Miscellaneous Plugins

Plugins: Screenshots

Using Worpress mShots service: WP Screenshot Browser Shots

or I could use something like wkhtmltopdf. or PhantomJS

Taking website screenshots using PhantomJS | codediesel

Taking screenshots of websites in PHP

Open Source Projects: CutyCapt - A Qt WebKit Web Page Rendering Capture Utility

jonnnnyw/php-phantomjs wkhtmltopdf

Plugins: Post Expiring

These plugins allow us to set expiration date to posts.

We were using Post Expirator but I will switch to Post Expiring as it is 10 times smaller!

Post Expiring was the best written and most simple. Problem was there was no easy way of selecting all the expired posts. This is why I selected VA Simple Expires as it is almost similary small, but it marks posts in special group called Ended, on pair with Drafts, Private, etc.

Very advanced but very big

Note: Our old plugin Post Expirator was HUGE problem as it was slowing down almost half of the Wordpress admin area. Also, heardtbeat was on almost every 5 seconds. Don’t know why.

Plugin: Cron jobs management?

Important - WordPress Cron is depended on the User. WP Cron fires only on the page visit so it can be inaccurate.

Simply the best is WP Crontrol as it managed to remove my cron jobs and an UI is nice and as expected.

There is interesting plugin WP-Cron Control for specific task - forcing a cron exection when calling specific URL with secret hash.

Plugins: Content filtering

We need a way to filter imported posts based on some criteria - keywords in article.

Plugin Post Filter can only confuse a user. As it is triggered only on action publish_post, I think that really it is never executed on imported posts. This is why I disabled it for now.

Well, no - it is working correctly. I still don’t like it.

Plugin: Organize & describe plugins

Wb Sticky Notes – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org

Selection is Plugin Notes for notes and Easy Updates Manager for controlling the update process, but I later concluded that plugin grouping is necessary and Plugin Groups is the best one for that purpose.

  • Plugin Notes
    Is clearly a winner. It’s maintained and even supports basic formatting in HTML or Markdown!

  • Plugin Notes Plus

  • Plugin Memorandum
    seems right and only that. Not properly maintained, and code is better on Plugin Notes

Hide plugins:

  • Hide Plugins works perfectly. You can’t hide mu-plugins, but that’s also impossible in other plugins. I am using this one, but only for not-really-scary plugins ;) For scary plugins, use Admin Menu Editor.

  • Admin Menu Editor also has this option, and as I don’t want multiple plugins for the same task, I’m using this one.

  • Plugin Manager also has this option.

Everything

  • Plugin Organizer Modify plugin loading order, disable plugins per post type, adds grouping. Adds an extra MU module to achieve that. Forget about it. Crazy complicated UI for no reason + slows down admin considerably.

  • Plugin Groups

  • Plugin Manager is maybe better for Grouping plugins. Has locking, grouping and hiding, all together. And an interface is more usable. Has small glitches when searching plugins, but I really do like it.

Plugin updates

  • Easy Updates Manager
    Detailed configuration system for updating WP and it’s plugins. Very well written, and therefore my winner.

  • Block Plugin Update
    Very straightforward and easy plugin for blocking updates of specific plugins. Does what it is supposed to do.

  • Lock Your Updates Plugins/Themes Manager
    If you really need update locking, this can be a plugin for you. Don’t forget that there are much better plugins for that. As for notes - it’s really only very basic.

Later added & still not reviewed:

Disable updates

Disable All WordPress Updates Hide Updates

GitHub - Rarst/update-blocker: Lightweight generic blocker of updates from official WordPress repositories.

“Disable update notification” nije isto što i “Disable update check (HTTP request)” Related hooks:

  • site_transient_update_plugins (disable update notification)
  • pre_http_request (better) & http_request_args (less low-level)

Rešenje je da presrećem pre_http_request i da filtriram po URL-u

Ustvari je problem: Dialing Out To Other Servers

Problematični: Vendidero

options - Prevent/Disable Automatic Update Check - WordPress Development Stack Exchange https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/72529/filter-any-http-request-uri

Plugin: Administration Improvements

Customize Admin, Admin Customization

Basics: Customizing Your WordPress Admin Classes to encapsulate access to admin menu global arrays: wp-admin-menu-classes.php

Plugins:

Improving Admin Menu

  • Admin Menu Editor is perfect, but only in Pro version you get some advanced options. Also includes plugin hiding functionality, that lets you hide plugins from other users. But I can go around those limits in combination with other plugins (Members).

    How? Introduce new custom role (Supporter) by creating a new role in Members plugin and add only Supreme Commander (myself) to that role. Now edit Admin menu as required, but restricting only to that Role

    Also, you can move menu items, but only in Pro version, you can do it between menu levels.

  • Adminimize can completely customize and hide areas of administration area, but it’s UI is quite confusing to me.

New:

Improving Admin Toolbar

Admin Bar Fix to auto-hide bar but still have a small icon.

Selection is Admin Toolbar Menus.

  • So, the best solution, and really quite good, is Admin Toolbar Menus, and it’s cleanly coded. It is also nicely integrated in WordPress native Menu system of options.

  • Custom Admin Bar is a plugin from famous WPMU DEV team, but the problem in it that it really nags a user to buy a premium.

Administration area explained: Administration Screens

Activity Log / Track content changes

Track content changes happening to your WordPress site with Stream plugin.

There are also extensions to it, as Stream to Slack

How to track and record Logged In User Activity in WordPress?

