Halfway to Crazy
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It's Episode 471 with plugins for Quizzing the Crazy, Knowing Your Age, Keeping Healthy Levels of Crazy, Crazy Security, Custom Content and ClassicPress Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!
Cerber Security, Anti-spam & Malware Scan, Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields, Fix Image Rotation, Quiz and survey master – QSM, Age Gate – Open Source, Imsanity and ClassicPress options in Episode 471
With great appreciation for the No Agenda Show for their inspiration of ideas and the occasional stolen sound clip.
This is a value for value show and I look forward to everyone providing some value back.
Start by Subscribing to the newsletter for additional information and get out there and rope them all in, Spread the word about WP Plugins A to Z and catch it live every Thursday at noon PDT on my YouTube Channel.
Producer Credits:
Show Art:
Angel Lemus — http://www.koadigital.com
All the show notes can be found at: WPPluginsAtoZ.com
Johns Rant:
This is #30 of 52 episodes for 2020. Its Episode 471 and the days are getting shorter and now is the time to find yourself an Oasis like the one at The Rogues Tavern and relax. We are now 30 weeks into 2020 and 19 weeks of the Rona, the doom and gloom seems to be never ending, but have no fear WP Plugins A to Z is here to lift your soul. The opportunities have never been better in the world as they are right now so get into action and start grabbing them while you can.
Things You can Do to help your soul:
Minimize your news exposure,
Work on your own little part of the world to make it a better place to be.
Inspire others around you to do the same.
Don't worry about things you cannot control.
Stop accepting and doing things that may not be your best interest.
Work in your best interest while at the same time respecting others, the rewards will follow.
I have some news from the world of WordPress for you today as well as some great plugins.
Let's get to the fun we have today.
WordPress News and Info
News this week:
Are Plugin Authors to Blame for the Poor Admin Notices Experience?
https://wptavern.com/are-plugin-authors-to-blame-for-the-poor-admin-notices-experience
Understanding WP-Cron
https://spinupwp.com/doc/understanding-wp-cron/
Upcoming in WordPress 5.5: Features and Changes Theme Authors Should Know About
https://wptavern.com/upcoming-in-wordpress-5-5-features-and-changes-theme-authors-should-know-about
Trivia:
the hall of shame via Automattic:
transparency.automattic.com/tag/hall-of-shame/
Matt's Famous Quotes
https://www.idrlabs.com/quotes/matt-mullenweg.php
Donor – Support
Show Producers
This Show will not work without you, the producers, as it is a Value for Value model, meaning if your'e getting any value out of it then give some value back and help the show out.
I'd like to acknowledge all the producers who have supported the show in the various ways over the last week.
This weeks show Art Work comes from:
Angel Lemus — http://www.koadigital.com
This week's Executive Producer/'s are:
A big thank you to all the Producers who came in under $50 and to those who have set up weekly subscriptions they will remain anonymous and I thank you very much.
All these small subscriptions really help the show out.
A big thank you to those who have hired me because of the Podcast, thank you that is as good as donating to the show.
You can Support the Show by:
Donating money to help the show Donations of $50 and over are credited with an Executive Producer Credit in the Show Notes, and their note is read out on the show.
Submitting art work at the WP Plugins Art generator,
Submit articles news and information
Submit plugin suggestions for reviews
You can also create a monthly donation at Patreon
Or something I may not have thought of.
ClassicPress Options
ClassicPress is a fast growing fork of WordPress that is starting to come into its own. ClassicPress is focused on Business Websites, runs fast and is looking pretty good. There are a few plugins specifically for ClassicPress and all plugins for WordPress 4.9.9 work well on it. I do believe it has a future.
One thing I am looking forward to in the ClassicPress World is the expansion of the number of ClassicPress specific plugins and their own repository. Currently there are not a lot of ClassicPress specific plugins but I do know it is going to grow and I'll have to expand this segment then. Who knows, it could take over the whole show.
This week for ClassicPress I have:
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Just a note for my ClassicPress listeners please send me info to help keep the ClassicPress section full.
Random Links to ClassicPress supporters
ClassicPress Resources:
For some up to date news on ClassicPress check out the ClassisPress Club news.
An alternate forum for the non-techies.
