WordPress Plugins That Don't Sting

It's Episode 566 and we have plugins for Gravity Poet-3, No Spam Bee, Caddy Commerce, Effecting Herds, Random Sentences, Oiking… and ClassicPress Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!

Add-on Gravity Forms – MailPoet 3, Antispam Bee, Caddy – Smart Side Cart for WooCommerce and Premium Edition, Herd Effects – Fake Notifications and Social Proof Plugin, Random Sentence Generator, Oik……. and ClassicPress options on Episode 566.

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 #25 of 52 episodes for 2022!

Episode 566 – only 100 more episodes to go before we get to 666! That should be an entertaining episode I am sure. There are so many numerology things around 666, it's all very interesting!

We have had mainly rain again this last week here on the wet coast, though that hasn't stopped us from getting outside! I think my kids like it best when it is raining out, because they get hot chocolate when they come back in. Then again, that is also kind of why I like it best when it's raining too – you really just can't go wrong with hot chocolate!

Hopefully everyone out there is managing to get outside at least a little, some good time without the socials, and some awesome time with friends and family! Remember – you're never too old to go splashing through puddles, then go home for hot chocolate.

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 – June 15, 2022 – Only a few to worry about this week! Gallery Bank, Copify, Toolbar To Share. Be sure to check yours and your clients sites for these plugins, and to keep an eye on the ‘okay' list so you know when you can put them back into service!

Elementor acquires Strattic – Strattic is a static and headless WordPress hosting company. A little surprising to me that Elementor has grabbed this up, though it seems to be a good investment on their part since Strattic has been an Elementor supporter since early on! Pretty sure that not much will change with this acquisition.

WordPress 6.1 to focus on refining full-site editing – Next phase collaboration and multilingual features anticipated in 2023-2025. This could be pretty awesome, and there are some video demos put up through Twitter via Gutenberg lead architect Matias Ventura! The whole thing seems pretty cool, with easier to build patterns, custom post types, block types, more intuitive experience locking patterns and managing saved patterns – all sounding like fantastic things to come!

Gutenberg Editor now in testing on Tumblr and Day One Web Apps – Honestly, I had never heard of Day One Web Apps until this article. This actually surprised me a little, I thought that Gutenberg was a WordPress only kind of thing, though apparently during the Q&A segment in 2021 at the State of the Word, Mullenweg said ‘Gutenberg is something even bigger than WordPress, which is basically saying how do we edit and create the web? And how can we get as many people, both proprietary and open source collaborating on that as possible?' Definitely interesting. If you are interested, you can check the testing out yourself by going to this article and clicking on the links.

Athens to host WordCamp Europe 2023 – With WordCamp Europe 2022 concluding last week in Porto, Portugal, we learn that Athens will be hosting in 2023! There was a fantastic turnout for the in person WordCamp this year in Portugal. If you want to learn more, you can check out the article!

Microsoft: June Windows Server updates may cause backup issues – Microsoft put out an update on June 14th due to an issue causing backup problems. There was an issue with the way that the files were being held in the server, and the shadow files weren't reloading correctly. The patch is in place now that they have completed a forced update for everyone, though be sure to keep an eye out for E-ACCESSDENIED errors when you are completing backups!

When will I be able to upload my brain into a computer? – This is an article written in response to one of TNW's readers questions, and although they go into depth on explaining why – the short answer is ‘no, no and no.' Really interesting information throughout the whole article though, the writer goes into depth on the space requirements, time requirements, the mechanics on the how, and then dives into the question ‘are our minds more than a sum of their (biological) parts?' Very cool article!

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

We just discovered a fast radio burst from a distant galaxy and we have questions… – Awesome article! Goes into what a fast radio burst (FRB) is, how it is created – and than goes into what we don't know.

Your browser stores passwords and sensitive data in clear text in memory – and this is why I don't allow browsers or the PC to hold my passwords for me! Your usernames and passwords are in clear text on your browser. The most affected are the Chromium-based web browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, and Mozilla's FireFox. If you have issues with your passwords (like me), get a program like Robo Form. Costs money, but is a lot more secure!

After 27 years, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser hits retirement – This browser once had 90% share of the market! It's sad to see it go, kind of like seeing the old Mario game go… perhaps it will come back in some form or another! Everything else from the 90's is coming back it seems… Read on for more information!

Firefox says it's now the most secure browser in the world – Honestly, I think that's a bit much of a claim… I mean, give it another week, and it could be the least secure! Though it's a great war horn to call in the next great Browser Battle! Read on to find out more!

Makers of ad blockers and browser privacy extensions fear the end is near – Seven months from now, assuming all goes as planned, Google Chrome will drop support for its legacy extension platform, known as Manifest v2 (Mv2). If you are one of those who uses these extenstions, you will be finding fewer extensions, and less innovations in the coming months and years. Many are beginning to drop the extensions – which really sucks for those like me who tend to bee line it towards extensions to see what is available! Read on to find out more!

Emotet malware now steals credit cards from Google Chrome users – Emotet botnet is now going after the victims with credit card stealer modules designed to harvest credit card info stored in Google Chrome user profiles. This is something to be aware of! Read on to find out more!

