WordPress Plugins To Make You Green With Envy

It's Episode 558 and we have plugins for Finding Conflicts, Advanced Headers, Woo Email Transferring, Magical Popups, Lite Logger, Voice Pod Inbox… and ClassicPress Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!

Conflict Finder – WP Fix It, Headers Security Advanced & HSTS WP, WooCommerce ‘Email Money Transfer' Payment Gateway, Magic Popups – Lightweight & Customizable, Lite WP Logger, PodInbox – Accept Voice Messages on Your Website……. and ClassicPress options on Episode 558.

John's Intro:

This is a value for value show and I look forward to everyone providing some value back.

Before I get started, you will want to hang around to the end of the show for our Q & A segment with Amber…. and to those listening on the podcast, you may want to check out the YouTube version which has some great discussions before the show starts…

Amber's Rant:

This is #18 of 52 episodes for 2022!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter long weekend! We had a pretty decent one, though one of my daughters came down with a stomach bug – it is the time of year when people who are sensitive to weather changes will be feeling a bit under the weather; this goes for people with allergies as well. Be sure to stock up on peppermint and chamomile teas! Also if you throw some Bay Leaves into the tea as well it will add loads of vitamin C!

Tea's are great, and having tea with kids and family can be a great way to wind down, or get ready for the day! Spending a little time every day with your family can go a long way. Remember, ditch the media while spending time with family and/or friends! Helps the brain meats!

Rinse and repeat as often as needed.

We have some news from the world of WordPress for you today as well as some great plugins.

News this week:

WordPress Vulnerability Report – April 20, 2022 – There are a LOT of fixes this week! Be sure to check these out, especially if you use plugins from Cool Plugins, they seem to have fixed a lot of bugs this past week.

Plugins to worry about this week are not so many; WP Maintenance, WP Social Buttons, Admin Menu Editor, Product Filter For WooCommerce Product, WP Video Gallery – these are most of them, there are a few more, be sure to check these out!

DuckDuckGo and Brave move to Bypass Google AMP pages by default – On April 19th, both DuckDuckGo and Brave browsers announced that they will be bypassing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in favor of serving publishers' content on the original URL. This is called ‘De-AMP' by Brave; how this works is: ‘where it's not possible to rewrite the URLS, the browser will watch as pages are fetched and redirect users, while preventing AMP code from being loaded and executed.' Currently available in the Beta and Nightly versions.

WooCommerce plans to bring full-site editing support to single product templates – WooCommerce still has the gap in their full-site editing support where it is not yet possible to use the full-site editing to customize every aspect of the store; but they are moving to close that gap with the latest features! This is still in its early stages, though you can try everything out in the block themes!

Plugin Directory limits ownership and committer changes on official featured and beta plugins – What this means, is that under the new rule, plugin owners will no longer be able to directly change ownership to someone else or add/remove commit access. The reason for this is to prevent bad actors from pushing malicious code or premium up sells. Plugin owners will still be able to manually add and remove support reps for their plugins in the directory, though they must email the plugin review team to change ownership or commit access.

Gutenberg contributors begin early exploration of a new distraction free mode – Honestly, I don't like the current ‘distraction free' mode… What they are aiming for is a drastically reduced interface. This will mean no more floating block toolbar, no more inserting point flashes depending on where your mouse is, no more huge toolbar at the top, and more blank space. They are also going to make it so that you can get out of this by pressing ESC.

Gutenberg 13.0 adds text selection across multiple blocks, new stack group variation, and featured cover blocks – Coming up you will see multi-block partial text selection, cover block with featured images, a stack variation for groups, pattern-based page creation, spacing support for the column block, web fonts optimization, duotones for site logo and post featured image placeholders, and vertical alignments for blocks with flex controls. There is a lot more that is part of this update, so have a look through!

WordCamp in Europe publishes schedule for upcoming event in Porto – For those who are near Porto, you will want to check out WordCamp Europe! They now have the schedule up and available for the next WordCamp! There are going to be 29 talks, 18 workshops, and two panels spanning 11 different categories on June 2-4!

