WPwatercooler - Weekly WordPress Talk Show

We had a full crew on today's show talking about WordPress New Years resolutions. We're joined by Chris Lema, Patrick Rauland, Suzette Franck, Dave Jesch, Wes Chyrchel, Steve Zehngut, Sé Reed, Devin Walker and your host Jason Tucker

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This week's show we talked about our favorite plugins. * Jason Tucker – Easy Invitation Codes * Chris Lema – Microkid's Related Posts * Dave Jesch – Shopp SEO Glue * Suzette Franck – WordFence * Gregg Franklin – Advanced Custom Fields * Jon Brown – Tabify Edit Screen * Drew Poland – Gravity Forms * Wes Chyrchel – Markdown on Save * Steve Zehngut – Custom Post Type UI * Sé Reed – Yoast SEO & Yoast SEO Video Happy Holidays!

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WordPress Ecommerce Plugins – Today we are joined with Sé Reed, Chris Lema, Wes Chyrchel, Scott Bolinger, Dave Jesch and our host Jason Tucker Holy War of E-Commerce Plugins WooCommerce and Shopp Sé did a 4 hour conference on Shopp, she had previous issues with it and learned quite a bit from this talk. Her fave thing is when it makes cart pages it makes virtual pages not custom post types. Dave talks a bit about virtual pages ins Shopp Scott says that Shopp is complicated and the 4 hour webinar would help with learning it. Se talks about the method of teaching Shopp that they did in the webinar. Scott and his company likes Woocommerce and how simple it is to use. Se thinks that Woo, WooCommerce and WooThemes is a bit bloaty. Chris has gone years not receiving an emailed from Shopp, he received an email from them and he thinks they are ramping up on their marketing. Chris also like Easy Digital Downloads by Pippin. Chris also mentioned how Woo has made the theming cleaner and most of their options are unchecked to save you time in turning on just what you need. Chris mentions that caching that is agressive can mess with things, Scott mentions that he had recent experience with this and his host WP Engine stepped in and helped resolve these issues. Chris is a big fan of Woocommerce but if you are doing online downloads and such Easy Digital Downloads may be the way to go Jason asked about the simplicity or complexity of the backend for the site owner. Chris says Ecommerce is complicated and its a challenge to make it simple. Sé talks about what she does at the Small Business Development Center and dealing with Paypal. Chris like how lightweight Cart66 is. Wes brings up YAK and how light weight the plugin is. This uses posts and pages and is very easy for his customers to work with. Sé says that Shopp is using CPT and also using an importer to import and export content. Sé says “it depends” is the go to answer when it comes to E-Commerce and what solution to use. Wes brings up magento, we all gasp. Jason brings up using Gravity Forms as a way to create a small and simple shopping cart. Dave says that doing a Gravity Forms cart would work well for small but the more complicated this will fall apart fast. Dave rewrote the import tool to import 600 items into Shopp from excel. Chris talks about an importer for WooCommerce that deals with many forms and formats of data. Sé talks about Winter time in the LBC Dave is interested in looking at WooCommerce Scott talks about Extensions on Woocommerce and how expensive it can be. Sé mentions behemoth when it comes to Woocommerce, Chris defends Woocommerce saying she's wrong about that. Sé says she was talking about the back end of the site not the front end. Scott talks about how simple it is to add the template tags into your existing templates to work with WooCommerce. Sé talks about how starting simple and working your way up instead of having to Jason mentions WP E-Commerce and everyone freaks out. Jason has used it in the past and didn't have any problems with it.

