN.
Checkout Summit is filling the WooCommerce Conference event gap nobody else would
(https://www.therepository.email/checkout-summit-is-filling-the-woocommerce-conference-event-gap-nobody-else-would) – You probably know Rodolfo Melogli from his many WooCommerce tutorials and code snippets on his site Business Bloomer – he has been around since 2014! Unfortunately due to AI getting involved in search results, his traffic is dropping across the board – and so he has decided to get out there in person to do something about it! He will be speaking and has set up a conference he feels is going to make a difference – and it already has!
This April 23 & 24, Checkout Summit will be held in Palermo, Italy. This will be the first in-person conference dedicated to WooCommerce since the platform’s own WooConf series ended in 2017. It’s being organized entirely by Melogli, from his home in Palermo, on a budget that he says has to turn a profit. This should be interesting – read the article to find out more!
4 bright planets light up March evenings – here’s where and when to look
(https://www.space.com/stargazing/4-bright-planets-light-up-march-evenings-heres-where-and-when-to-look) – For those of us who missed the full alignment of the planets in the sky on March 1st, never fear! We can still see some fantastic alignment of planets throughout March! Throughout the month, we will see the 4 planets Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars shining together. Mercury will be at its best of 2026 all month! We should see all 4 planets all month long with March 8 being the best view!
(Go visit WP Shout Comics OR Word Chronicles OR MonkeyUser.com for a fantastic brain break – my favourite today is this one!)
Some Extras – check out our Facebook or Twitter!
Meet your AI auditor: how this new job role monitors model behavior
PressConf returns to Tempe with a new mission: challenge the WordPress Community
The WP community collective expands board, Chris Reynolds named interim president
Automattic again seeks to dismiss WP Engine’s latest complaint, moves to drop WooCommerce from case
WP Accessibility Day is crowdfunding a booth at WordCamp Europe to close the EAA knowledge gap
WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 ships after delay as project leadership realigns release around AI and milestone story
Automattic, Mullenweg ask court to keep details of WordPress.org hosting negotiations private
WordPress.com launches built-in AI assistant that works in Editor, Media Library, and Notes
Checkout Summit is filling the WooCommerce Conference event gap nobody else would
Rogue’s Corner News and Extras
Be sure to go and check out the new and unique plugins now available from WPProAtoz.com!
Rogues Corner & Tip of the day
This Shows Featured Promotion
I will be promoting a premium plugin I’d like to help get others to buy it.
This week it is
ChangeLogWP
The Lowdown:
Clear, detailed changelogs enhance user experience and maintain a strong relationship between developers and users. They inform users about new features, bug fixes, and improvements, helping them understand what’s changed.
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Communicate Updates: Inform users about new features, bug fixes, and improvements, helping them understand what’s changed.
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Build Trust: Transparent documentation shows developers are actively maintaining and improving the software, fostering user confidence.
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Aid Troubleshooting: Help users and developers identify when issues were introduced or resolved, streamlining support and debugging.
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Guide Adoption: Highlight new functionalities, encouraging users to explore and utilize updates effectively.
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Ensure Compliance: For regulated industries, changelogs provide an audit trail of changes, ensuring accountability and traceability.
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Support Decision-Making: Help users decide whether to update based on changes that impact their workflows or security.
WordPress Items:
Plugins to the repo 60+ a day AI involved
WordPress Best Practices:
FAIR to step back https://x.com/jdevalk/status/2027083436645650649
Small Guys People to follow on X:
V for V for the show
If you get any value out of this show then donate that value back to the show. You can do so through time, talent, or treasure – or all 3!! – through our website wppluginsatoz.com.
Click on the ‘Treasure Donations’ link on the left-hand menu, or on the ‘Time, or Talent‘ pages to find out more!
Note to our listeners out there using Overcast you are the winners for the most downloads.
Tip of The Day:
Talk about us WPProAtoZ.com as an agency and what we do
Follow WP Plugins A-Z on X @wppluginsatoz and Facebook – WordPressPluginsA2Z
Upcoming Interviews:
Reminder that we have more interviews coming up in the coming weeks with more developers and community members https://wppluginsatoz.com/book-an-interview-on-wp-plugins-a-to-z-podcast/
Available dates: March 9 & 23, April 6 & 20, May 4 & 18, 2026
Other Shows and places to get WP Info & Training
The WP Builds Podcast
WP Roads
WP-Tonic
Worlds Worst Web Developer
WP Mayor
wp Minute
Dragon Rating Time with John!