A new ‘baby Jupiter' is being born and teaching us! – Pretty awesome! We are currently watching as a new baby Jupiter is being created, and this is teaching us a lot about planet formation. The baby Jupiter is about 500 light-years from Earth, and is in the process of forming, drawing down matter from a vast disk of dust and gas swirling around its also-infant sun. Really cool!

The extras – for even more extra news, check out our Facebook, or Twitter page!

This is the extra news stuff that someone out there might find interesting. To read more, you can head on over to the show notes or newsletter and check it out! If you find something to add for next show, send me a link at amber@wppro.ca

What are micro frontends? – Micro front ends in a nutshell: a practice that splits a single web application into multiple smaller, stand-alone web applications but is presented to the user as one. This means that a page can be viewed as normal, but behind the scenes, multiple components of that page are fetched from different locations and stitched together on load. This article goes into depth on what these are, why they are useful, and why they think your dev-team will love them!

The hidden hack for super-speedy web browsing – The ‘hidden hack' is all about enabling gesture-based mouse controls in your web browser, how to do so, what it does, how it works, and why you will want to do this!

3 listener presentation tips – This article goes through and explains what the brain is actually doing both as a presenter and a listener, then goes on to fully explain the 3 tips given: Manage Interference, Group Together Materials to Boost Working Memory, and Link New Concepts to the Familiar. Very useful!

Amazon web services fixes container escape in Log4Shell hotfix – Amazon Web Services (AWS) has fixed four security issues that were affecting cloud or on-premise environments running Java applications with a vulnerable version of the Log4j logging library or containers. This article goes into depth on how this was affecting AWS, what the patch did, and how to find and fix the flaws.

Critical Microsoft RPC Runtime Bug – No PoC exploit yet, but patch ASAP! This vulnerability can be exploited by unauthenticated, remote attacker to breach systems and by those who already have access to a system and want to hop onto others within the same network. This article goes through and explains what CVE-2022-26809 is, how it works, and how to both mitigate and detect it.

Clever new browser extension eliminates one of the worst problems with the web – One of the worst problems = Cookies. With CookieEnforcer you can automatically reject optional cookies! And all through your browser addon! Not too shabby! This article will tell you in depth all about it!

CISA warns orgs to patch actively exploited Windows LPE bug – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added TEN new security bugs to its list! One of the recently added is a high severity local privilege escalation bug in Windows Common Log File System Driver. This article talks about the various bugs that have been added to CISA's list, what they do, and where you can go to find out more in general.

Google releases urgent Chrome update to patch actively exploited Zero-Day Flaw – This article goes into what the two security issues are, how they are being exploited, what they are called and what they do. Always be sure to update when one of these warnings come out!

Breakthrough in electrically tunable graphene devices could lead to the development of ‘beyond-5G' wireless technology – IIIIiiiinnnnnnteresting…. An international team made up from both UK and the US have managed to develop a tunable graphene-based platform that allows for fine control over the interaction between light and matter in the terahetz (THz) spectrum to reveal rare phenomena known as exceptional points. The article goes into depth about these findings, who found them, how it works, and what it could plausibly be used for in the future!

LibreWolf vs Firefox: Comparing the privacy heroes of open-source browsers – This is an interesting take on the two browsers! I can't say anything about LibreWolf as I haven't tried it, though after reading this I am totally going to! This article talks about the pros and cons for both browsers, going through the interface, search providers, hardened privacy, and some extras! Worth the read!

How hackers are beating multi-factor authentication simply by ‘annoying' users – So essentially, the hackers are just sending you a whole lot of multi-factor authentication requests until the user gets annoyed and finally clicks on it to stop the annoyance – which is how the hacker then gets control as they are connected to that message/text rather than your provider. So you log in with your ‘one time password', and they get to know what it is. This article goes through this in depth.

