 Okay, Jeremy. Thank you very much So yes I have to say they've given me a thing to walk up and down on which is very tough I might attempt to do that or practice in my putting skills. I'm not sure which And I've never been captioned before So the temptation to use words like anti-dissip establishment areas and just to see oh Result okay, so how do how the heck do I choose a plug-in? I was very tempted to call it something else, but heck is fairly close to what I was thinking You can put the emphasis where you like really It's a pain, but just by briefly who the heck am I Yes, t-boy to for three years I spent being something called a solutions architect and There's a whole team of us and if any of you idea what what one of those is Please let me know because we never worked at what it was Although we did know we did manage to hack piss off the all the architects in the department next door because it's been eight Years becoming an architect and because we're it we just called ourselves architect, which is fine Most of that time I was with BA a the airport company Working on fight information systems, which are brilliant and fascinating and working on Oracle financials, which are really really dull Probably do so any accountants out there? I've been doing my own thing since 2012 and yeah play tennis. I sing and I talk which means I don't blog really So that's basically what I do So what is a plug-in? Hopefully most of you are aware and that's WB beginners definition of what a plug-in is Don't need to paint those on it because it's not very exciting. I would point out the words integrate seamlessly at the bottom I've attempted to put the word should before that Because they don't always obviously that's part of the fun but Yeah, let's go. So yes the Far more basic than that kind of definition is is this well actually The plug-in if looking at the bottom there is a plug-in is what your site does Now this is a hugely over simplistic Split of the two but the themes about your design and your layout and the colors and all rest of it and Plug-in is the bells and whistles and all the sexy stuff now I'm sure lots of plenty of theme developers would argue otherwise and yes There's lots of themes that do clever stuff as well, but again an overly simplistic view But the point is at some point you will have to choose a plug-in So I'm not offering the definitive solution to choosing a plug-in. This is a way. It's not the way So it's I'll stress again. This is my get-out clause. This is simplistic. It's generalized and These are the not rules. This is just guidelines and the way I've found it my experience in WordPress as I said in my intro was Just kicking the buttons until it did as it's told and or till I found out what the hell about that button did And I'm not offering a silver bullet a solution to everything You still gonna have to put the hard yards in you it takes some works It takes some effort and takes some time to find yourself a plug-in that does what you wanted to do so 55,000 plus plug-ins. I know I haven't looked to them all In fact, that was what it was last week. I think it's checked about an hour ago It was 55,840 now and I was I was looking another one appeared. So there's there's new ones coming on all the time So the question is where do you go to find these dear plug-ins well no big surprise there WordPress.org is the place to look WordPress.org slash plug-ins is where you will find The bulk but before you jump in and start searching like crazy and so on so forth You need to think about What it is you're actually going to do with this year plug-in So you need to think and Decide for yourself what you need a plug-in to do it sounds simple But it's very easy just to leap in there and actually find something that looks like it might be and Set yourself up in totally the wrong direction. So make a list It sounds yes sounds dead straightforward But make a list of what you need a plug-in to do for you what you were looking for the functionality you're looking for and then expand the list Try some different terminology because Like any search routine they're not perfect and you will find Different terms come up with very similar terms will Come up with different answers and once you've done that And you've got a list of terms divide that list to define the list of what you've got To do you've got must-haves fine You've got nice tabs and you've got what I like to call with news which other wouldn't it be nice ifs Okay, now wouldn't it be nice ifs tend not to come from you if you're if you're putting a website together for a client or a Friend or a group or whatever They're they're the really good ideas that tend to come up about between 24 and 48 hours before the things going live and Some bright spots is all and you know what's coming Because they said it'd be nice if it did this and go Yes, it would and if you'd asked me about three months ago We could have maybe done something about it But now's not a good time But if you can actually try to pre-empt those and if it's a case of going through with a client or With yourself or your group you're working with and so on and actually trying to identify those things You'll find some of those things On the wouldn't be nice if you know it takes a bit of lateral thinking and it takes a bit of thinking around They're talking around the subject But some of those things will be yeah, actually that's something we could really really do with and it might actually just steer Steer your search slightly But be prepared to compromise Yes, wouldn't it be nice if so lovely? But maybe that's the phase two of the project or phase three or whatever and particularly if you're getting paid for it That's really nice because it actually gives you a Root to take so you can say yeah, we'll get you up and running We'll get you live we'll get you going with the basics