John’s Plugin
Hub2WP
The Lowdown:
hub2wp is a WordPress plugin that lets you discover, install, and update plugins and themes hosted on GitHub directly from your WordPress dashboard. By leveraging GitHub’s ecosystem, it provides a straightforward way to extend your WordPress site beyond the resources available on WordPress.org.
hub2wp does not require any changes to existing plugins or approvals from a central authority to make themes and plugins discoverable or updatable. All it takes is for developers to add the
wordpress-plugin/wordpress-theme tag to their public GitHub repository. hub2wp automatically verifies that a repository is a valid WordPress extension. Thousands of valid plugins and themes are already available on GitHub, ready to be installed right away!Private repositories are also supported, and you can manually set up update monitoring for themes and plugins installed outside hub2wp.
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 be upset by your inability to do something fully. Accept that you are not the best at everything, and admit to it when you just cannot figure something out!
Honestly, your boss and your co-workers will like you more if you just admit you can’t figure something out, and would like some help, than if you try and go it alone, pretending that you know what you are doing.
Try something out, and if you cannot figure out, ask for help. Makes you appear smarter than you probably are when you are willing to admit you need the help. ;)
Dragon Rating Time with Amber!
Amber’s Plugin
Describr – Membership, User Profile, Content Restriction & Role Editor Plugin
The Lowdown:
This is another plugin sent into us – and I have to admit that at first, I had a hard time understanding how to use this. I thought perhaps my login plugin I was using, LoginWP (Formerly Peter’s Login Redirect), might have been the issue… but instead it turned out to be an entirely Skill Issue on my part. I will happily explain my massive Skill Issue I encountered, and will try to show off just how totally awesome this plugin actually is!
Starting at the beginning – once you have downloaded and activated this, you will see the plugin dashboard under ‘Settings’>’Describr’. Here you have full control over this amazing plugin!
In the settings, you will see options for the following:
‘Email me whenever’ – which allows you to check off boxes on when you get a notification – user password change, new user registered, new user’s account held for moderation, or a user is deleted.
‘Email user when’ – new user registered, membership approved, user confirms membership, membership is held for moderation, user is activated, user is deactivated, membership is rejected, user is deleted.
‘Profile’ – use Describr as default profile page on the front end, and you can choose the side of the profile photo size. Auto sizing is 200, I assume PX. Members are able to send emails to one another, and the ability to enable profile menu – and you are able to choose the default tab for them – preset to ‘about’.
The way that the profile page is set out is interesting. The page gets its own active tabs, and you get to choose what the user sees. All options – ‘About’, ‘Posts’, and ‘Comments’ are auto checked off, and there is a setting option where you can choose who sees it. And when I went to look at it from a user’s point of view, they also have the option to set it so that they can choose who sees the info – which I think is brilliant!
When I made it so that the active tabs are set to ‘who can view: Profile Owner’, and then went into the user account, the user still has the option for privacy, and setting it so that ‘everyone can see’, ‘members only’ or ‘only me’. I wonder if that means that if the site creator sets it to ‘profile owner’ for who can view, does that mean when the user sets it to ‘everyone can see’, not everyone can see?
There is also an option to manage the social media fields, and there is quite a long list of options to check off! They come pre-checked off for your convenience.
Next we have the ‘Account Settings’ – here you can choose whether the user has access to Account, Privacy, Password, Sessions, Notifications, Blocked Users, and Delete User. They come pre-checked off, though you can make it so that people cannot have access to these on their account page.
Then you have email settings, and this is for the admins. You throw in your email you want people to see, set the name you want your users to know you by, choose your text format for emails from admins and from users.
‘Send Email Using’ – This is where you can choose to set up SMTP, PHP’s mail () function, Sendmail, or qmail.
‘Email Logo’ – Choose if your email logo will just be your site’s logo, or if you will choose an ‘URL’, or just ‘none’.
‘New User Default Status’ – Here you can choose between ‘approved’, ‘awaiting review’, ‘rejected’, ‘awaiting confirmation’.
You can choose whether you will allow symbols in usernames and nic names – and you can choose password details, like if the user can generate their own password, whether they need to confirm their passwords, and how strong their passwords will need to be – how long, how short, etc.
At the bottom you see ‘Describr Pages’. Here is where my Skill Issue entered in. You have the option to choose which page’s content will be updated with the Describr shortcode, though ‘The Privacy Policy’, ‘Homepage’, and ‘Posts’ pages cannot be used.
Above the drop down option, you can click on ‘Edit’ or ‘View’ for your pages – I did not change these.
Another aspect of this plugin that took me a moment to figure out, is how to edit the roles of your user – Right beneath ‘Describr’, you will now see ‘Roles’. Click on this and you will see a list of how many people are set to which roles in your site, and how many capabilities each role has.
Click on the name of one like ‘Author’, and you can uncheck the capabilities of this role, add a new capability. There is also the option of where they are redirected to to login, once they have logged in and where they are redirected to once they logout – and an option on where they are redirected to when they logout as well.
