Podcasts are a great way to capture your audience by uploading audio and video episodes. However, producing quality content is as important as choosing the right podcasting tools to win your audience’s attention. A great tool should be compatible with your website and hosting service as well as support the video and audio files you […]
The post 7 Best WordPress Podcast Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Hostinger Tutorials.
WordPress Playground, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser, makes it possible for users to quickly test plugins and themes without having to set up a local development environment.
Ordinarily, testing a plugin or theme with Playground requires visiting playground.wordpress.net, which will instantly create a real WordPress instance with admin access without having to install PHP, MySQL, or Apache. It runs inside the browser using a SQLite database. Adding a plugin or theme to the instance is as easy as appending the slug to the URL when creating the test site:
https://playground.wordpress.net/?plugin=gutenberg
https://playground.wordpress.net/?theme=lemmony-agency
A new Chrome browser extension, created by LUBUS, a development agency, makes this even easier by adding a “Playground” button to theme and plugin pages on WordPress.org. Users can fire up a sandbox instance to test drive a theme or plugin in just one click.
I tested the extension and it works as advertised. It’s a neat little shortcut for launching a Playground instance without having to remember the URL or get the plugin/theme’s slug to append to it. The video below shows a site created with a selected plugin installed in under 20 seconds.
“We have been using Playground internally a lot for testing out plugins, and quick demos for internal or client meetings,” LUBUS founder Ajit Bohra said. “We often find a plugin or theme which we would like to test drive. It involves copying the slug of the theme or plugin and using them in the URL. To make this quick we thought of building and quick browser extension to add a button on wordpress.org to quickly launch a plugin or theme in the Playground.”
Bohra posted his process of creating the extension in a thread on X. He used the Plasmo framework, which offers a dedicated runtime for building browser extensions, taking the project from idea to built in approximately 30 minutes.
Bohra said the browser extension is currently a proof of concept that he would like to further extend with more settings based on feedback from users. He also hopes to collaborate with the Meta team in the future to see something like this added to the plugin and theme pages on WordPress.org so that users don’t have to rely on a browser extension.
The Chrome extension is called “Open in WordPress Playground” and is available to the public for free on the Chrome Web Store. The code is open source on GitHub and open for contribution.
group.one, a European cloud hosting and digital marketing services provider, has acquired the BackWPup, Adminimize, and Search & Replace plugins from Inpsyde. Together the products have more than 1.1 million active installs and will join group.one’s growing portfolio of WordPress products, which include WP Rocket, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO.
Inpsyde sold the plugins to focus more on its consulting and product services.
“This sale lets us concentrate on our core competencies and work more closely with our clients, like PayPal, Payoneer, and Mollie, providing the know-how to develop and reach their full potential with new avenues for advancement,” Inpsyde CEO Alex Frison said.
 The acquired plugins will be managed by the development team at WP Media, one of group.one’s brands, expanding its offerings beyond optimization and SEO to include backup and site management capabilities.
“Backup and recovery solutions are crucial to protect websites against data loss and we look forward to further developing BackWPup, along with Adminimize and Search & Replace,” group.one CEO Daniel Hagemeier said. “Together with WordPress hosting from WP.one and one.com, and our flagship products WP Rocket, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO, WordPress users can now come to group.one to optimize, secure, maintain and promote their online presence.â€
When asked what specific features are being prioritized on the immediate roadmap, group.one representative Simon Kraft said “the smooth transition over to WP Media” is their focus following the sale. He was unable to comment on whether the commercial versions of the acquired plugins would be subject to any pricing changes.
If you sell valuable collectibles or are passionate about online bidding, an auction site can help you achieve both goals. Building a bidding platform simplifies the auctioning process to make money online. You can do so using WordPress, a popular content management system (CMS). Easily add auction functionality to your website with WordPress plugins, eliminating […]
The post Best 7 WordPress Auction Plugins and How to Create an Auction Website appeared first on Hostinger Tutorials.
WordPress’ Plugin Review team is wading through a backlog that was over 900 plugins awaiting approval earlier this week. The current count has 870 plugins sitting in the review queue, with an average wait time of 61 days before initial review.
WordPress developer Marcus Burnette drew attention to the matter on Twitter after submitting a plugin he created to display a gallery of your own WordPress Photo Directory photos on your website. Other developers commented on his post, reporting that their recently-approved plugins took two months.
WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy responded with an invitation to contributors who want to learn how to review plugins and apply to join the team.