with the straightforward stuff you wanted But we'll come back to that because that's a really nice idea and maybe when the things established will We'll build we'll build the project or we'll make a we'll make a phase two so Don't do yourself out of a few you know of another stage to the The project so okay, you come up with a list of what you actually want to happen now Where do I look? Well, okay? We mentioned wordpress.org. Sorry. I'm waving my hands around Stick my hand in the pocket We mentioned wordpress.org And wordpress.org is a list as I said of 55,000 plus plugins great however, there's plenty of people out there who are prepared to give you a list of the 10 best plugins for Something or the this one down here beginners one 24 must have word plug wordpress plugins for business websites Now they're chucking these things out all the time And they're great because they can actually do some of the filtering for you because a they'll have chucked out some of the rubbish Which is always helpful and be if you've got a particular area looking for that might actually give you a focus and give you some ideas of what some Some plugins might do and might not Which is great, but bear in mind some of these or most of these are commercial organizations as well Now if there's anybody here from those organizations as prepared to tell me it's not the case I'm sorry bullshit alone I'm quite prepared to be told it's not the case, but There are vested interests at work here. So there may be sponsorships and there may be I'm guessing I'm it's pure guess. Don't take me on That was a quote. I really don't know but They're there for a purpose. They can be really useful in giving you some guide some pointers as to where you might go But just bear that in mind So Well, what do I search for? Okay, well, I'm gonna go back to the WordPress store We might have filtered down your list a little bit But you go into WordPress.org slash plugins and you type in a term or a word Now put in a term or a keyword and so on so forth And look for clues in the first answer And try synonyms if you don't take takes you to Takes you the way to go take for example You start with general to very general terms if you if you really not clue this look good up because you don't know necessarily the terms that Are the the inwards or the jargon terms that may be used for the area They're useful. So a lot of people search for example forms because lots of Lots of websites need forms and very quickly you find that actually a lot of them are split into into contact forms and other forms Um, so try synonyms and actually trying to focus in your search It's logical, but it's it's a thing to do. I Would also suggest particularly if you're going back to revisit and do other other sites in the future It sounds terribly nerdy and and the OCD but take a note of the terms you used Because occasionally it floats across your eye line or there's a Plugin I might use I might not use it for this project But I actually might need what might need it later on and six months later You can spend 80s going now what the hell term was I looking for an app and I remember looking at saw something And and you don't know where the hell you're looking. So it's worth taking a notice. Let's say it's a bit nerdy and it's a bit Anger if you like but it it is if it is effective You can actually go back and ah well I actually looked up contact forms that gave me such and such and gave me somewhere to go so look what types What types of plugins have we got The vast majority of no, that's not a fair a lot of the plugins you will see on WordPress.org are free plugins Great, but they tend to be light versions. Why are they light versions? Well, they have some of the functionality you need and if you've got a very simple site and some very Straightforward ideas that might be all you ever need good on you. Well done great How you recommended it's free. Why not? However, you do see in the reviews some of the people say out wages. They've done all this thing It doesn't do all the things I need to well. Yes, because people have invested a lot of time in developing these things They obviously want you to you know Some of them will go by donation and so on and so forth, but some people have got a living to make so There are premium versions or the pros you'll often find Something like contact forms has a light version, but also has a pro version So I use something called calculated field form because it allows me to Or for one side I did allow me to do spreadsheet style stuff with I could pick up fields and I can actually Do equations and functions between fields and so on and so forth. It's quite fun And I had a mortgage calculator and all sorts of things built into it And it was quite fun to use and that's I pay I paid a premium for it But there's a one-off payment Some of the other ones some of the particularly popular ones like gravity forms. It's a subscription and You can be paying for one site. You can be paying $59 a year for that But if that's what you need you're going to pay $59 great Don't know that You can't do the whole thing for free necessarily So there's description ones and then you have things like work We'll kind of said new commerce, which is a freemium site freemium site is one where the basic plug-in is free, but there are Hundreds possibly thousands of other plugins that have been built that and attached to We commerce around it, which are payment ones So you the basic stuff you get free, but all the add-on stuff So it's a plug-in for a plug-in if you like is Bless you is Is extra so those are sort of types of plug-ins you can get So how do I choose a good one? Well cheapest advice you can get is word of mouth and Somewhere like this is a great way a great place to do it. So the word counts go to meet-ups Edinburgh has a meet-up Might have something to do with