Unscrambling WordPress Plugins

It's Episode 569 and we have plugins for Where Use, Categorizing, Notes for Woo, Templately, Exchanging Rates, Queerifying… and ClassicPress Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!

WhereUsed, Categorize Pages, Product Notes for WooCommerce, Templately, Exchange Rates, Queeryify……. and ClassicPress options on Episode 569.

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 #28 of 52 episodes for 2022!

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the trees are getting extra friendly with my face – allergies suck! Although luckily there's a lot you can do for your allergies, so that's a bonus. Still sucks though.

Hoping everyone is getting outside and getting that beautiful sunshine while it's here! It was late getting to us this year, so be sure to get out for extra hours this summer to make up for the lack!

Go be a kid.

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

News this week:

WordPress Vulnerability Report – July 13, 2022 (https://ithemes.com/blog/wordpress-vulnerability-report-july-13-2022/) – We have a list of plugins to pay attention to this week, some of the ones I recognize are: Shortcode For Current Date, Copyright Proof, WordPress Popup, and Project Source Code Download. There are quite a few more, so be sure to check them out!

WordPress Themes Team contributors get pushback on proposal to improve Block Themes' Visibility in the Directory (https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-contributors-get-pushback-on-proposal-to-improve-block-themes-visibility-in-the-directory) – This is one of the ideas that the team put forth 7 weeks ago: possibility of changing the popular themes algorithm to more prominently feature block themes, and/or adding a new ‘Block' menu item next to Popular and Latest on the themes directory team.

The 94 available block themes represent fewer than 1% of the directory's 9,761 themes.
A good point made by one of the contributors is that to add a ‘Block' tab to Theme Directory filter will bring up the full-site-editing tag Themes as well, causing more confusion than it would be helping.
This is an ongoing issue that the WordPress Community is rather inflamed about.

WordPress Executive Director says 5% in Five for the Future Program is aspirational and Not Required (https://wptavern.com/wordpress-executive-director-says-5-in-five-for-the-future-program-is-aspirational-and-not-required) – The director was responding to a public criticism where the ‘Five for the Future's True Intentions' was called ‘toxic score keeping'. No, this is not required, though everyone who does put in get's a point, and those points are being shoved under others' noses. This is an interesting conversation to follow.

Gutenberg 13.6 adds Pattern Modal Support for Custom Post Types, expands creation of Template Types (https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-13-6-adds-pattern-modal-support-for-custom-post-types-expands-creation-of-template-types) – This addition means that when users create new content within a custom post type they will have the ability to display patterns in a modal when a user creates a new page. Essentially a memory block from what I gather. Very exciting!

Gutenberg Times to showcase the Pew Research Center's “Block First Approach” in a Live Q&A on July 22, 2022 (https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-times-to-showcase-the-pew-research-centers-block-first-approach-in-a-live-qa-on-july-22-2022) – Gutenberg Times will be hosting representatives from the Pew Research Center in its Live Q&A session on July 22, 2022 with co-hosts Birgit Pauli-Haack and Anne McCarthy. This should be interesting for those who follow these!

These Emoji's don't mean what you think they mean (https://thenextweb.com/news/these-emoji-dont-mean-what-you-think) – A survey completed regarding emoji's and their meanings according to various people showed that not a lot of people really agree on what various emoji's mean. For instance: the eyes looking down to the left emoji: 36% of people said it means “I see you” while 26% said it means “want to gossip”. And the money wings emoji was split between thinking it means a loss of money (28%), and an influx (31%) of money. Might want to rethink that emoji before you send the winky face – some think it means being flirty, while others think it's referring to an inside joke or means ‘I'm kidding'.

Twitter Outage shows “something went wrong” error message (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/twitter-outage-shows-something-went-wrong-error-message/) – We got the Blue Wale Fail Error today on Twitter! Over 55,000 users have reported that it's just not working. We still don't know what happened, but they are working on it. Perhaps they also tried to upgrade something like Rogers did, and it just didn't go over well.

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

Quantum Crime spree is upon us! Here's how IBM plans to save us all (https://thenextweb.com/news/theres-quantum-crime-spree-coming-heres-how-ibm-plans-to-save-us) – Threat = @holes will inevitably get access to extremely smart tech that will be able to break the current world wide encryption AND hackers have been stealing encrypted data for decades and storing it for later. Read on to find out more!