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Mobile Responsive WordPress – Today we are joined with Suzette Franck, Elizabeth Shilling, Patrick Raul, Jon Brown, Dave Jesch, Steve Zehngut, Cody Landefeld, Wes Chyrchel, Chris Lema and Jason Tucker. Jon goes in to explain how responsive and mobile are different. Elizabeth mentions that a lot people use their sites as mobile. Jon wants the difference between a responsive site and mobile site known and that they are different. Wes gives the benefit of using responsive as mobile ready site. Steve Zehngut speaks to his clients regarding their site in terms of how the site will be viewed. Cody Landefeld asks the group what they think of the saying, “There’s no need to do a mobile site, if you’re not doing it responsive you’re not doing it right?” Steve mentions how it depends on the project. Patrick agrees, that’s about 95% of the projects. Chris shares his take regarding it being an information/architectural question, not a visual question. Jon describes how he thinks of it as a user experience issue, provides an example of an airline’s needs. Wes brings up picking an app from your phone an asking, what’s the WebApp equivalent? OmniGraffle is mentioned and discussed. Steve shares his opinion regarding OmniGraffle's web knockoffs. Wes suggests creating a distinction by asking, would this be better as an app, an web app or an website? Cody provides an overview of his take regarding what factors distinguish whether an app or web app is required. Wes mentions how we are far from being ready for using responsive completely. Flexbox was mentioned. Cody asks “How is responsive now a prerequisite for a plugin you’re using on a marketing site?” Discussion ensued about images and responsive plugins, specifically sliders. Jon mentions how he writes plugins with responsive in mind, yet brings up the point that it can’t always be like that. He asks what others are doing? Suzette Franck uses images Percentages on the width and fonts as ems. Steve brings up the issue of outside media that clients are using. Wes shares a strategy to deal with clients adding info to their site from their phone, while still maintaining responsiveness. Jon breaks down the plugins of which plugins are more likely to handle responsiveness. Steve adds more info regarding media players and responsiveness; shares the struggle that it is to make some players responsive. Jon gives his take on other plugins. Suggest that the repo have tags at to which plugins are responsive or not. Wes brings up how some clients aren’t interested in responsiveness. Strategies are shared to deal with the client using responsiveness in their site design. How much site traffic from mobile is brought up and discussed. More and more traffic is from mobile vs. desktop. Chris mentions a housing application web app program that he oversees at Emphasys and speaks about how much mobile has taken over. Steve mentions the importance of Google Analytics and how it can be used as a marketing tool. Cody mentions handling clients' expectations and questions giving the client everything they ask for versus providing guidance for the clients. First page mobile, Scott, running promotion for 50% off; design a landing page for your website that is very mobile specific. See at Chrislema.com, great to get the site visitor info they need to. Suzette makes the point that it’s important to have a link to bring up the full version of the site, when looking at mobile. Wes mentions Content from

This week we are discussing WordPress 3.5 with Sé Reed, Suzette Franck, Gregg Franklin, Austin Gunter, Patrick Rauland, Steve Zehngut and our host Jason Tucker

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This week's we will be discussing WordPress Theme Frameworks. Dave Jesch – http://www.davejesch.com Patrick Rauland – http://www.speakinginbytes.com Sé Reed – http://www.sereedmedia.com Steve Zehngut – http://www.zeek.com Gregg Franklin – http://www.greggfranklin.com/ Jason Tucker – http://www.tucker.pro Chris brings up WPMU reviews, Chris Lema’s site, chrislema.com, and Clifford Paulick has two in depth articles regarding frameworks. Jason asks for Chris's favorite frameworks. Chris mentions which frameworks he likes: Catalyst, WooFramework Se mentions which framework she likes, & her views. Steve mentions his thoughts on frameworks. Chris mentions the importance of frameworks. Genesis robust and mentions the results. Chris delivers thoughts about working with frameworks and becoming a tool. Patrick shares his thoughts on the value of frameworks. Steve mentions the value of a freelancer. Chris mentions the value of some other frameworks. Jason mentions Headway and a mention of Genesis, he likes it. Steve speaks about Headway. Chris mentions what drives the use of a framework. Chris mentions the popularity of Woothemes control panel for the end user. Se mentions main concerns about dependency. Patrick asks Se about her workflow. Se mentions what she uses. Steve mentions what he uses. Gregg uses a lot of everything.  Looking to simplify, going modular, he uses “Office” Dave mentions Thesis, Thematic, & Genesis; the pros & cons. _s “underscores” by Automattic mentioned.  Use what is appropriate for task at hand. Steve plugs Genesis, and gives his two cents. Dave sees Genesis as a way to hook in with what’s already there. Steve goes into cons of Genesis. Gregg Franklin mentions a theme he’s working with AppThemes, Vantage; seconds the challenge of ‘undoing’ the hooks for what you want is a challenge. Chris mentions the benefit of being able to unhook. ProFramework some themes that should be plugins become part of a theme. Dave agrees that there’s a difference between what belongs in a theme vs. a plugin, presentation vs. functionality. Theme developers installing a theme with plugins is a more complicated install for nondevelopers, Steve counters. Gregg mentions his experience with AJ at ThemeForest, about putting all as plugins. Chris brings up how functionality is embedded in theme and the pain it causes.