and forums and blogs and so on great way to pick up free advice I'm personally very cheap. I'm yours for a hot chocolate and a blueberry muffin As you can tell However, don't take with this, you know, some people are trying to earn a living. So that advice They may come with some caveats But equally There some of that advice might be skewed slightly because if they're the person who's actually Develop the plug-in that might be the one they're pushing, but you know, it's all these things. It's a balance The other thing is if you're gonna Have a look at a search on WordPress at all, this is a sort of response you get You're gonna the things to bear in mind the things to look at how many times it's been downloaded Has it been downed only twice so has it been downloaded? Gazillions of times because that might be a clue as to whether it's any good or not or without how popular it is now if it's brand new No, obviously might be very few But this compressed JPEG one is one I've used a couple of times. It's got a hundred thousand plus installs great Well, that sounds promising Now next to it slightly out of picture is Smush, which has over a million Just as it happened that didn't suit my particular circumstances that one did But the fact it's got a hundred thousand plus was a good start How recently updated? And what do the forums and reviews say about it? Well This is that compressed JPEG one again Last updated nine hours ago. Well, that's promising Might be that there was something fundamentally wrong with it and they've updated it But it's actually tested up to five point zero. So that WordPress five point zero. That's encouraging Reasonably up to speed Now if it hasn't been updated for 18 months or a couple of years You start thinking is that because it's so rock-solid that it's brilliant or is it because developers just got really fed up and it's gone on and done something else and has lost interest So might work perfectly well, but if you do have a problem, you might not get the support you were perhaps hoping for and The other place, of course, the other thing you might want to look at is the reviews. Oh The reviews what joy So Here you are. Yes. Yeah, I'm looking. I'm interested in the five-star reviews. This one has 97 five-star reviews and you have things like fantastic good plug-in very useful plug-in amazing plug-in and great support Well, it's all kind of encouraging. That's good good news and certainly for those of you in the last Last talk that Claire did compared to the the ratios of five stars to one star without Gutenberg Example she gave I'd say that's that's looking quite promising Trouble with five-star reviews is yeah, most of them very useful. So That the third one down excellent not stingy on free version Compress about a thousand images monthly. Oh, that's what I wanted. That's that's pretty much answer my question. That's it. That's a good sign Hey, it's telling me that's the free level And the that's all I'm that's all I'm really interested in it doing result however, I Find this happens with more with themes and with plug-ins right now The themes in particular Five-star reviews tend to be written by the developers Mum and the granny and Auntie Nellie and whatever because they've said just give me a five-star review And the developers love five-star reviews for you. Maybe not so useful Because they tend to be fairly straightforward fantastic great which is fantastic and great But doesn't really tell you a great deal about it. So I've got a preference for four-star reviews Because I'm weird like that, but the great thing is That word but They tend to come with this is a great plug-in, but so This one says great only missing mobile apps integration. Well, if that's the bit you're looking for You know, perhaps that puts a puts a flag up and go perhaps that's that's where I'm going to find a problem So it's worth looking at the four-star reviews because they tend to be I find a little more objective So you might get a slightly more They're I say intelligent kind of thing about you know, it's a bit more thought-through type of response This as an example also has Two replies to it this particular one. So I looked at what the replies were So Rick Rickard asked about this mobile apps and the author time PNG came back specifically with an answer And Oh, it was a couple of years ago It came out so firstly he raised a concern and the the developer could come back with an answer and the solution And under further underneath there that Rickard himself had come back and said tiny PNG rocks Which either tells me he's terribly cool or is about 12 not sure which Not my language But anyway, that's encouraging that's a sign of things to come down the converse of that of course is the one-star reviews And you get quality stuff like it's absolute shite which again I find one star reviews tend to be written about two in the morning Because they tend to be written when you've had a really bad day. It's not done what you wanted to do The support guys not come back and give me any help whatsoever And you're getting really really hacked off and yeah, it's just the end of a bad day and In a fit of fury you hammer down on the keys just like that one star So you tend to get very emotive type stuff in one star reviews So reviews very useful But you know seek a balance look for objective kind of responses and it might give you some of the stuff you're looking for A word of warning What you regard as a five-star or a four-star or whatever ain't necessarily what the other guy considers to be a five-star or four-star Exhibit number one This is one for ad plug which is an ad advertisement subscription thing It's only got two four-star reviews Hey exactly what I needed will be this plug-in sucks, and they're both four stars. Go figure. I have no idea but So bear that in mind now the dates are a bit slightly