New Lilith ransomware emerges with extortion site, lists first victim (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-lilith-ransomware-emerges-with-extortion-site-lists-first-victim/) – Lilith is a new ransomware operation that has been launched and their first victim is a large construction group based in South America. Lilith works by performing double-extortion attacks, which is when the threat actors steal data before encrypting devices.

New Android malware on Google Play installed 3 million times (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-android-malware-on-google-play-installed-3-million-times/) – Whoops! The malware is named Autolycos, and is currently hiding in the apps ‘Funny Camera', and ‘Razer Keyboard & Theme'. There are 8 apps in total these guys have infiltrated. Read on to find out more!

CISA orders agencies to patch new Windows zero-day used in attacks (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisa-orders-agencies-to-patch-new-windows-zero-day-used-in-attacks/) – Windows now has a list of bugs abused in the wild, and the attackers are gaining SYSTEM privileges through this zero-day flaw. There was an update recently, so be sure to update and read the article to find out more!

Hackers can unlock Honda cars remotely in Rolling-PWN attacks (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-can-unlock-honda-cars-remotely-in-rolling-pwn-attacks/) – Honestly, the phrase ‘Rolling-PWN Attack' is just freaking awesome. Lol. The issue is a weakness in the code used for the unlocking and starting the engine remotely. Read on to find out more!

Massive Rogers outage caused by a maintenance update (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/massive-rogers-outage-caused-by-a-maintenance-update/) – YUP! That sucked. Sorta. I didn't lose out on much, though I had A LOT of things to catch up on the next day – also, it sucked having Interac go down. The cause is apparently due to them updating their core network, causing some of the routers to malfunction. Do your research and make up your mind – if you come up with some crazy conspiracy theory, let me know!

Ransomware gang now lets you search their stolen data (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-gang-now-lets-you-search-their-stolen-data/) – Soooo…. I guess it's like window shopping only virtually shopping… for your lost and found info? These guys force their victims to pay threat actors to not leak stolen data, and let them browse the info they have before they will pay…. interesting extortion plan!

State-Backed Hackers targeting Journalists in widespread espionage campaigns (https://thehackernews.com/2022/07/state-backed-hackers-targeting.html) – I mean, we all kinda knew that the best hackers out there were under the guidance of the governments. “most commonly, phishing attacks targeting journalists are used for espionage or to gain key insights into the inner workings of another government, company, or other area of stat-designated import' says Proofpoint. Read on to learn more!

New ‘Retbleed' speculative execution attack affects AMD and Intel CPUs (https://thehackernews.com/2022/07/new-retbleed-speculative-execution.html) – Yet another vulnerability found by security researchers affecting numerous older AMD and Intel microprocessors that could bypass current defenses and result in Spectre-based speculative-execution attacks. Read on to find out more!

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

The hall of shame via Automattic:
transparency.automattic.com/tag/hall-of-shame/

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:

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You can also catch us live on our YouTube Channel every Thursday at 11 AM PDT – show up by 10:45 AM 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 WP Plugins A to Z 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!

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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!

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

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C/O John Overall
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Off we go into the meat and potatoes, Into the depths of plugin depravity…..

ClassicPress Options

ClassicPress DOES have a future – we just don't have the time to help ClassicPress get themselves out there right now.

As the ClassicPress World expands the number of ClassicPress specific plugins in their own repository we see them growing. There are a few plugins specifically for ClassicPress currently, and all the plugins for WordPress 4.9.9 work well.

If anyone out there is using ClassicPress and would like to send in some reviews or news, we will gladly add it into this section! You can do so anonymously or let the world know your name – we will respect your choice!

ClassicPress News:

Sadly, the number of plugins in the repository has dropped from 81 to 75. However, there is still a fair amount of recent conversations occurring in the forum, check them out to see what is being discussed using the link below.

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 71 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/

——————————–

John's Plugin

WhereUsed

https://wordpress.org/plugins/where-used/

The Lowdown:

Items That Will Be Detected

• images, attachments
• links
• Gutenberg custom blocks or reusable blocks
• iframes
• Shortcodes (coming soon)

Areas Where It Searches For The Items

• posts, post meta (even custom post types)
• taxonomy terms, term meta
• users, user meta
• WordPress menus
• Redirection rules (if Redirection plugin is installed)

Discover Problems

• Broken links ( 404 errors hurt SEO ranking)
• Redirects referenced (301, 302 etc.)
• Unused reusable blocks

Rating 4 Dragons

——————————–

Amber's Plugin

Templately

https://wordpress.org/plugins/templately/

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty cool plugin designed to offer up templates for WordPress. It talks about Elementor and Gutenberg ‘and more' page builders it works great with, though it doesn't list them. I can say from personal experience that Templately works with Elementor beautifully!

