Hello everybody. In today’s episode we are going to talk about “There’s a plugin for that.” We’ve got a whole list of plugins to share with you today right here on Your Website Engineer podcast episode No. 288.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Your Website Engineer podcast. My name is Dustin Hartzler and today we’ll be talking about plugins because, well, I just got a whole list of plugins that I wanna talk about and I just can’t fit them into a normal show. And so today I thought it’d be a good idea just to kinda go through a handful of these. I’ve got half a dozen of them or so that I wanna share with you. And let’s go ahead and get started with a little bit of news.

Not a lot going on in the WordPress space this week. I do want to point out and highlight the interview that I was able to be a participant on over at CastingCred.com and it was an interview where we just kinda talked a lot about my journey of how Your Website Engineer podcast started and kinda just my overall – like how I’ve been very consistent and just a lot of like behind-the-scenes details that I was able to share. And so if you’re interested in hearing kinda a behind-the-scenes of YourWebsiteEngineer.com go ahead and check out CastingCred.com and then just search for my name or there’s a link in the show notes for episode No. 288.

The other bit of news that I wanted to share with you today is Shiny Updates. The Shiny updates project has been officially proposed to be merged into WordPress 4.6. This is actually a plugin that you can download on the WordPress repository, but it basically modernizes the process of installing and updating and deleting things and plugins in order to hide what was referred to as the blank screen of sadness. And it’s basically the screen that shows you the technical rundowns of things as it preforms the installation and like when it says like “Enabling maintenance mode” and then “Deactivating plugin and reactivating plugin” – all of those good things.

It’s just a work flow to just hide all of that and it doesn’t require a page refresh which is really, really nice. And so, there’s a link to the WP Tavern article over on WP Tavern obviously, but I have that in the show notes as well so you can see a short video. And what this means is that now it’s a plugin. They’ve been working on the plugin and now the plugin is ready to be put into 4.6. So, in the next latest version of WordPress we’ll be able to automatically see all these changes which is super, super nice. Alright, moving right along. There are more than 44,000 plugins in the word press depository and this week we’re just going to highlight those.

So, this part of the show – the Is There a Plug-in for That? section is going to be basically the whole show. We’re just gunna talk about plugins this week and some of them that I’ve tried. Some of them that look really interesting that I don’t have the use for and so let’s go ahead and just dive right in. The first one is called Contact Widgets and this is a plugin that allows you to easily add your contacts and social media icons with a simple widget. And so this is really simple. It’s built in. It’s gotta bunch of language support, probably two dozen different languages.

It’s got more than 40,000 active installs and it’s got a 5 star rating in the WordPress repository. It’s a free plugin. It’s basically the widget that gives you the ability to put in a title, an e-mail, a phone, a fax and address box. And you can display a map and that’s the contact widget so you can add a contact form or your contact information right on the sidebar of your site. Or you can do the social widget and you basically can highlight and choose which social icons you wanna use, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

You can just tap on which icon that you want and then it will add a box where you can actually add your username and password or your username for Facebook or Twitter or whatnot. And then it will just display the icons right there on your site. It’s really kinda a simple plugin. It’s called contact widgets and all of the things are customizable and you can change the colors of everything with a little bit of custom css so that is the first plugin of many that we will be talking about on this episode.

The next one that I want to talk about is called Admin Columns Pro and this is a plugin that will allow you to remove and reorder the columns in your WordPress dashboard and the pro version of [inaudible] [00:04:26] editing which will save you a ton of time. So, what is this? This is a plugin that think about on your post – when you go into all post or review all pages or if you do all comments these – in a lot of plugins they have like different columns. And a lot of times you can toggle on and off which columns you want to appear. Maybe you don’t want to see the SEO columns or whatever.

You can toggle those inside the screen options for that particular page, but Admin Columns is a little bit more powerful. You can automatically filter the post right there without having to do anything else. You can click right on maybe the category and you can filter by all the categories. And if you want – the powerful part is if you wanted to be able to change something. If you wanna be able to change a category instead of using the quick edit button now you can just go ahead and you can click right on it and click on – there’s a pencil icon right next to it and you can change the category. You can change the date you posted if you want to. You can change the title.

