– ‘good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the globe today! Coming to you LIVE from …'

Welcome to Episode 639 – WP Plugins AtoZ State Of The Word 2024 & The Chaos Within!

Today our dear listeners, we are not doing a regular show, but are instead doing a pre-recorded Christmas Show! For those of you who have decided to tune in and listen, there is a show for today and another for New Years for you!

We hope that everyone out there is having a good time, whether you are hosting or a visitor remember to always bring a banana! After all, pulling a banana out of your pocket can lead to all sorts of both hilarious and crazy conversation! I mean really, is there anything else in the world that you could pull out of your pocket that will get as much of a reaction as a banana?

Only a couple of reminders before we start the show today….

Reminders:

• Remember to dress warm if you live where there is snow before going out and destroying all family members with your amazing snowball chucking skills!
• Remember to let the hot chocolate cool down before gulping it so that no injury occurs to your person!
• When imbibing Grandma's Eggnog be sure to have a Designated Driver!
• Did you know that 40% or more alcohol kills basic germs? Because of this you should keep Whiskey or Vodka close at hand to help with your and others health while family is visiting. Nothing is more important then your health after all!

That's it for reminders – if I missed anything important be sure to let me know and I will add it to next year's reminders! 😉

Remember that you can send anything pertinent my way at amber@wppro.ca!

Who's Our Featured Artist This Week?

Artist: 

Grok! He is always our artist these days, and I think it is awesome!

WordPress Tips

I have a tip that may or may not be a common tip for those out there who work from home:

Grandma's Eggnog and other tasty drinks

Now, if you know your job really well, then you can absolutely enjoy Grandma's Eggnog and other tasty drinks while working from home – so long as you don't have to drive anywhere that is!

After all, around this time of year there really isn't all that much to do – even the spammers take the holidays off for the most part! If you don't believe that, just have a look at your spam emails coming through between the 23rd of December and right through until the 3rd of January. Way less then usual, and basically no spam on Christmas and New Year's day themselves!

Just make sure that there is a Designated Driver around for you – and I don't mean just for cars. If you decide you want to enjoy Grandma's Eggnog to the extreme, let your business partner or whomever else can pick up your slack know so that they can be aware of anything that needs work. Perhaps take turns!

My point is that you don't always have to be in charge, at 100% awareness, or always be the Designated Driver yourself. If you have the opportunity, let loose and allow someone else to take the wheel for a day or two.

All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy!

Donations and Support

‘How can you help' I hear you asking – well, there are plenty of ways!
Scratch our backs and we will scratch yours – do an interview, have us review your plugin, send us something to read out for you!
Donate some time or treasure our way, and we will make sure that you receive equal value in return!
You can go and check everything out at wppluginsatoz.com – click on Time, Talen, or Treasure in our main menu on the lefthand side and see what options there are for you!

How to reach us:

We have a real brick and mortar address where you can send in art and/or notes – you can find the address in our show notes!

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

We also have virtual addresses too!

John:

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

Amber:

• email: amber@wppro.ca

Enter the past year and the chaos within!!!!

I wrote down some talking points that we both can chatter about, left an area for you to bring forth talking points, if we only go with what I wrote I think that will work too.

Amber talking points to present:

We have had a sorta crazy, pastel coloured whirlwind sort of past year eh? What, with the changes to the WordPress itself, the loss of ClassicPress, and the absolute chaos being that has been created by Mullenweg over the ACF thing.

One thing I HAVE really appreciated over this past year is the number of plugins that have been removed from the repository. I mean, there are a million more plugins that have been added for sure, but the number of well known plugins that are no longer serviced that have been removed is fantastic. I know there were a few that I had been using and honestly had no clue they were no longer serviced that had been removed, and I was grateful to learn that they just didn't exist anymore and were becoming unsafe. Don't ask me for example's because I was NOT smart enough to write them down, I just remember the effect of seeing that change had upon me.

I have been creating a list over the past year of plugins that I REALLY like having! I have added the entire list at the very end of the show here so that people can see it at their own leisure, though my top 5 are the following:

Ambers top 5

These are my top 5 out of the list of 10 below, just in alphabetical order to keep it easy on my brain meats.

1. Copy & Delete Posts

I love this plugin because it makes life SOOOOOO much easier! You create a single post – which lets face it, most of us add waaaaaay more posts then we do pages! – do all the fiddly settings in this one post, and then from there on you just hit ‘duplicate'. It duplicates it, you change the name, it creates a slug from the new title name, and you go from there! Everything is all set out for you so all you have to do is ‘paint by numbers' style filling out of information! Makes life just so much easier, saves hours!

2. Easy Updates Manager

This has the ability to stop EVERYthing on your site from auto-updating, or even showing that it needs to be updated for some sites. We use this on all of the sites we work with. It helps to keep things from any sort of auto-updating and possibly breaking the site, and helps us to keep sites alive that are on the way out. Fantastic plugin.

3. New Plugins

This I originally found because I wanted to see the newly made plugins. This is actually called ‘CubeColor New Plugins' – and even when you put that name in, WordPress does not find it easily for you. This shows the plugins the way I've been told WordPress originally did with the following order of tabs under ‘add new plugin':
New, Featured, Popular, Recommended, Favourites, Beta Testing, For Elementor.
Definitely worth checking this out if you have not already.

4. Post Types Order

Again, this is one of those plugins that just saves soooo much time! With this you can go and fix up the order of all the posts. That post you just made yesterday – the client wants it to be first.
Sure! No problem with this plugin! and that very first post on the site? Yea, the client wants that to be last now.
No Problem with this guy! Totally awesome plugin and worth checking out if you have not already!

5. Rank Math

This is an absolutely amazing SEO plugin. I must add ‘amazing right now' – because All In One SEO plugin was pretty amazing when I first landed here about 4 years ago, though unfortunately it has sorta disintegrated over the last 2 years especially. I think they are trying to get the plugin to do too much, and the way it is set up is so robotic that if you actually follow all the suggestions, you will actually get dinged by the Google bots because you will be charged with ‘keyword stuffing' and ‘getting an AI to do your work' for your content.
Rank Math has been just awesome, it's easy to use and easy to understand, and they don't robot everything, but instead focus on the humanized aspects of SEO and offer a lot of suggestions to make it more human friendly.

John talking points to present:

John's top 5

1. Gravity Forms
2. WP Activity Log
3. Elementor & Elementor Pro – This is a personal choice, and if your brain does not work with Elementor all the power to whatever choice you have!

Amber's must have plugin list for a brand new site

Plugin’s to Start a Brand New Site

1. Antispam Bee
2. Blackhole for Bad Bots
3. Classic Editor
4. Duplicate Page
5. Easy Updates Manager
6. Elementor & Elementor Pro – this is a personal choice, and if your brain does not work with Elementor all the power to whatever choice you have!
7. Yes Cookie
8. New Plugins
9. Post Types Order
10. Rank Math

I have other lists, for User's Sites, Site's being built with a full team, and sites that regularly bring information over from other sites. There is also a small set of plugins I use for sites that require the use of forms.

John's must have plugin list for a brand new site

1. Antispam Bee
2. Blackhole for Bad Bots
3. Classic Editor
4. Classic Widgets
5. Easy Updates Manager
6. Elementor & Elementor Pro – this is a personal choice, and if your brain does not work with Elementor all the power to whatever choice you have!
7. Yes Cookie
8. Gravity Forms
9. WP Activity Log
10. Rank Math