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WordPress Plugins A to Z #88

WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode. It’s Episode #88 and we’ve got Plugins that let you play favorites, Category Post limiters, Social Toolbar, Newsletter, WordPress Command Centre and a new plugin that will remove all technical distraction to your clients that log into your WordPress site. It’s the podcast that Matt Mullenweg listens to with his media player tucked under his pillow… It’s WordPress Plugins A-Z!

WordPress Plugins AtoZ Podcast Can also be found at WPPluginsAtoZ.com
We can be found on Stitcher Radio Click here to Download app or listen online Now.
Find us on the iTunes Store here.

>>>Self Promotion of our businesses here<<<

Coming soon to a computer near you a WordPress Training the looking for sugestions for next one. Do you need WordPress Emergency WordPress support for issues you know when you see the ever favorite White Screen of Death. Or just some questions on how to do something please visit WPPro.ca/emergency for some quick tips or request some help.

Marcus is continually looking for an intern to work on the Daily Plugin web site. This involves weekly site maintenance, blogging about wordpress news and helping to maintain the resource directory that is being compiled. There is an opportunity for revenue for a person who is willing to work hard to help grow and develop the brand. Contact marcus at his site, marcuscouch.com.

>>>Self Promotion of our businesses<<<

John’s & Marcus Rant: What to rant about?

WordPress has been downloaded 18.5mil times for version 3.4 and because I felt like I was sleeping too much I am helping my daughter to start an online business more to come ..

Listener Feedback / Audio Clips

Raffi with a question about registration plugins.. Check out these two plugins.. WP-Members or Premise

WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John

Social Toolbar 2.1

Version: 2.1
Author: DaddyDesign
Last Updated: 29 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 3.2 or higher
Downloaded: 36,134 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »
Plugin Homepage »

The Lowdown:
While the links here lead to the free version my review is on the paid version.. The free version seems to offer much of what the paid has minus a few special treats including more customizations than the other. So what did I find..
I used this on the redesign of a clients website One thing I really liked here was that you can control what pages it will display on or simply let it have the run of your site. It also has just about every social network you could want built right in all you need to do is add you link. And if thats not enough you can add custom ones. They also have some great training info built right into the plugin not that I used it since I tend to just dive right in unless I get stuck. I had no problem with this plugin and liked the many ways of adding social networks and customizing the bar at the bottom.
About the only thing I thought might be nice was to have a way for it to auto fade out unless it was moused over. Maybe after a few seconds fade out and become transparent .. Might not be possible but a nice thought.
Well all was great until I started testing the new site on IE and found that on the pages to display the bar the layout broke in a very bad way.. Have let developer know about issue maybe he can see why. Well when I went to fix this it was fine then about an hour later it was back must be something in my theme so I had to leave this as it was not necessary to launch the site but will come back to it.

Rating: 4 Dragons

Follow up re review of plugin
Easy automatic newsletter 2.7 lite

Version: 2.7
Author: PillarDev
Last Updated: 6 days ago
Requires WordPress Version: 3.3.1 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Downloaded: 9,444 times
WordPress.org Plugin Page »

While this is a beta of their pre release of a new paid pro version, I was checking to see how it improves over the last time I did this. What I found was that this plugin is easier to use than before they have made it easier to understand the cron that has to be placed in the system as well as adding a new wpcron for those who do not understand nor want to learn about proper cron jobs. The only thing I found I was wishing for was a easy way to import over the site sizeable database of users directly into this plugin. what I do like about it is that it automatically creates a newsletter based upon the content created in the past few days to month depending on the time you select. It is a much better newsletter going out than before but still has some limitations on the format of the newsletter. other than these two items I think it is a great plugin and make the job of sending newsletter easy and lazy. The author has taken under advisement the access to users and looking at adding it as a feature in next release
Rating 3 Dragons

CMS Dashboard Commander
You can check it out here http://wppro.ca/cmscommand This is a bit more than a plugin and of all the multisite managers I have tested in the past couple of months I have found this one to be at the top of the list. The best part for me was the number of sites you can manage if you get in on the beta it starts with 50 and you can add to that with a few simple tweets.