The volunteer team responsible for reviewing plugins has undergone significant restructuring after the departure of long-time contributor Mika Epstein. In June, the team added six new sponsored volunteers and opened applications for more team members. They have selected new team reps and have more than 20 applicants who have expressed interest in volunteering.
“The first challenge we found during our onboarding was the fact that a lot of processes were not clearly documented,” newly selected team rep Francisco Torres said in a recent update. “We asked A LOT of questions during this process and ensured that all the answers Mika shared with us were added to the team’s internal docs. This effort should make it a lot easier for new contributors to join the team down the road.
“We have also improved our internal tools to catch the most common coding mistakes and have built our predefined responses into the output provided by this tool. We still review this content manually before sending out replies, but by merging the two tasks into one (reviewing the code and drafting the message) we have been able to cut down review time considerably.”
In strategizing ways to cut through the formidable plugin backlog, the team has begun speeding up the process by performing a cursory initial review, followed by a more thorough one once the plugin author has fixed the most obvious issues.
“In order to tackle the backlog faster, we’re now spending less time on initial reviews,” Torres said. “We begin checking issues that take us less time, and then as soon as we spot one or two issues with the plugin that would prevent it from being approved, we email the plugin author to ask them to fix the initial issues. If the author gets back to us with those first fixes, then we proceed with an in-depth review.”
A two-month wait can be demoralizing for developers who are excited to share their open source plugins with the world. Now that the whole process is getting documented and refined to be more efficient, the Plugin Review Team will be better able to onboard new reviewers and put them in place to tackle the backlog.
The Kadence Blocks plugin, which is used on more than 300,000 WordPress sites, has patched a critical vulnerability in its Advanced Form Block file upload capability. Version 3.1.11, released on August 8, 2023, patches the security issue with the form uploads.
The plugin’s development team is getting out ahead of the situation by posting an advisory on their blog, with a short description of the vulnerability and its potential for exploit.
The Kadence Advanced Form Block, introduced in Kadence Blocks 3.1, offers site owners the ability to add a file upload capability to their site. The code within the Advanced Form Block had insufficient tests to limit what types of files can be uploaded. This could allow attackers to upload a file claiming to be a valid image type that actually contained malicious PHP code. That PHP code could be malicious, and in so doing, take over a vulnerable WordPress website. Exploiting this vulnerability would require a settings at the server level that would be considered insecure. Most premium hosting providers secure upload folders from PHP execution at the server level, though many budget hosting providers do not.
Kadence Blocks developer Ben Ritner said sites that are not using the Advanced Form Block file upload capability are not subject to this vulnerability. At this time the vulnerability is not known to have been exploited.
Kadence Blocks users are encouraged to update immediately and check for unexpected users, admin accounts, and content changes. The advisory also includes ways to make file uploads more secure, including limiting file type, adding authentication, and scanning for viruses.
ConvertKit has updated its official WordPress plugin and WooCommerce add-on to support a range of new features. More than 40,000 sites use ConvertKit’s plugin to integrate their newsletters, email campaigns, and digital products with WordPress. The service is free for the user’s first 1,000 subscribers but offers more automated features and third party integration on its paid tiers.
The latest version of the ConvertKit plugin for WordPress brings the “Members Content” feature out of beta. It allows site owners to set up gated content for things like courses, e-books, or curated content without having to switch platforms, keeping members on the WordPress site.
In the WordPress admin, under the ConvertKit >> Member Content settings, admins can now specify a ConvertKit Commerce product to be required in order to view a post, page, or WooCommerce product page.
This update also adds a “Newsletter feed” that ConvertKit users can embed on their WordPress sites to display a paginated list of their public broadcast emails. It can be shown as a grid with images and descriptions or a list with subject and date.
Recent updates to the plugin also introduce product embeds, allowing site owners to create a storefront of their ConvertKit products on their WordPress sites. The styles for the embedded products can be edited inside the Site Editor.
Other notable improvements in this round of updates include the following:
More detailed information on the settings for the new features is available in the ConvertKit documentation on customizing subscribers’ experience on WordPress websites.
WordPress is a global platform with users in every corner of the world. And because of that, translations have been a hot topic for years. Translating your site makes it more accessible and opens it up to entirely new audiences.