“Must Have” Plugins List
https://forums.classicpress.net/t/must-have-plugins-list/1163
To find a listing of ClassicPress specific plugins check out this link https://forums.classicpress.net/t/plugins-built-specifically-for-classicpress/1011?u=codepotent there is currently 37 42 49 50 52 55 57 plugins here and growing. I look forward to the day they have their own repository. I can still recall WP when it had a small repository.
CodePotent's plugin directory
https://codepotent.com/classicpress/plugins/
WordPress plugins
Are you looking for some great newly released plugins check this link
https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/new/
John's plugin
Cerber Security, Anti-spam & Malware Scan
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-cerber/
The Lowdown:
This is a pretty complete security plugin I came across while doing some work on a new clients site and briefly found myself locked out due to typos.
This plugin does a great job of keeping out the bad by limiting login attempts and then locking them. You can filter sites by IP and IP network.
You can use an authorized users mode forcing people to login to your site. This is a great tool to create an intranet.
Not an often rating for a freemium plugin!
Rating: 5 Dragons
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Amber's Plugin
– Age Gate – Open Source
https://wordpress.org/plugins/age-gate/
The Lowdown:
Used for: Creating a pop up to verify the age of the user. Easily worked around, but it covers your ass. ? Good for when you have adult contented posts, or art, or even if you just have something that may offend someone, like boobies in a picture, or an unpopular political opinion – those fall under adult content. So, with a warning label, all is well on your end.
How it works: You plug it in, activate it, than you can set everything up just the way you like it. I had a lot of fun making all of those very dry and boring little messages more interesting. Like instead of “Please confirm your age” I put “WAIT! Are you Legal?” Way easier to deal with irritating pop ups when they can make you smile.
Also, this version allows you to throw the age verification up for not only your entire site so you have to pass that before entering the site, but it also gives the option to throw it up for specific things, like posts, or pictures. It gives you a list to choose from for which topics you can age block. I personally think its just easier to age block the whole site, but that's just me.
Pro version?: I went through a lot of these, and the only one that did what I wanted it to while simultaneously not having to pay for the better options was this one. It is totally open sourced, and completely free.
Easy to use?: Very easy to use; I’m still working out the percent sign as code or something. Not entirely sure how to use that yet… but it tried it’s best to explain it to people like me.
Like it?: I quite enjoyed this. Very customizable.
Rating: 4 dragons
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John's plugin
Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields
https://wordpress.org/plugins/pods/
The Lowdown:
Are you looking for an easy way to create custom posts types and custom fields. This is a great plugin for that. Here are some of the things this plugin does for you.
You can create entirely new content types and settings pages.
- Custom Post Types – Content types that look and function like Posts and Pages, but in their own separate sections of WordPress.
- Custom Taxonomies – Content types that look and function like Categories and Tags, but in their own separate sections of WordPress.
- Custom Settings Pages – Create custom settings under Settings menu to help organize your site’s custom global settings.
- Advanced Content Types – These are entirely separate from WordPress and function off their own database tables.
Rating: 5 Dragons
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Amber's Plugin
– Quiz and survey master – QSM
https://wordpress.org/plugins/quiz-master-next/
The Lowdown:
Parv, a marketing manager at JustHyre got in touch with us, asking us to review this plugin.
I had actually checked this out before when I was searching for a plugin for a client, and it just didn't do what I needed it to do.
Used for: creating quizzes and surveys for people to take on your site. If you are searching for an easy, correct or incorrect answer type survey plugin, or a regular survey maker plugin, than this is for you.
Unfortunately though, if you're wanting to do a survey that is along the lines of ‘what kind of animal are you, a unicorn or a pig?', than this won't do it for you.
For a quiz like “what kind of animal are you”, the answers interconnect, and you get a certain animal based on the answers you chose throughout the quiz. This plugin just has simple right and wrong answers.
There is an option in there to have a points based system, where you get an allotment of points at the end, where the goal is to gain as many points as you can…. but I could not for the life of me get the points to show up in the results. It does however show up on the QSM dashboard… so maybe it pops up in the person's account, or on their fb profile? I'm not sure about that one…
Now, QSM would be pretty useful for those looking for simple quizzes and survey options; it's fairly straight forward, offers some different colour schemes for the question and answer pages – at least the little comments box below the questions; the user can share it on Social Networks and it won't fail, which could be useful; however, if you want to integrate it with anything like MailChimp, you will have to pay for the pro options.