Just install the plugin they provide and then start managing sites it again is a similar platform what looks to be a customized version of wordpress, and the bonus here is that if you happen to work with others such as Joomla/Drupla or phbb you can manage them here also so it is pretty complete in that aspect. It does a pretty nice job of updating all sites

You can also mass post to all sites if you like as well as do backups and even clone a site which I will test soon. This worked great
Rating 4 Dragons

WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus

Favorite Plugins
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/favorite-plugins/

Requires: 3.4 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Last Updated: 2012-9-26
Downloads: 67

Quickly and easily access and install your favourite plugins from WordPress.org, right from your dashboard.

This is a simple plugin that adds “Favorites” to the plugin installation screen in WordPress. Simply enter your WordPress.org username (or even someone else's) and see a list of favorite plugins that can be easily installed.

Marcus’ Take: FINALLY! A social component for those of us who use WordPress plugins right within WordPress. What can I say, this is something I’ve been looking for since the Favorite feature started in the repository. Though I would like to see further development, like the most popular user’s favorites, etc. But this rocks anyway. I love the fact that I can now set up a favorite list and pick and choose what I want on client sites, and even have the list available for new items that I find. This is a developers dream if you also use the repository frequently. If you prefer to just listen to John and I, there’s probably nothing to see here!

Rating: 5 Dragons

Remove Posts in Category From Homepage

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/remove-posts-in-category-from-homepage/

Requires: 3.0.1 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Last Updated: 2012-9-21
Downloads: 82

This plugin allows WordPres admins to prevent posts in a given category from displaying on the homepage / main loop as well as the RSS feed.

Two new checkbox will display on the “Add New Category” and “Edit Category” screens — it's that simple!

Marcus’ Take: This was an ideal plugin to hide a category I had for a client site that was based on testimonials. It would also be great for hiding the reposting of twitter posts, etc from the main feed and still allow for integrated archive functionality.
Rating: 4 Dragons

WordPress Helpers (Piklist framework)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-helpers/

Requires: 3.3.2 or higher
Compatible up to: 3.4.2
Last Updated: 2012-9-26
Downloads: 189

WordPress Helpers opens up the missing settings you wish were in WordPress.
This plugin requires Piklist.
With WordPress Helpers you can easily:

Take control of the WordPress Admin Bar… including “Howdy”.
Show ID's on edit screens for Posts, Pages, Categories, Tags, Users, Media, Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies.
Disable the theme switcher.
Remove the “Screen Options” tab.
Hide Dashboard widgets.
Set the default Dashboard columns.

Writing

Set the default Post editor (Visual or HTML).
Totally disable the Visual Editor.
Increase the height of the Excerpt box when writing a Post.
Disable Autosave.
Set the Post Per Page on the edit screen.

Reading

Set Excerpt length by characters or words.
Remove the “Private” and “Protected” title prefixes.
Disable RSS Feeds.
Add Featured Images to your RSS Feed.

Discussion

Do not allow comments on Pages.
Remove auto linking in comments.
Disable Self Pinging.

Appearance

Enhanced Body/Post Classes: Browser detect, Taxonomies (including hierarchy levels), post date, has post thumbnail, author information, logged in users, multisite, odd/even (post archives only), post excerpt.
Remove any/all default WordPress widgets.
Run any shortcode in a widget.
Remove WordPress version, Feed Links, RSD Link, wlwmanifest and relational links for the posts adjacent to the current post, from your theme header.

User Profiles

Remove the Admin color scheme option from the User Profiles.
Remove AIM, Yahoo IM, Jabber/Google Talk.

Marcus’ Take: This is another great advancement in the realization that it is no longer just the developer that adds content and accesses a wordpress site. This tool helps to lock down and remove the things that would just confuse the client. They want a site that works and should not be distracted by all the internal functions and meta-news of the WordPress world. This plugin is like a secret boot disk to WordPress, allowing you access to settings that would have required at least 4-6 additional plugins to accomplish collectively.

Rating: 5 Dragons