but Why the kind of four stars and then say this plug-in sucks doesn't hey, that's his problem So nobody's perfect. So take him as you will. That's what review. That's what reviews do Okay, so I've chosen the plug-in. I want what do I do now? Install it word of warning Make Oprah. I've done this and made a mistake When you install a plug-in make a note of which version is and when you installed it Because it doesn't matter how much testing you do There's a possibility that's there's a conflict somewhere or something doesn't quite work the way we expect it to and whatever And I don't know how I don't care how brilliant you are how much time you can devote to your precious website You can't test you can qualify that you can't you seldom can test everything And chances are your user or your worst deal your customer comes back two months later and says You know last couple of months this is doing this funny thing it does this and it does this and you know Since when oh, I don't know it's in the last couple of months or couple of weeks or whatever you go Okay, you go back and find that's the time you updated that plug-in Maybe test that thing and try it again with a previous version final. Yeah, actually That's when it started going wrong and you've you've missed it So note the date and version number and keep a copy of the version get Easiest way to do that is rather installing your your plug-in directly from the website Download it to your own PC or Mac first and then upload it from your machine onto onto the website Only means you've got your own personal copy of that version Again bit nerdy that anal take that what you will but it means you've got a copy It means you've got a copy and if you it might be easier to find that copy of the old the previous version Then it is going back to the developer and trying to track through there However efficient or not their Their site is to find a previous version and get it back But before you go whoa Waffling and with a with a plug-in you do need to test it Because it doesn't matter who you spoke to word camp which review you read Which forum you went on and so on so forth does it do the thing you want it to do Because the chances are your requirements are slightly different to anyone else's who's used to use the plug-in And obviously the more easy territory they get the more particular that might be So how do you test it well Easiest place to test it is on the site itself and of course if you're not live yet that that might be ideal Because at least you can test it in the environment it's with in which it's going to live But pick a moment because if your users or your customers testing at the same time it might be a bit disconcerting Things are changing now as he's as they're using it And that goes to some extent for for live sites as well eventually you've got to put it on your live site and test it That's why Site designers tend to be working to stupid hours of the morning because they're hoping no one else is looking at the site Itself however if you can't use the site itself check a staging site does your host provide a staging site 34 sp who are standing out there Provide a free staging site when you sign up with them site ground who's another big hosting company. They do the same thing very very useful Take an instant copy of your website And you've usually got a an exact copy that you can practice and beat up the hell you add all the stuff you like into it Hopefully without anyone else being able to see it The other thing to do is to set it up on your own set up a website on your own machine There's a System called local by flywheel, which is very straightforward for setting up your own basically virtual machine on your own PC or Mac And basically sets up your own copy of the site and you again No, no way anyone's going to see that because it's only just in your machine anyway great way to try things out Slightly more complicated, but basically the same deal Wamp Mamp and Zamp That's basically Windows Mac and The other one shows my technical prowess there But basically those are again virtual machines allow you to set up your own Your own environment So you've got it up. You've got it running brilliant One of the questions you regularly get regularly talked about Is how many plugins is too many plugins for my website And My general principle would be keep it lean and mean But depending on how big and complex your site is Depending on how many plugins you're going to require If you take a very simple theme it might be that you need lots of plugins to get it through all the sexy stuff you want to do But if you're looking to do that it's worth continuing to test your plugins Because if you stop using them You need to deactivate and delete your stuff So if you've got an option to take a plug plug in out do so Just be careful to remember what it actually does Because you might find that some other element of it you'd forgotten all about it does And suddenly it's gone out of the site But because you're good folk and test all your stuff then you'll spot that And it won't be a problem. You can sneak it back in So you'll be fine So Yeah there's lots of people with an awful lot of plugins on their website If it works and it's not causing you grief there's actually nothing wrong with it But just for the sake of your own peace of mind and Ability to get to bed before midnight then keeping it lean and mean makes sense And finally Do back it up before you start updating everything I know it's a bore and I know it takes ages and depending on the size of your website can be crushingly dull But I know through painful experience if you don't it doesn't have to lead to some late nights So yeah there's thousands of no there's lots of options for backing up There's lots of plugins that help you back up Seems like cloud there seems like bolt press Many others are