You make the changes and hit ‘Save Changes’. All the roles have the exact same options.
Another addition is to your ‘Users’ dropdown options. You now have under ‘Bulk Actions’ the options to: ‘approve membership’, ‘send account confirmation’, ‘reject membership’, and ‘membership pending’. You can also ‘change role to….’: every option is laid out, and includes the option of ‘no role for this site’.
And if you look at the bottom of your own personal ‘user’>’profile’ page, you will see the option to check off ‘Important Person’. This will display an icon next to your profile picture. Now go to ‘Settings’>’Discussion’, and you can choose from a variety of Icons – set an icon for people who do not have their own in the membership, and choose one for yourself.
My first issue – I did not go into ‘Menu’ and add these pages to my menu, so I was not able to ‘find’ the pages from the User’s point of view.
Second issue – Once I DID add these pages, I was confused as to why there was nothing on the ‘User’ page. I honestly am still not sure since the page does exist, and the shortcode is there – but I suppose there is nothing there because the page was blank to start with?
See, I have not built any multi user sites at this point in my life – they have all been business or posting sites, no need for multi-users, excepting those who need to login for posting or any other sort of work, so this has been an experience!
Once I added ‘Account’ to my main menu, and went to check it out, I more fully understood the options on the page. I never did figure out how to make the ‘Account’ page NOT blank – it shows up in my menu as ‘User’, and when I click on ‘View’ in the options area, it shows me a blank page. I tried setting it to another page in the drop down menu – none of the dropdown options I have there worked for me.
I also tried testing this out with Elementor – and I learned that Describr pages do NOT work well with Elementor in that way! The page will not load when you try and turn it into an ‘edit with Elementor’ page. Works well on the Elementor site, but not Elementor itself.
Overall, I would absolutely use this on a multi-user site if I build one – it IS a great plugin so long as you remember to add the pages to your menu, and do not try to ‘edit with Elementor’! My own skill Issue here has caused a couple of missteps, although I was able to stumble through and get it working smoothly – meaning that it is good for people who don’t entirely know what they are doing. Lol
Testing something so far outside of my experience has actually been quite a bit of fun! And this is being offered to the world as a 100%, totally free plugin!
I highly recommend you check this out – and if you have experience in membership plugins, then I bet you will find this one a breeze to use, intuitive, and that it works well!
Rating: 5 Dragon
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!
WordPress Campus Connect Ribera del Duero – January 30-June 17
WordPress Campus Connect Universitat de Lleida – February 18-May 1
WordCamp Nice 2026 – March 6
WordCamp Madrid 2026 – March 6-7
Women WordPress Day San Jose 2026 – March 7
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!
Make the Value for Value Pitch
V for V for the show
If this show saves you time, headaches, or helps level up your WordPress game, or if we have showcased a plugin you never knew you needed that wound up saving you hours of time – go out and plug people in!
Consider giving back through our V4V model: Time, Talent, or Treasure (or all three!). Head over to our site wppluginsatoz.com.
Click on the ‘Treasure Donations’ link on the left-hand menu, or on the ‘Time, or Talent‘ pages to find out more!
This show is supported by the V4V plan which means Time, Talent or Treasure.
How to Support the Show
Submit your Art work
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Get us to make your announcement for you, let the world know you have something to say or a company worth checking out!
Today’s Plugins we covered were:
John’s Plugin:
hub2wp by WP-Autoplugin
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Allows you to discover, install, and update plugins and themes hosted on Github
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Can use directly from your dashboard
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No changes required to existing plugins or approvals from central authority
Rating: 5 Dragons
Amber’s Plugin:
Describr – Membership, User Profile, Content Restriction & Role Editor Plugin by C7hris
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Front-end user profiles & account pages
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Control over capabilities, roles, notifications, and more
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Users can upload pictures, talk to one another, block one another, and more
Rating: 5 Dragons
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!
Brick & Mortar Address
WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall
20-754 E Fairview Rd.
Victoria, BC V9A 5T9
Canada
Internets Addresses
John:
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My website: http://www.johnoverall.com/
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WordPress Emergency Support: http://wppro.ca/wpemergency
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email: john@wppro.ca
Amber:
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email: amber@wppro.ca
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 at Amber@WPPro.ca – !
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When working with membership sites, is it harder or easier to add the membership after the site is built?
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Is there a way to make it easier to add the membership after the fact?
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When grabbing plugins from places like GitHub, how do you go about double checking the security before installing?
Questions asked after closing credits:
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What is something you wish you had known 5 years ago that you know now?
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What is the best bit of advice you can give others – whether they are old hands or green-horns?