Marcus Couch

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WordPress Plugins A-Z

It’s episode 156 and we’ve got plugins for Home page content length, Skype switching, Google Drive, Galleries and Event Calendars. All Coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z with John Overall and Marcus Couch. This is the show that dives into plugins, separating the Junk from the Gems!

WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:

Godaddy has officially entered into the WP Managed Hosting area. Plans start at $6.29 per month and include DDoS protection, firewalls, automatic updates and an easy one-click migration tool. GoDaddy states that their service will have blistering speed and guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

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All-in-One Event Calendar 1.10.5

The Lowdown:

While this plugin does have a premium version and I highly recommend it if you’re serious about your events calendar the free version is a great way to start. Once upon a time I had dismissed this plugin as it was problematic but in the last few months I have been using it more and more as the event calendar of choice. It is highly customizable though its use of themes. You can create your own theme that is protected from future upgrades of the plugin so you do not lose your customizations.

With the premium version you can connect it to facebook to be able to pull calendar events from there.. You can allow user notifications of upcoming events you can if you’re inclined turn your whole blog into and events only platform. With the pro version you can also allow your visitors to submit events to your calendar.[/aesop_content]

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 NextGEN Gallery 2.0.40

The Lowdown:

Well I had abandoned this gallery a long time back and had not been back even after it was bought by Photcrati. I had started to hear good things about but just had not made the time to check it properly. The past week I acquired a new client who had this on his site and wanted to keep it so I thought I would give it a good exam and see how it performs.

Well I was pleasantly surprised in the performance and functionality of the free version of the plug as I have discovered there is now a pro version of this plugin ( of all my predictions the one about freemium seems to have been my best) anyway the free version performs very well including now making it much easier for users to create and implement galleries into posts. I used to give 2 hr training just to use this plugin back in the day.

All in all they get a great mark on this plugin

Rating 4 Dragons (the pro may be a 5 but have not tested it)

 

Event Espresso

I have reviewed this plugin in the past even getting Seth Shoults onto a show for an interview when his company was young and just starting out with this plugin. been about 2 maybe 3 years now.

While there is a lite version available I would suggest just skipping right over that and into the pro version it is worth the money. I have installed and configured this plugin on several website over the past couple years but it has been a while since I have done it and had not seen the improvements. So was excited to to a fresh install for a client.

One of the best things I saw was that Seth and his team have made some great improvements in the way the plugin work and breaking out into sub addons things that weren’t always necessary but good to have on some installs and that the plugin will auto update now previously it was a bit of a chore to update it.

The improvements over the last time I did one about 9 months ago are fantastic and it is easier to use than before great job guys.

Rating 5 Dragons

**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus**

Google Drive WP Media

Google Drive WP Media

Requires: 1.5 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.8

Last Updated: 2014-1-23

Downloads: 15

Google Drive on WordPress Media Publishing. Direct access to your Google Drive, you will enable to manage your files remotely from your WordPress blog. Upload and share your files directly from your WordPress blog to Google Drive.

Features:

• Option to auto insert your Google Drive files into your WordPress Media Library.

• Attach your Google Drive files to your posts.

• Upload your files from your WordPress Administration to Google Drive.

• Create folder to storing your files.

• Enable to attach any files to posts.

Rating 4 out of 5

Skype Mobile Switcher

Skype Mobile Switcher

Requires: 3.0 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.8

Last Updated: 2014-1-23

Downloads: 18

The plugin uses a shortcode to do the following: * On mobile: make a phone number callable from any phone * On desktop: make a phone number callable via Skype

To use the plugin wrap your phone number in [phone] [/phone] shortcode.

Example: [phone]+1 847 8474710[/phone]

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dynamic Home Length

Dynamic Home Length

Requires: 3.0.1 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.8

Last Updated: 2014-1-22

Downloads: 24

This plugin adjusts the number of posts per page of the front page based on the total number of texts in all recent posts so that its height would automatically be in proportional with the height of your widget column.

Rating 5 out of 5

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 Just some reminders:

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