available check on wordpress.org But do make it back up because it doesn't half make life easier particularly if someone's paid you for the privilege They kind of assume it's there and rebuilding the site from scratch when you've Rebuilding the shape of the site isn't bad Trying to remember all the content they've given you can be more of a challenge And finally finally major choice Relax Well for a bit anyway But you need to keep alert You need to keep testing There's lots of other changes going on Your site is never finished For one thing it can always be better But also there's other stuff happening The wordpress is continually making changes for security reasons And little things like Gutenberg coming along just to make life interesting But your theme gets updated And the plugins both the one you just put in and all the other ones Tend to get updated too So you need to keep your eyes open and check those And that's really all I have to say Thank you for listening Okay thanks very much Jeremy Does anyone have any questions It's a good question I'm sufficiently paranoid that I would I would sooner do it myself But I've still got The time And sufficiently few Websites that I can Have the luxury of doing that The danger of letting the host do it is that They apply to things like wordpress updates and so on And they just throw those in So long as they Let you know it's happening That kind of helps Because it's kind of embarrassing And particularly if you're taking money for the privilege When your client rings up and says But you know the site's down don't you And you don't So practice your Of course I know it's down I'm working on it right now Response that's kind of That can be kind of useful And I was hoping you'd notice that Just to check that you're keeping an eye on it All that Is kind of useful But personally I would I like to do it myself I like that level of control And I like I like the element that says I decide when it It goes live or I will agree with my customer Customers When it goes live Because it makes it look like I'm in charge And I know what I'm doing Which is always useful Well yeah there's The adage which is You never go for the point zero of anything Whether it's an operating system Or a theme or anything And I must admit Personally 5.0 That sounds terribly exciting But it doesn't really fill me With a great great great deal of confidence right now So I might just wait a little bit Unless they're going to make radical radical changes Or there's something radical On the security side of things My temptation would be Someone else take the steam And the hassle Before I jump in there But I shall be testing 5.0 But I will be there on a staging site Preferably with sandbags built up by the side And with a tin hat on Oh yeah yeah I guess from a plugin Because they tend to be developed By much smaller organisations Deciding to go from Version 1.7.11.12.3 Or 1.2 Or 2.0 Okay what have they changed Have they just changed the numbers for the hell of it Because they'd run out Or it's sometimes hard to tell But occasionally I mean Jetpack was a famous one Obviously Jetpack Massively used Had a terrible reputation at one stage Because it had been built once And then had unteamed things Built onto the side of it And it was this big cumbersome mess of Automatically It's a terrible old thing And we did rebuild it from scratch And it's actually a lot slicker now And I do use it now So I'm a kind of a convert I say kind of Because I haven't found out all it does yet So I'm still learning on that one But that one was One that actually said No we're going to go for a A whole new version And they stripped the whole thing down And built it up again And it's amazing There was one And I'm now desperately trying to remember What it's called But it was built It was developed in Australia And basically it It was one of the first plugins I'd seen And it wasn't a very particular clever one And it certainly wasn't the one I was reliant on But it was kind of I thought it was quite good in terms of building And it was called something White label So you can put your own logo Or the logo for the company on it Which when I put it in the customer And then oh look I've got my own logo Kind of useful And it stopped And stopped being supported And so on and so forth And I was just at the point of going I need to scratch around and find something else And start that search process again When actually another company picked it up And took on the sport Which was like touch woods And that's as kind of close as it's got The whole site and the way things work Just the developer loses interest Now if you're lucky He or she tells you they've lost interest And say look forget it I'm not going to be around I'm not going to answer your questions anymore I've gone and gone to do something else If you're unlucky they just leave it And the thing just drifts off into the ether So you do have to kind of keep an eye on these things And the chances are You seldom have to reinvent wheels Apologies to developers out there I'm not a developer as you might have gathered Chances are somebody's done the thing you want to do In some form Now it might be tacked on to a few other things And you might have to adjust a little bit But the chances are there's something out there That does something pretty damn close To what you were doing before So there's usually alternatives Yes sir The worst I've come across Somebody cheerfully said to me Yeah I've got 72 on mine Which seemed a lot If it's doing what you wanted to do And it's not crawling like a snail And it's not keeping you awake at night Because one's getting in the way of the other one I'm tempted to say yeah it's fine I'm sure you could pare it down With some effort But if it's actually doing what it needs to do I wouldn't lose sleep over it Anyone else? OK Another big hand for Jeremy