You can do all of this stuff without having to click Quick Edit which is really, really nice and it just makes things – it feels almost like it should be built into WordPress itself. So, this is a plugin. There’s a free version and there’s a premium version and the premium version does unlock that capability of doing the inline edits which is nice, but you can find out more by going to AdminColumns.com and then there’s a link in the show notes for this episode to get right there. If you want the pro version for one site it is $59, for 4 sites it’s gunna run you about $129 and then $200 for unlimited sites.

And so the unlimited or the pro version includes import and export of column settings which is nice in case you get everything set up perfectly on a website and you wanna move it to every website that you use. You can sort columns. You can do multiple column sets, multi-set columns. You can filter. You can edit. Yost columns – so the yost columns cannot be edited in current WordPress, but they can be with Admin Columns Pro and so if this is something that’s interesting to you I’d definitely check it out and head on over to the page and check out their videos and their features. It’s definitely a really cool plugin and I think that some of these features could be implemented in the next version of WordPress.

They just feel so much like WordPress already. Alright, the next plugin I wanna talk about is called version press. You can find out more at VersionPress.net and this used to be – this was a plugin that was a crowd funded plugin to get started. And there was a way to pay to get access to it and now it is 100 percent free. I think I talked about that on a few episodes ago. Version 3.0 is free in open source and it’s basically version control for your WordPress site. It’s built on Git and Git Versioning system and it allows you to undo changes, easily create staging sites and merge databases. Now, I wanna say with one caveat that this plugin probably isn’t ready for primetime as I wasn’t able to get it installed.
I’ve had it on my list for the last couple weeks. I was gunna talk all about Version Press because I do have – for me personally I do take some time and I set up all my websites. I track them with Git and I have a really complex system of how I manage my websites and how I manage things locally and push things live. I wanted to try to find an easier way to do this and I thought Version Press was going to be perfect for that. Well, it turns out that all of my test sites I’m not able to do it because of different variations so some of the stumbling blocks I ran into is that your server needs to be running at least version 5.6 of php which some of my old things did and some of them didn’t.

You also have to be able to install Git on your hosting provider which some of them could and some of them couldn’t and so there was just some limitations. And so I think it’s great. I think it’s a good thing for developers to be able to use, but then if you’re a developer you could just a regular version of Git. And so I don’t think it’s quite ready for the masses yet and so I’ll keep my eye on it and I’ll definitely keep you updated and let you know where this goes and how it progresses. And if I can ever install it – how well it actually works. Alright, the next one is called Blue Admin and this is a simple admin design that makes your WordPress dashboard more clear and more relaxed.

This one I stumbled upon by a colleague of mine had a ticket that came into the newcomer’s ticketing system that we use and they were using this as a plugin on the dashboard. And it really makes your dashboard kinda look and feel like Facebook’s dashboard which is kinda odd at first when I thought about it, but it works really, really well. It loads quickly. It feels more – I don’t know the word. It feels more responsive. It feels like it’s a new version of WordPress. It’s clear. It comes with a WordPress page – a login page customization that you can do. It’s compatible with multi-site and you can add custom navigation and news to your WordPress admin bar.

And so if you wanted to have from the top menu instead of just dashboard and themes and settings or whatever those options are there, you can add your own. So, if you’re always going to woocommerce and doing things you can add that or if you’re always adding new pages you can go and you can add those in there which is really nice. It adds that little extra ­ just makes WordPress feel new again. I know that when WordPress came out with this new, darker version and kinda updated the UI it felt brand new and this is the exact same thing.

Right now it has the blue, almost Facebook color for the tool bar across the top and very light gray and white color scheme which looks really, really nice, but I feel that you can go in and you can customize those colors and you can tweak them so that you can make it exactly the color scheme that you want to kinda go with your branding and your theme. It basically just changes the css of the style admin section and that’s basically all that it’s doing. It’s a real simple plugin, but it looks really, really nice. So, that is WordPress or it is called Blue Admin and you can find that at a free plugin on the WordPress repository.

Another one that I wanna share today is called GF chart and it is an easy way to chart and count information captured by gravity forms. So, if you are a fan of gravity forms this is a plugin – if you have a to automatically generate information I know, right now, out of the box gravity forms – if you’re doing some sort of survey or a poll like you have to export all of the data and then you have to pull it into excel and then you have to formulate your charts, your graphs and your whatever. Now, with this plugin, this extension, some of the cool features that are built in are you have the ability to create charts and you can insert those charts onto posts and pages and they do a real time update as more submissions are made.