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Today's discussion is a loose format Show and Tell. Dave Jesch – http://www.davejesch.com Patrick Rauland – http://www.speakinginbytes.com Sé Reed – http://www.sereedmedia.com Steve Zehngut – http://www.zeek.com Jason Tucker – http://www.tucker.pro Jason talks about a plugin called “SimpleMap Store Locator” that does multi store locator using Google Maps. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-map/ Patrick Rauland talks about “Limit Widgets” that limits the number of widgets a widget area can have. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-widgets/ Jason demos the Simple Map and shows a table view of the plugin Patrick demos his plugin Limit Widgets, pretty cool yet crazy simple. Dave Jesch talks about a plugin concept for allowing a client to post bugs and problems and give the developer info about the clients site. Jason demos how White Label CMS works and how hes currently using it with gravity forms to work as the mockup or rev 1 of this plugin Dave was talking about. Patrick asks about using this idea with Zendesk. Jason has it tied into Gravity Forms to work with Freshbooks so a quote is generated when a submission is made. Jason mentions how weird he thinks WordPress is accepting BitCoin. He doesn't know many people that uses BitCoin. Jason talks about harvesting bitcoins and how people use videocards to generate bitcoins. Se says Dave “scrapes things for stuff”. Se also “Decisions not options”. Steve show an iPad app for Edwards Life Sciences using XML-RPC. Dave wants to use XML-RPC for the plugin that he and Jason want to build. Here is the talk that Mike Adams did at WordCamp OC Steve was talking about. “WordPress APIs – Feeds, XML-RPC, APP, and REST” Jason askes about libraries for XML-RPC with iOS. Steve says he does some plist'y JSON silliness to pull that off. Jason says its a good idea to crack open the open source code of the WordPress app for iOS Se asks about what other things Zeek has done with XML-RPC. Se talks about her favorite, “Cycle” a slideshow / slider jQuery Plugin. It also is compatible with Easing Plugin. Jason wants to do another “Favorites” show about particular categories, expect more of those coming soon. Leave a comment on which plugin categories we should cover.  

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WordPress Community Summit is the topic for todays 30 minute roundtable at the WPwatercooler. We're joined with Steve Zehngut, Oscar Gonzalez, Dave Jesch, Jon Brown, Chris Lema, Dre Armeda, Sé Reed, Ben Metcalfe, Brandon Dove and Jason Tucker. Se Reed mentions that WordPress Community Summit is the Bohemian Grove of WordPress. Se very excited about WordPress Community Summit. Ben Metcalfe jokingly discusses about WordPress going to ‘rails' …Dre Armeda adds ‘merging with Joomla'. Dre opens up about WordPress Community Summit in Georgia at the chapel Miley Cyrus built for her film. Dre describes the scene at WordPress Community Summit.  Open sessions, round table sessions…topic at each table than strong points, bad issues that there having, how to make it better, creating actionable items Chris Lema asks about where the attendees are coming from Core are they well known. Brandon Dove got a lot of info for running WordCamps, meeting up with other WC organizers. Dre mentions ‘The Foundation and Transparency Around It'. https://make.wordpress.org/summit/2012/10/29/summary-of-morning-discussions/  Chris asks more about Foundations. Dre goes more into ‘The Foundation and Transparency Around It' . Jon Brown asks what were the key points that came about WC topic? Brandon shares what is happening with the Foundation and the money being brought in. Se asks if there were any answers as to where the money is going. Brandon discusses current use video at WCs. Discussion breaks out about video and timeliness of seeing them uploaded on WordPress.tv Dre mentions Summit topics that were covered during the event; such as, Who’s Really Running the Foundation? Se asks for answers. Dre continues with the answers and what will be happen moving forward to working out solutions. Brandon mentions that there's a big opening up at WordPress; WordCamp sites will be more versatile. Dre brings up manage WordPress hosting. Ben discusses what the WordPress hosts went over security issues, sharing information, performance issues Mentioned sharing information about plugins security with hosting companies and the repository. Jason Tucker asks about how that might go forward. Ben mentions that there is already a group that discusses security and what actions that will happen going forward to deal with plugin issues and taking it to the next level. Jason wonders if the plugin developer will be contacted. Ben mentions that ‘Matt' suggest that the hosts should review the plugins. Chris asks how developers are going to be approached about poor performing plugins. Ben provides a thorough response to how developers will be brought in to the discussion when his/her plugin has performance issues. Dre gives Jane Well props for putting together the Summit. Dre mentions importance of WordPress handbook  http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/ Describes it as a huge win. Brandon mentions what is going to happen noncore code contributions and recognition that will start to occur. Se mentions that people will be listening to the developers on the frontline. Chris asks “What was the most surprising thing to you?” Dre mentions “Safe zone let’s talk openly” tone was set and people were focused.