CVE-2021-31805 RCE bug in Apache Struts was finally patched! – Apache has finally patched a critical flaw in Apache Struts RCE properly. It wasn't done right before, so the attackers were able to use the raw user input in tag attributes, possibly leading to code execution – similar to S2-059. The article goes through and talks about how this bug works, and how it was fixed.

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

This show won't work without YOU the Producers as this is a Value for Value kind of show!

If you find value in our show, toss some value back! Help keep the show going so we can keep on plugging!

Show Producers

This is where we like to take the time to thank everyone who supports the show!

This weeks show Artwork is by:

Greg's Graphics (Greg Holdsworth) — https://gregsgraphics.com

You can Submit Artwork yourself by going to https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/

You can also check out all the art work yourself by going to https://wppluginsatoz.com/show-art-submitted/

Show Executive Producer/'s up on the stage this week:

Nobody this week, maybe next week!

Executive Producers are the ones coming in with $50.00 or more in donations. You can also send along a note that will be read out live on the show! You can just say hi, or you can send in your elevator speech and get a little self promotion while donating to a good cause!

Back Room Producers hanging-out in the Lounge:

Back Room Producers play a big part in keeping this show going! Some of these producers are the anonymous benefactors coming in with donations under $50.00.

Our best known Back Room Producers are those who help us out with our contests, artwork, and site organization!

Some of our Back Room Producers help out the show by sending us in notes, questions, plugin suggestions, and plugin reviews.

Other Back Room Producers help out the show by sending in licenses for the contests.

Our least visible Back Room Producers help out the show by hiring us! This is as good as donating, plus we get the added bonus of more experience to bring to our listeners here on the show!

A big thank you to all the Producers out there, we couldn't do this show without you!

Support the show with your Time, Talent, or Treasure:

Time Support:

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Spread the word about WP Plugins AtoZ through social media, YouTube – wherever you find yourself! Get on out there to round them up and rope them all in, then belly up to the bar and enjoy with your catch of the day while we do our best to bring you the latest and greatest of plugins and news with a laugh!

You can also catch us live on our YouTube Channel every Thursday at 11am PDT – show up by 10:45am PDT to catch our pre-stream! Really quite entertaining most days as we fiddle with the dials and knobs to chase away the gremlins that have moved in since the week before.

Send us in articles, news, or general WordPress information to share either here on the show or on the WPPluginsAtoZ site. You can do this anonymously, or have your name attached – just let us know in the email. Articles and General WordPress information will land on the site, while News may land either here on the show, or on the site – or both!

Send us in plugin suggestions or reviews for the show. This can be a plugin you love or hate, your own write up, or just a recommendation for a plugin to review!

Random tasks that need doing. See a task that you'd like to take on? Shoot us an email and we can talk about it!

Talent Support:

Submit Artwork into WP Plugins Art Generator. LOVE seeing the creativity of all the artists out there! Submit your artwork to https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/

See somewhere that could use your talent? Shoot us an email and we can talk about it!

Treasure Support:

Donations to the show! Over $50.00 donations will earn you an Executive Producership where you can have your note read out on the show! Under $50.00 donations will earn you a place in our Back Room Producers Lounge!

Patreon! – Yes, Patreon is still a thing that exists and works – and you can even watch our show there!

Something we haven't listed here? Shoot us an email and we can talk!

Want to send something in to us through Snail Mail? You can find us at:

WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall
20-754 E Fairview Rd.
Victoria, BC V9A 5T9
Canada

Off we go into the meat and potatoes, Into the depths of plugin depravity…..

ClassicPress Options

ClassicPress is growing really well, but we just don't have the time to add reviews on ClassicPress myself. We are always open to reviews sent in by listeners, though unless there is a review sent into us on ClassicPress, we am not going to do more than mention that ClassicPress is a thing. Here are some resources, we hope some listeners out there find this information useful!

One thing we are looking forward to in the ClassicPress World is the expansion of the number of ClassicPress specific plugins and their own repository. There are a few plugins specifically for ClassicPress and all plugins for WordPress 4.9.9 work well on it. We do believe it has a future, we just don't have the time to help them in getting it out there right now.

