WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode 161 February 24, 2014 @11:30am PST

It's episode 161 and we've got plugins for Google Authorship, Background Galleries, Chron Job Editing, Newsletters, Translations email systems and special Guest Garth Koyle from Event Espresso. All coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!

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

We have with us Garth Koyle from Event Espresso to share some thought about their upcoming release of version 4 of their plugin and he is going to share a couple of his favourite plugins with us today.

WordPress News and other interesting WordPress related posts:

This site has pages of code snipets to make WordPress do all kinds of things http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/1567/best-collection-of-code-for-your-functions-php-file

 

**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by John**

AuthorSure 2.0.2

• Version: 2.0.2
• Author: Russell Jamieson
• Last Updated: 3 weeks ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.8.1
• Downloaded: 85,649 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

The Lowdown:

With today overlord Google looking down on everything we have to sometime pay homage at the SEO altar and try to appease the Terabyte God. This plugin helps you appease that god without the blood sacrifice that so often seems to be required to be made on an obscure dark moon night on the 30 of February in the 14th year of a new century.

Set this plugin up and do a few configuration setting and you will get the credit with Google that you deserve for your content it creates a rel= author setting and will create an author box at the bottom in case you do not already have one if you do at the min it will place a last updated time on the post for you.

Rating 4 Dragons

 

Full width Background Gallery 1.0.0

• Version: 1.0.0
• Author: Nishant Jain, rahulbrilliant2004, tikendramaitry
• Last Updated: 11 months ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.5.2
• Downloaded: 8,894 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

The lowdown:

Well this one has some great promise but is not yet ready for primetime I think. The setup is a bit confusing and is not clean and intuitive. It has the promise of videos for a background but I was unable to get them to properly display with the lite version. It looks like to get the one that is easy to use you will need to spend $19 on the pro version.. It does have promise so may be worth it but as for the lite version will not ready just a rough sample. And it seems to add confusion to the mix they have 2 free version in the repository one with a bit more functionality called Full Page/ Full width Background Slider so if this does not confuse you nothing will.

Rating 2 Dragons

 

**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Marcus**

Advanced Cron Manager

http://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-cron-manager/

• Requires: 3.6 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.8.1
• Last Updated: 2014-2-24
• Downloads: 20

Advanced Chron job manager for WordPress Cron tasks and schedules. This plugin allow you to manage WP Cron task viewing, deleting tasks and can schedule new chron tasks.

Also remember that WordPress Cron is dependent on the User. WP Cron fires only on the page visit so it isn't always 100% accurate.

Rating: 3 out of 5

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WP Newsletter

http://wordpress.org/plugins/my-newsletter/

• Requires: 2.8 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.8.1
• Last Updated: 2014-2-24
• Downloads: 42

WP Newsletter is a very flexible plugin that helps you to send newsletter emails to all of your WordPress commenters and registered users down to the level of a specific post's comments. It supports HTML so that more skilled users can send very nice looking newsletters.

Rating 4 out of 5

**WordPress Plugins Reviewed by Garth**

Glot Press

http://translate.wordpress.org/getting-started

GlotPress is the open-source engine that powers the translation of WordPress, BuddyPress, and the WordPress apps for Android and BlackBerry. It is a collaborative tool, meant to replace the sometimes tedious process of translating .pot files with other tools.

Rating 4 Dragons

 

wpMandrill 1.33

• Version: 1.33
• Author: Mandrill
• Last Updated: 1 month ago
• Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
• Compatible up to: 3.8.1
• Downloaded: 19,062 times
• WordPress.org Plugin Page »
• Plugin Homepage »

This plugin uses Mandrill API to send outgoing emails, with or without attachments, from your WordPress installation. It replaces the wp_mail function included with WordPress.

Emails are tracked and automatically tagged for statistics within the Mandrill Dashboard. You can also add general tags to every email sent, as well as particular tags based on selected emails defined by your requirements.

Rating 5 out of 5

**Rambling Last Words and Plugin Wrapup

John: AuthorSure – 4, Full width Background Gallery – 2

Marcus: Advanced Cron Manager – 3, WP Newsletter – 4

Garth: GlotPress- 4, Mandril – 5

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How to Contact Us:

Garth can be contacted at:

• http://eventespresso.com
• twitter — https://twitter.com/eventespresso
• https://twitter.com/garthkoyle

John can be contacted at:

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

Marcus can be contacted at:

• Marcus Couch can be contacted at his website at marcuscouch.com
• Twitter @marcuscouch

 

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