Alternatives:

How to Track and Record Logged In User Activity in WordPress How To: Track WordPress Changes & User Activity - Free Plugins to Download

Slack notifications

Winner: Dorzki’s plugin

  • Slack Notifications dorzki is very small and efficient. Not extendable, but working as expected.

    Notes: when post is updated,

  • Slack is very ambitious but not maintained well. As seen on gedex/wp-slack, last update was 2 years ago.

    It supports unlimited events via custom hooks. There are also couple of free extensions, like this one for WooCommerce

  • WP Toolbox also has some basic support for Slack notifications.

And that’s about it.


Improve taxonomy management

Source: 20 WordPress Plugins to Optimize Category and Tags - Hongkiat


Plugins: User Role Management

Those settings are saved to the database, so it is not slowing down you Wordpress as a whole. It is perfectly safe to use a plugin for this.

  • Advanced Access Manager (AAM) has all the role options plus GUI options on administrator side. It is my favorite. Nevertheless, even this plugin failed enabling unfiltered_html saying: Failed to grand capability - WordPress policy.

    Sometimes, when you need just the basic stuff, it is little too overwhelming.

  • Members is developed by core WordPress contributor Justin Tadlock, works perfect, but doesn’t support unfiltered_html in WPMU without changes in code.

  • User Role Editor has unfiltered_html on multisite only in Pro version, and in free version works with code changes in theme.

  • User Role by BestWebSoft has multisite support only in Pro version.

  • WPFront User Role Editor has multisite support only in Pro version.

5 WordPress Plugins To Extend User Roles and Capabilities 5 WordPress Plugins to Manage User Roles


Unfiltered HTML in multi-site.

Note: In WordPress Multisite, only Super Admins have the unfiltered_html capability. http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#unfiltered_html

function map_meta_cap() at the capabilities.php always returns ‘do_not_allow’ for the ‘unfiltered_html’ if you are not the superadmin in the multi-site environment.

So you can always do this: https://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/giving-unfiltered_html-capability-to-site-admin

To translate: remove_filter('the_content', 'wp_filter_post_kses'); in theme should do the trick. But better yet: kses_remove_filters(); as seen: http://endorkins.com/2013/08/27/disable-wordpress-kses-to-prevent-html-filtering/ or https://wordpress.org/plugins/removekses/

But, I don’t think it is NOT a proper thing to do. But it is easier.

Or just use official Automattic plugin for that:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/unfiltered-mu/

With any plugin you still need to…

// Add the unfiltered_html capability back in to WordPress multisite

add_filter( 'map_meta_cap', function($caps, $cap, $user_id, $args) {
  if ( $cap == 'unfiltered_html' ) { unset( $caps ); $caps[] = $cap; }
  return $caps;
}, 10, 4 );

Improve Combo Box input in Admin

Libraries to improve Select Box with JS

It all started with Chosen. List alternatives in order of quality.


Sanitize Filenames on upload

Must do the following:

  1. Convert international characters to normal, maybe even transliterate cyrilic to latin
  2. Remove invalid and strange charactes
  3. Replaces any ‘+’, ‘_’ or space with dash ‘-’
  4. All the dots ‘.’ except last one are replaced with ‘-’
  5. Lowercase everything

Jebote, ima ih kao “kusih pasa”


Plugins: Various Page Lists

Standard

I had to fork a plugin to add more filters to it.

Page-list - simple and no need to look for more CC Child Pages Subpages Extended

List Pages Shortcode List Child Pages Shortcode

Advanced Sidebar Menu WP Child Pages Child Pages Shortcode

Advanced (Grid)

9 Best WordPress Grid Plugins 2020 - aThemes

Populate menu with subpages

Interesting: Custom Post Type Auto Menu

Add Descendants As Submenu Items (guy died)

Plugins: Related pages (must support pages)

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) Related Similar Posts – Best Related Posts Plugin for WordPress Related Posts Thumbnails Plugin for WordPress CP Related Posts


Plugins: Multiple featured images

Dynamic Featured Image / https://github.com/ankitpokhrel/Dynamic-Featured-Image (dynamic) - has to much ads Simple Multiple Featured Images (dynamic, not working?) Multiple Post Thumbnails (fixed) / How to Add Multiple Post Thumbnails / Featured Images in WordPress Multiple Featured Images


Plugins: Development Helpers


Plugin: Approve New User Registration

8 Best WordPress User Registration Admin Approval Plugins 2022

Feature really for free:

  • New User Approve Last proper version from original author Josh Harrison (picklewagon), before it was sold to some company, was 1.8, but is unmaintained from then: wpexpertsio/new-user-approve

    In the current version 2.4.1 most functionalities are still there, but the plugin has been converted into a “colorful advertising machine”. Free version is crippled in a way that you must use the plugin hooks to customize the emails and error messages because there is no UI for that. However, the new version looks so ugly that it is pointless to put it on.

  • User Verification, documentation here
    Not exactly “admin approval” but nonetheless nice advanced plugin with lots of options to prevent SPAM. Users are self-verified by sending confirmation link to them.

  • WP Approve User by Konstantin Obenland
    Source code obenland/wp-approve-user and support threads

    A very ascetic plugin that does what it is written for. The problem with this plugin is that it does not have a detailed setting to whom an email is sent, and the email itself is only sent in plain text format. This fork branch 3.1 has the latest changes and FR translation: helgatheviking/wp-approve-user at 3.1

    To add missing admin notification, consult this

No need to work on email HTML design as there are separate plugins for this purpose.


Plugin: Admin Notices

date 15. Dec 2016 | modified 17. Jan 2023
filename: Plugins » Miscellaneous