Killing off Internet Explorer not enough, they are permanently deleting the poor thing! – Microsoft announced on June 15th that their future updates will make it so that when one clicks on the internet explorer icon, it will automatically take them into Edge. Great idea, but still, feels a bit like overkill… I mean… they could just leave the poor thing alone… after all, people like to poke around older things like this… Read on to find out more!

Zimbra bug allows stealing email logins with no user interactions – That's a little disturbing – no interaction required… like, touchless theft! A fix has already been published, though it's no good if people don't update! Be sure to update, and read the article to find out all the nitty gritty!

Cisco Secure Email bug can let attackers bypass authentication – This bug only affects appliances configured to use external authentication and LDAP as the authentication protocol. The external authentication feature is disabled by default, meaning only devices with non-default configurations are impacted – which is great news! …unless you are a tinkerer and have done this… though even then, I'm sure they will put out a patch soon… 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:

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Spread the word about WP Plugins A to Z through your 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 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!

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!

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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 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 81 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

Add-on Gravity Forms – MailPoet 3

https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-on-gravity-forms-mailpoet/

The Lowdown:

If you're using Gravity forms and Mailpoet this is an excellent plugin to have as it adds a check box for people to sign up to your email list when they send you a contact or other form from your site.

Rating 5 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Herd Effects – Fake Notifications and Social Proof Plugin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/mwp-herd-effect/

The Lowdown:

The name alone piqued my interested. Once activated, you will find it under ‘Wow Plugins' on your left hand menu.

The whole plugin is about creating fake notifications, like ‘so and so has just bought this or that 10 minutes ago!'

The point of this is to encourage people to buy your products. You can make it seem like you are now running out of whichever product this is, or make it seem like people are really interested in another product – and there is no limit to how many of these you can set up! You can make it so that not many of these pop up during a persons visit, or that they pop up constantly, making it look like you are doing A LOT of business.

Honestly, I think this is brilliant! In the free version you can change the look a little, decide whether or not to give your visitors a chance to exit out of the notification, and you control the time it stays for, how often it shows up, what it says, how it shows, so on and so forth. The free version gives you just enough to get this going and help your business out!

The premium version gives you more look and feel control, and offers more options for adding information and controlling its timing and placing.

Rating 4 Dragons

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John's Plugin

Antispam Bee

https://wordpress.org/plugins/antispam-bee/

The Lowdown:

This is by far the best anti spam plugin for WordPress and is absolutely free and puts such a small load on your site.

Rating 5 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Random Sentence Generator

https://wordpress.org/plugins/random-sentence-generator/

The Lowdown:

This is a total freeby, and loads of fun! All you have to do once this is activated, is put the short code [RSG], and the plugin does the rest!

After putting the short code into your page or post, you will see a bubble on your page appear with ‘Random Sentence Generator', and a button with ‘generate sentence'. You can even submit a new word! Or multiple words – my cat was eating catnip, so I put in cat crack. It appreciated the phrase.

I have ‘ye old pirate' active on my sandbox, and this plugin plays well with it – so the first sentence I got was:

‘Below ye olde close party together, we have to need company, really to feel underneath old school dusty clever study'.

Loads of fun!

Rating 5 Dragons

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John's Plugin

Caddy – Smart Side Cart for WooCommerce and premium edition

https://wordpress.org/plugins/caddy/

The lowdown:

This is an excellent plugin to put an easy access shopping cart on your WooCommerce website. The free version has some great whistles but if you want all the bells, add the premium version.

Rating 5 Dragons.

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Amber's Plugin

Oik

https://wordpress.org/plugins/oik/

The Lowdown:

This plugin was created to provide a load of shortcodes to help display more dynamic content from your site's pages, posts, attachments, links, and custom post types.

Totally free, the short codes can do some pretty amazing things, like give you the ability to present your Google map in short code form anywhere. This plugin actually reminds me a lot of Pretty Links, though a little easier for newbies to grasp at first glance.

I also liked that it has a ‘help' page. It helps you to understand better the syntax, and whether it expands in titles. Very cool!

This plugin also has the option to add or create your own short codes in the ‘options' area.

Works really well, behaves nicely, I would have to say this is a pretty great new version of Pretty Links.

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

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

Listener Questions

Good morning Amber and John,

My child wants to do some YouTube videos, what is the best software or the software you use to get the backgrounds you use? Do you have a green screen behind you to hide whatever is in the room? Do you have any other suggestions for setting up and doing recordings and streaming?

Thanks!
Parent of a hopeful YouTuber 🙂

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

The plugins we covered were:

John’s Plugins: Add-on Gravity Forms – MailPoet 3 – 5, Antispam Bee – 3, Caddy – Smart Side Cart for WooCommerce and Premium Edition – 5

Amber's Plugins: Herd Effects – Fake Notifications and Social Proof Plugin – 4, Random Sentence Generator – 5, Oik – 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!

• Is it possible for a full backup from WordPress to be corrupted in the zip you FTP from the cpanel?

• Have you ever been unable to unzip a full backup from Cpanel?

Closing out this Episode

Just some reminders:

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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