However, a new in-depth study by the WordPress Performance Team indicates that translations could slow your site down. Testing showed that localized websites, or websites that are tailored to specific target audiences and languages in different regions, can load up to 50 percent slower than non-localized sites.Â
According to WordPress Contributor Pascal Birchler, “In addition to core itself, each plugin and theme has its own translation file, which has to be loaded and parsed on every request. Loading and parsing all these translation files is an expensive task.â€
The blog post goes on to discuss a number of ways to speed up sites with translations. One option is to use a different file format. When downloading translation packs from translate.worpress.org, they are in .mo file format. Converting them to .php may help speed up your site. To do this you’ll have to use an external tool like GlotPress.
Another option is to cache the translations on a disk or database, this will definitely free up space on your site. This isn’t the most realistic option for most people because it requires disk or database space.
A third way to speed up your site is to use the gettext PHP extension. Because the extension is not as commonly available, most sites are using the built-in .mo parser. Installing gettext has shown significant performance improvements.Â
The blog went on to detail three more solutions, though all require developer experience.Â
Suffice to say, the conversation around translations in WordPress is taking on a language of its own. While there have been no decisions made about how the Performance Team will move forward to fix the issue, they are collecting feedback, which you can submit here starting Aug. 6.
The fourth phase of Gutenberg, is slated to include Core implementation for multilingual sites, but because we are just ending Phase 2, that could take some time.Â
Because this is such an important issue to the community, we’ve provided a few additional ways you can continue to translate your site without slowing it down.
As we stated above, WordPress is an increasingly global CMS. Just last year alone, there were WordPress community events in every continent. Only displaying information in English automatically excludes a huge part of the population, not to mention large segments of the WordPress community.Â
An English-only site could limit new contributors and users, and it might prevent potential customers from finding you. On the other hand, enabling translations can set you apart from your competitors. If a customer can read a product description in their preferred language, they’re more likely to engage with it.
Finally, translations give you more search engine visibility, automatically increasing your SEO. Different languages can present unique keyword opportunities and search patterns. By conducting keyword research in each target language, you can optimize your content for those specific search terms and rank higher in local search results.
Translations also make it possible to receive backlinks from other websites in those languages, expanding your reach. You also have the opportunity to localize your content to different regions.
If you’re still looking to translate your website, using a plugin can be a great way to do just that without slowing down your site.
While there are a wide array of choices when it comes to translation plugins, they ultimately break out into two categories: automatic and manual.
Automatic translation plugins will, as the name indicates, automatically translate everything to your visitor’s preferred language. These plugins are less time intensive but can be less accurate.
Manual plugins require you to manually translate all your content. Though this can be incredibly time consuming, you are less likely to make errors.
All of them will allow users of all languages to enjoy your content. Here are five of our favorites:
Weglot is incredibly easy to set up and has a big focus on SEO. It automatically translates all content on your site and updates in real time so you don’t have to continue updating anytime you add an article, though you can edit translations when you need to.
It detects your visitor’s preferred language through your browser and displays that language. If for some reason they want to view another language, the convenient Language Switcher allows for quick and easy language changes.
TranslatePress supports both manual and automatic translating, integrating with Google Translate for machine translations and is compatible with various themes and plugins, including certain page builders and WooCommerce.Â
A nice plus with this plugin is you can translate metadata, URLs, and create separate sitemaps for each language. The free version allows you to translate your site into one language though the premium version has support for unlimited languages.
GTranslate uses Google Translate to automatically translate your website content into multiple languages. The plugin uses a cloud-based approach keeping your website light and focuses on SEO. Like Weglot, it also offers a customizable language switcher which can be added as a widget, shortcode, or menu item.
There is both a free and premium version but unlike most premium plugins, it uses a monthly subscription rather than a yearly license.
WPML or The WordPress Multilingual Plugin is the only one on the list that doesn’t offer a free version, but it is incredibly powerful. The plugin supports manual translations but also integration with professional translation services, giving you options.
It supports translating custom post types, custom fields, menus and widgets. And of course it is incredibly SEO friendly, allowing you to translate your metadata, permalinks, and more. As we mentioned, WPML isn’t free but it’s a full-featured option.
Polylang is a manual language translation plugin. You can translate in as many languages as you want, use a different domain per language, and the ability to language switch via widget.Â
The plugin also allows you to translate custom taxonomies, sticky posts, RSS feeds, custom post types, and more.
Translating your site opens you up to a wide range of new users. While the WordPress Performance Team works on ways to speed up local translations, these plugins will keep you going. Make your site more accessible, enhance your SEO, and reach people you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Whether you choose manual or automatic translations, your future fans from across the globe will thank you.