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Advanced Custom Fields is the topic for todays 30 minute roundtable at the WPwatercooler. Suzette Franck has used this on an art gallery website that had 7 years of data, she made a custom form on the back end to be put into an custom post type. Se Reed asks what is the difference between using custom fields and Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Steve Zenhgut talks about how quicker and easier it is to use Advanced Custom Fields and be able to export the resulting code to be used elsewhere. Chris Lema talks about a project he used this on where he used both the import and the export feature. The CMS he was using had 18 CPT and each had 5 to 10 different fields. He states that you can assign with mapping the various meta boxes and where they will be used. Steve talks about the various addons, they recently purchased the “Repeater” addon and it works well. Chris talks about how he has used this Repeater addon and how it is all stored in Post Meta. Jason Tucker asks how portable the resulting code is and if the plugin is required. Steve says that it can and will export all of the code for you when you are done. Se asks if this can be used for importing other DB data into this plugin Chris has used this by writing a script to create json data to parse and pull the data. Se talks about the challenges of working with Post Meta directly in the mysql DB. Jason talks about importing the data and mapping it. Chris says that he has only imported the metadata of the post. Se explains so issues shes dealt with and the challenges shes had doing it the hard way. Chris mentions how we're all trying to suck all the knowledge from him and just using him for his smarts. Conspiracies Conspiracies Dave Jesch asks Suzette about data validation, she says that it does in fact do field type validation. Apparently a war began in Se's city. Se talks about Post2Post and it's awesomeness. Jason talks about how there is a Gravity Forms  addon that looks very tasty Chris talks about an addon his team wrote about using multisite with Advanced Custom Post Types. Kat asks if beginner users can use this or is it only for advanced. It's so simple anyone can use it. Suzette talks about how this can be used on CPT and all of the control that comes with it. Jeff Hester asks about if it can be used on posts and not custom post types he has a metabox for trails that he has on his hiking website. Steve says that almost every customer has a need for some custom fields in their posts and this is perfect for his clients. This and Gravity Forms are used quite a bit in at his company. Se asks about if this also generates pages to display everything or is it just adding new fields to work with on your own. Chris brings up Types and Views and the whole discussion goes into a frenzy. Se wishes things were harder for a developer the rest of us disagree. Steve wants better video documentation on how to use Types and Views Jason comments that 16 year olds made the videos he watched Chris talks about CPT and Types and Views Se… again… let the dogs out. Chris gets back into CPT with Types and Views and how he has used it in the past. Chris mentions that the amount of custom coding he has done has declined just by using these awesome tools ...

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On today's show we talk about Form Plugins and we later get into ethics. Forms Plugins – Gravity Forms we missed Lucy Beer Se uses Contact Form 7 on her clients sites mainly because it's free Jeff uses Gravity Forms Chris says its $39 for a personal license, Formidable Lite is Free Linda talks about Gravity Forms and licensing Se wants her clients to be self sufficient and Contact Form 7 fills that need. Why do we all not like Contact Form 7? Se likes it and uses it daily. Verious and Linda like it Jeff doesn't hate Contact Form 7 Chris mentions that it Contact Form 7 does store the data in the DB. Se doesn't mind this for her starter clients. Chris “wants that data” Dave says he knows of a plugin to add this functionality Verious talks about WP-CRM to create forms Se has used Gravity Forms for a quoting system Steve mentions that you can use Gravity Forms for their clients. Se cant use her developer license due to ethics issues for one of her clients Who lets the dogs out? Chris talks about how requirement lists helps you determine what form solution to use. Steve says its worth $39 is way worth his time. Se says that CF7 is good enough for her Se's love is free Steve say at some point you are going to hit a cap with a plugin that is limiting. Se loves the beauty of WordPress and to use various plugins to pull off solutions. Chris also likes Formidable Pro is cheaper for Dev license. Chris says that Formidable Pro and Gravity Forms works fine for creating a post. For creating a post in a custom post type you need an addon for GF, Formidable Pro does this automatically. To edit a form someone has already used you need to jump through some hoops to make that happen with Gravity Forms. Verious talks about BreezyForms, he hasn't used it yet extensively, but it looks promising. Linda says that going with the critical mass you get more extensible functionality Jason mentions Jetpack forms, no one has used it. Jason talks about Gravity Forms tying into his FreshBooks using an addon. The group talks about Bill Erickson's CRM theme, it didn't use Gravity Forms like we thought initially. Ethics – Se talks about Ethics and plugins. Do you pay / donate your plugin authors. How much do people donate? $5, $10, 50? Chris donates $25 to $50 Steve takes into consideration how much time it's saving him and then donates accordingly. Se asks about if everyone discloses that a plugin is being used. Steve states that having the right plugin is worth more so he charges more for the benefit of getting a product to market faster. Linda always mentions that uses using plugins or prem...

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