This is really cool so no longer are you taking a screen shot of your pie graph or your bar chart or your whatever. You are actually being able to imbed a form on your website and anytime somebody has a new submission it will auto – like the form itself or the chart, the update, whatever it is will automatically update which is really nice. So, if you wanted to have like a giving campaign. Maybe you are raising money for something and people are pledging how much they’ll give or maybe you’re doing a simple poll of where should my next meet up be or whatever that case may be you can see it and view it on real time on your website.

And so it’s cool you have to use gravity forms obviously and it is – let’s see. I’m trying to see how much this one costs. It’s called GF chart and the classic version is $49 and it can be used on unlimited sites for 12 months. So, it’s $49 per year and, let’s see, if you get the plus version it comes with preconfigured templates. That’s not available quite yet, but that is something that if you need the ability to put charts, graphs, count things, display them dynamically, involve your audience in any way, shape or form then I highly recommend checking out GFchart.com.

Alright, there’s that one and then the last one that I wanna talk to you about is called Forge plugin and this gives you the ability to create and design your website via drag and drop methods. There’s no coding required to create your perfect website and it feels like it just works. This is another one that just feels like it should be the way that WordPress works and so how this one works is you install it. It’s another premium plugin. There’s a free version of a plugin, but there’s also a premium version that you can update to, but it basically gives you the ability to create zones and areas. It feels a lot like headway. It feels a lot like just the drag and drop ability of that.

It also feels a lot like the thrive builder from thrive themes I talked about before, but basically you can add a row of – and this works with any theme which is really nice. You can go in and you can add a text block or an accordion element or a contact form or you can even include and build in and pull in any widgets that are built into WordPress or any of your plugins as well which is really, really nice. You just go in and you can drag and drop. You see everything instantly with your layout. It creates stunning pages that look the same.

There’s no coding and they also have like an undo button which is nice too so as you’re designing it you see it and then if you don’t like something you just did you can hit the undo and it modifies and un-modifies the column, the row, the image that you added. It takes seconds to build an entire site. There’s a lot of pre-made layouts that are already used and there’s a lot of people that are using it. It seems like it’s a super, awesome plugin that people are using to get around some of the limitations of using WordPress. It is a free plugin, but it has some add-ons. So, if you wanna add some conditional logic so if you wanna hide specific elements based on a given set of conditions you can do that.

If you want to there’s advanced elements. So, if you wanted advanced elements like buttons, contents, sliders, maps and things like that then that is all built-in there. That’s an additional piece that you can buy. There’s a starter bundle that basically gives you all of the extensions. It’s $59 for one site and it’s $150 for multiple sites and this gets you the advanced layouts, the libraries, the templates, the things like that. So, another great way to customize WordPress themes and templates using a plugin called Forge. That’s Forge plugin found over at ForgePlugIn.com. Again, all of the links to all of these will be in the show notes for episode No. 288. And I think that’s going to wrap up this episode.

Just a short episode with six plugins to highlight today. Do you have any plugins? Is there just one that you’ve stumbled upon that you haven’t heard me talk about on the show? Send them over to me. I’m always looking for interesting new plugins that can be free plugins, which can be premium plugins. Even though a lot of WordPress folks don’t like to spend money on plugins, I think that plugins serve a place and there’s so much extra value that you can get for – like the Forge plugin is $60 per year and you can save hours and hours of frustration building out your theme to get it looking exactly the way you want to for $60.

Like, yes, it’s expensive if you’re just getting into WordPress, but in the grand scheme of things $60 isn’t that much for a plugin that saves you that much time. So, if you have any plugin suggestions send them over to me. Or if you are a plugin developer and you have one that you’d like me to mention on the show send that over to me and you can use the contact form on YourWebsiteEngineer.com or you can just send me an e-mail at Dustin@yourwebsiteengineer.com. Alright. That’s going to be a wrap. I am still in Spain. I’ve got a couple more weeks here. I’ve got to wrap this podcast up in the next three minutes before the church bells start going off at 9 am.

The church bells go off for like 30 minutes straight. And I was trying to get this podcast recorded earlier this morning and there were birds chirping out the window and so I had this small little window to get this podcast recorded and out to you. So, until next week keep your eye out for brand new plugins or try to install some of these plugins and we’ll talk again then. Take care. Bye.