ClassicPress News:

No new updates this week

Check out the new ‘chats' in the forum
https://forums.classicpress.net/

WordPress does have a section devoted to plugins that are compatible with ClassicPress, check it out!
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/classicpress/

If you're looking to learn how to use ClassicPress check out the tutorials on their site.
https://www.classicpress.net/category/tutorials/

For some up to date news on ClassicPress check out the ClassicPress Blog.

ClassicPress Resources:

“Must Have” Plugins List
https://forums.classicpress.net/t/must-have-plugins-list/1163

You can check out the ClassicPress repository here https://directory.classicpress.net/plugins They now have 84 plugins (and counting!) available.

ClassicPress Information – The information that will keep, and help you on your way to understanding and using ClassicPress!

Find out more about ClassicPress 1.4.0 rc2 https://forums.classicpress.net/t/classicpress-1-4-0-rc2-release-notes/3785?fbclid=IwAR3wGK5IW8ssJ-XC4k7IiZMBtSjUTVN2pexk6ATCRvuMN-Fn-McOy-XJJv8

WordPress Plugins

Are you looking for some great newly released plugins? Check out this link:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/new/

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John's Plugin

Conflict Finder – WP Fix It

https://wordpress.org/plugins/conflict-finder-wp-fix-it/

The lowdown:

This is a simple plugin to help with plugin issues. What it does with a single click you can turn on or off all plugins. Their big claim is that you do not have to use FTP to turn off all plugins but can do it this way.

While this is a great idea and can help, but not when you're having an issue such as white screen.

Rating 4 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Magic Popups – Lightweight & Customizable

https://wordpress.org/plugins/magic-popups-customizable-and-lightweight/

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty awesome free and lightweight pop up plugin! I wasn't sure how it would look since it is so simple, but it has a decent look to it!

You can't personalize more than just the words and the colours, but it has a decent delay option where you can choose how long before it shows up on your site.

You have the option of adding text, adding a button with an URL, and whether or not it will pop up just once, or multiple times.

Great plugin for those who are just looking for a simple pop up, though the lack of personalization leaves it a bit lacking. For its simplicity, it works very well! And I appreciate that they have a ‘test' option so that you can test it out where only you will see it before setting it loose on your site.

Rating 4 Dragons

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John's Plugin

Headers Security Advanced & HSTS WP

https://wordpress.org/plugins/headers-security-advanced-hsts-wp/

The Lowdown:

The Headers Security Advanced & HSTS WP project implements HTTP response headers that your site can use to increase the security of your website. The plug-in will automatically set up all Best Practices (you don’t have to think about anything), these HTTP response headers can prevent modern browsers from running into easily predictable vulnerabilities. The Headers Security Advanced & HSTS WP project wants to popularize and increase awareness and usage of these headers for all WordPress users.

Rating 4 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Lite WP Logger

https://wordpress.org/plugins/lite-wp-logger/

PLUGIN HAS SINCE BEEN REMOVED – WORDPRESS NOTICE STATES:

This plugin has been closed as of September 21, 2022 and is not available for download. This closure is permanent. Reason: Author Request.

The Lowdown:

Nice light plugin for tracking any changes made to your site.

This plugin keeps a log for you for however many days you want it to, and it will tell you the date & time, user & role, source IP it came from, and the object on which the change has taken place.

Very useful for keeping an eye on your site to see who is making changes; you also have the option of choose specific roles to look at the logs of, which I can see as useful also.

Lite WP Logger is light yet useful, so it won't slow your site but also gives you information you need. Very nicely done!

Rating 5 Dragons

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John's Plugin

WooCommerce ‘Email Money Transfer' Payment Gateway

https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-email-money-transfer-gateway/

The Lowdown:

For Canadian WooCommerce store owners this is a great addition to make the task of accepting e-transfer payments.

Rating 4 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

PodInbox – Accept Voice Messages on Your Website

https://wordpress.org/plugins/podinbox-accept-voice-messages-on-your-website/

The Lowdown:

A really well made plugin for accepting what is essentially voicemail to your site!