You do have to create an account with them on their site in order to gain access to the templates, though once you have signed up for free, you have access to all the free version templates.

In the Free version you have access to hundreds of templates, scattered throughout pages, landing pages, posts, headers, footers – all the bits you need. You can also save templates created by you into the cloud.

In the Pro version you have access to hundreds more, and it might be worth it!

Definitely worth taking the time to check this one out.

Rating: 4 Dragons

——————————–

John's Plugin

Categorize Pages

https://wordpress.org/plugins/categorize-pages/

The Lowdown:

Categorize a Page just as you would do with a Post.

This plugin adds the ‘categories’ taxonomy to the Page post type. This enables the tags metabox in the New or Edit Page interface. To show tagged Pages on a category archive page or in a feed, it uses the ‘pre_get_posts’ hook to change the post_type query parameter to ‘post’ AND ‘page’.

Rating 4 Dragons

——————————–

Amber's Plugin

Exchange Rates

https://wordpress.org/plugins/exchange-rates/

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty cool plugin! Once installed, you will find the dashboard under Settings on your left hand menu; here you will see options for which source to use for your currency exchange, what kind of formatting you want (like whether there is a comma in the amount), how many decimals you want to go, and how many of the 122 countries you want to show the exchange rate for.

You will need to put your country's base code currency, then highlight the countries you want to show exchange rate for, and than hit ‘Generate' at the bottom to get the shortcode to place onto your page.

There are a few more options, like what colour background behind each currency exchange, what shape the flags will be in, whether the symbol for currency will be shown – etc.

This is a pretty awesome little free plugin that makes the exchange rate show a lot easier, and it works really well!

Rating: 5 Dragons

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John's Plugin

Product Notes for WooCommerce

https://wordpress.org/plugins/product-notes-for-woocommerce/

The Lowdown:

MAIN FEATURES

• Add multiple notes per product.
• Add product notes per variation.
• Make notes public or private.
• Notes will be visible on product edit page.
• Display the notes on frontend (“private” notes will be visible to admin and shop manager only): in new product tab, in single product meta section, on multiple additional positions on single product page, on shop (e.g. category) pages.
• And more…

Rating 4 Dragons

——————————–

Amber's Plugin

Queerify

https://wordpress.org/plugins/queerify/

The Lowdown:

This is a fun plugin! Total freeby, supposed to make your site all full of neon rainbows!

I was really excited as they have 12 different gender identities to choose from, each with their own flag – though no Nyan Cat like in the plugin banner.

Unfortunately though, once I put it into my site – there was no picture at all; it didn't actually break my site, it just made all the site imagery go away. The plugin is a few years old, and I was hoping that the code would still be good – unfortunately it seems that something is amiss however.

It's been a few years, so I understand, though I would certainly love it someone out there picked it up and remade it! That would be cool!

Rating: 1 Dragons

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Random links for plugins

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

Listener Feedback / Audio Clips

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

Listener Questions

Hi Amber and John, 

I am working on my website and  there are so many themes to choose from.  I know you have talked about how to choose in the past. Do you know if they have come up with a ‘make your own theme' type thing where you can choose elements from different themes to make ‘the perfect one' for me?

Thanks for the help! You guys have helped me learn a lot!

Avid  Listener

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 toWPPluginsAtoZ.com/PluginContest

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: WhereUsed – 4, Categorize Pages – 4, Product Notes for WooCommerce – 4

Amber's Plugins: Templately – 4, Exchange Rates – 5, Queeryify – 1

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

Reminders / Commercial /  Promotions:

Next Week:

No meetups planned for now, though the one on June 25th was a total hit! Missed you all there, look forward to seeing you at the next one!

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!

• How do Short Codes work?

• When making internal links, do you need to take the whole URL from the page you are linking to, or can you just take a part of it?

• What's better: having your site background coloured, or having your site background either black or white (off-white)?

• Do you think it's possible to use neon colours in a site and have the site look good?

Closing out this Episode

Just some reminders:

Be sure and subscribe to our Newsletter. 

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