The post Translations May Slow Down Your WordPress Site, Plugins Can Help appeared first on Torque.
Jetpack 12.4 was released today, launching the plugin’s Newsletter product. It allows users to send blog posts as newsletters, without the hassle of having to copy and paste from the WordPress editor into another newsletter service’s campaign editor and reformat it for email. This launch comes seven months after WordPress.com launched its newsletter offering, which uses the same underlying infrastructure to deliver emails.
Jetpack Newsletter is launching as a free product, with a percentage of fees collected from creators who choose to offer paid subscriptions:
Fees are only collected when you accept payments. Fees are based on the Jetpack plan you have and are calculated as a percentage of your revenue from 10% on the Free plan to 2% on the Complete plan (plus Stripe fees).Â
Jetpack users are probably familiar with the plugin’s ability to send posts to subscribers via email. The newsletter feature uses this same infrastructure that site owners have relied on for years to allow subscribers to get updates in their inboxes when new posts are available.
Newsletters can be turned on under the Discussion tab in the Jetpack settings. Many Jetpack users likely already have this turned on.
The Subscribe block can be placed anywhere on the site and new subscribers will be sent a confirmation email to confirm their subscription. They have the option to choose between instant, daily, or a weekly digest, as well as control the time and day they receive their digests. Subscribers can also pause or unsubscribe from the site.
Subscriber import and other features, such as newsletter stats for opens and clicks, is available via the Jetpack admin pages on WordPress.com.
At this time, newsletter creators can only import up to 100 subscribers via CSV file. This is severely limiting for all but the smallest of newsletters, but the Jetpack team has confirmed that it is high on their list of priorities to change as it creates too much of a barrier. The limit was set for spam prevention, but it makes it nearly impossible to migrate to Jetpack Newsletter if you have a popular newsletter. Those who are on paid plans can upload unlimited subscribers.
Newsletter creators can change the site name and logo for their emails and paid users will have more customization options in the future.
One thing that sets Jetpack Newsletter apart from the vast majority of other traditional email service providers is that it allows unlimited email sends and unlimited subscriber lists for both free and paid users.
Most popular services like Mailchimp, Brevo, and SendGrid, allow only a few hundred emails to be sent per day or up to 1,000 per month for free users. Paid plans get expensive quickly as a newsletter’s subscriber base grows. Emails and subscriber numbers usually determine the pricing for these services, which makes Jetpack’s product stand out from the crowd, especially for those who intend to independently monetize their newsletter through ads and paid sponsorships.
Jetpack Marketing Lead Rob Pugh said that although popular newsletter services are more limited in emails and subscriber numbers, they also offer a completely different feature set. The Jetpack Newsletter product is aimed at competitors like Substack.com, Beehiiv.com, and Ghost.org, which also all offer unlimited email sends. On paid plans, Jetpack Newsletter’s offer beats Substack, as it collects 2% (plus Stripe fees) as compared to Substack’s take of 10% plus credit card fees.
Newsletter creators should be aware that Jetpack Newsletter’s unlimited emails and subscribers may not last forever, as the FAQ section of the product states that it is an introductory offer:
As an introductory offer, we do not limit you or charge you based on your email list size. This may change in the future. Fair usage policy applies.
Jetpack representatives were not able to confirm the limits of fair usage or how long the introductory period will last.
“Launching without a limit on emails isn’t the most financially responsible thing, but we’re most excited to get this feature into the hands of people to get feedback,” Pugh said. “We’re focused on the immediate roadmap to make the product better, although there will likely be a limit at some point in the future if we see extreme use from people on free plans.”
He said the Jetpack team goes out of its way to make pricing changes as fairly as possible “and we don’t want to pull the rug out from anyone, so we’ll certainly consider how people are impacted before making changes.”Â
Until the limited subscriber import issue has been solved, any pricing changes down the road are only likely to affect newsletters that are just starting out getting people signed up. Apart from this limitation, Jetpack Newsletter is making a competitive debut in the market. For those who are already using Jetpack and have an existing subscriber base, it makes it nearly effortless to add paid subscriptions. Using the block editor is far easier than most newsletter campaign editors out there, and Jetpack streamlines the sending process so creators don’t have to copy and paste between email services.
In this article, I will introduce you to a WordPress bulk page creator called LPagery that takes the drudgery out of creating dynamic landing pages in bulk.
The post “Discover LPagery: the WordPress Bulk Page Creator” first appeared on WP Mayor.