The first thing you need to do if you haven't already, is create a PodInbox account. There IS a free version! With the free version, you get 1 PodInbox for 1 podcast on 1 site. I think that is a decent deal!

Once that is done, you need to get your ‘show ID', which is really quite easy! You can simply click on the ‘get show ID' button in your PodInbox dashboard, which you will find under Settings.

Then just enable the floating button widget, and decide where it will show up – Header, Body, or Footer. Also, you can choose whether the button shows up in both Desktop and Mobile, or just one or the other. You also get to configure the button – not overly much, just colours in the free version, though it is a lot of options for a free version of everything!

The original colouring is just red with white lettering, and I think it is both a good size and decent shape. It just sorta sits over there in the corner, out of everyone's way but visible if wanted.

I really like this – even though it requires a 3rd party to make the plugin work.

Rating 5 Dragons

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Random links for plugins

WordPress plugins crafted from love and experience
https://codeat.co/

Listener Feedback / Audio Clips

Hi, just wanted to say i've been listening for the past couple years and really appreciate the effort you and John put into the podcast. Thanks for the hard work. I also think Amber has been a great addition to the podcast. It's nice to have the contrast of someone new on the space along with a veteran. Keep up the good work!

Andrew

Thanks Andrew! It was really nice to hear from you, I am glad that you are enjoying the show! We will absolutely keep our noses to the grindstone and keep this show going!

Feel Free sending in your thoughts to us – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly – we'll take them all!

Listener Questions

There's no such thing as a stupid question! Send your questions to us via email, Facebook, or our website!

There is no contest right now – we are just waiting on the worker bees to return with our next contest!

Be sure to stay tuned to find out what will be available next! If anyone out there would like to help our current worker bees, contact us. Many hands make light work and more contests!

Contests Powered by Simple Giveaways who kindly provides us with the premium version for our contests.

A BIG Thank You to Steve Goodtime & Brant Matthews who have created our Awesome jingle for the contests!

A BIG Thank You to Steve Goodtime & Brant Matthews who have created our Awesome jingle for the contests!

A BIG Thank You to Charlie for coming to the aid of the show and getting our contests all organized!

We also want to give a BIG Thank You to all the Developers for supporting our show with their plugin donations! Please be sure to check them out!

Short note about participating in the contests folks – we go to great efforts to get these licenses. We would LOVE to see a bit more participation from you, The Producers.

Visit http://WPPluginsAtoZ.com/contests for more info.

 

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

The plugins we covered were:

John’s Plugins: Conflict Finder – WP Fix It – 4, Headers Security Advanced & HSTS WP – 4, WooCommerce ‘Email Money Transfer' Payment Gateway – 4

Amber's Plugins: Magic Popups – Lightweight & Customizable – 4, Lite WP Logger – 5, PodInbox – Accept Voice Messages on Your Website – 5

Matt's Famous Quotes
https://www.idrlabs.com/quotes/matt-mullenweg.php

Reminders / Commercial / Promotions:

Next Week:

Meetup Has Been Planned For June 25th!! Keep tabs on the date at: https://wppluginsatoz.com/meetup – keep an eye to make sure that the date doesn't change on you for any reason (like zombies or wet ninja cats being herded through catnip fields flooding the valley or anything..)

Would you like to be on an interview show? Simply connect at https://wppluginsatoz.com/interview

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/

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 and we will answer to the best of our ability!

• When taking over a site that is new to you, what are the first three things you look at?

• Say this new to you site is running oddly slow – what is the first thing you look at as the likely cause?

• When checking for plugin conflicts, is there a way to check that does not involve turning off and on your plugins?

Closing out this Episode

Just some reminders:

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You can support the show at wppluginsatoz.com/donate

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How to Contact Us:

John can be contacted at:

• on my website @ http://www.johnoverall.com/
• WordPress Emergency Support http://wppro.ca/wpemergency
• email: john@wppro.ca

Amber can be contacted at:

• email: amber@wppro.ca