I personally don't like this plugin. It seems like they took a simple format, and tried to make it appear fancy with a load of options that don't really give the ability to personalize the plugin. And they make you pay for the options that could actually make it more useful, like Mailchimp Integration. It's a simple yes or no quiz, or a basic survey with seemingly fancy options.
Sorry Parv from JustHyre,
I rate this at 3 Dragons.
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John's plugin
Fix Image Rotation
https://wordpress.org/plugins/fix-image-rotation/
The Lowdown:
This is a simple plugin to help with the issue of image orientation when using images from a smart phone. It auto re-orients the images so that they are upright.
Rating: 4 Dragons
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Amber's Plugin
– Imsanity
https://wordpress.org/plugins/imsanity/
The Lowdown:
Used for: this takes those crazy huge images that people upload onto blogs and what not, and auto resizes them to a more moderate size for you, but still allows the image to actually be seen on a regular browser.
This allows you to resize in bulk any and all images that were uploaded before the installation of this plugin. They DO give a warning though, that if you bulk resize, it will permanently alter your images on WP, and so it could warp the images beyond repair. So, test one or two images before bulk resizing.
How it works: Once its enabled, it just goes on its own, resizing whatever is loaded up to it. It takes the images and resizes it to the parameters that you have chosen. You can choose the size everything gets resized to; you are able to convert from BMP to JPG, and PNG to JPG if so desired.
You can make it ignore any image you don't want resized, by adding ‘noresize', all one word, to the name of the photo; the example they give is: your pic is named ‘photo.jpg', so change it to ‘photo-noresize.jpg'.
No pro version for this, you get what you get.
I liked it, it was easy to install and the set up is pretty easy too. plug it in and let it go.
I rate this at 4.
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Listener Feedback / Audio Clips
WP Plugins A to Z got mentioned during a twitter thread https://twitter.com/lukechesser/status/1288500268691271681
Discussing the uproar over unsplash. I saw the article but did not dig into it too deeply but will be happy now to know more about it.
Remember Matt in his own words :
“For WordPress, we're trying to set up a community that will be around 10 to 30 years from now. … I feel like the non-elected benevolent dictator: It's my responsibility to meet as many users as possible and direct the software project in a way that reflects their interests.”
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Enter The Contest to Win!!:
Contests Powered by Simple Giveaways who kindly provides us with the premium version for our contests.
We do have a contest where we are giving away a subscription for ShoutWorks, check the interview being released this week.
Visit http://WPPluginsAtoZ.com/contests for more info.
After you enter the contest remember to share on social media and you get more chances to win.
For all developers who would like to support the show. You can donate a premium license to be used in a future contest please go to WPPluginsAtoZ.com/PluginContest
Closing out this Episode the Plugins We covered were:
John’s Plugins: Cerber Security – 5, Anti-spam & Malware Scan, Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields – 5, Fix Image Rotation – 4
Amber's Plugins: Quiz and survey master – QSM – 3, Age Gate – Open Source – 4, Imsanity – 4
Trivia:
Matt's Famous Quotes
https://www.idrlabs.com/quotes/matt-mullenweg.php
Reminders / Commercial / Promotions:
Remember to make Amber feel welcome by sending some good feels back.
I am still looking to see about a meetup in August keep tabs on this at https://wppluginsatoz.com/meetup .
There is a new Interview is out with Christian from Shoutworks.com
Would you like to be on an interview show? Simply connect at https://wppluginsatoz.com/interview
Follow my Journey at TheRoguesTavern.com check out my adventures into the wild searching for gold, hiking, camping, out on the gun range and more.
If you have suggestions on plugins you would like to have reviewed please submit them on the website at https://wppluginsatoz.com/submit-plugin-review/
For all developers who would like to support the show. You can donate a premium license to be used in a future contest, please go to WPPluginsAtoZ.com/PluginContest
Be sure and subscribe to our Newsletter.
Just some reminders:
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How to Contact Me:
John can be contacted at:
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