November 2021 Favorite Plugins & Themes

We asked members attending November’s virtual meetup to share their favorite plugins and/or themes. These are the plugins that were shared:

• WP Recipe Maker
• WooCommerce
• WooBuilder Blocks
• Redirection
• Heroic Table of Contents

If you’re a podcaster, these themes and plugins might help you out:

• Podcast WordPress Themes from SecondLine Themes
• Blubrry PowerPress (or check with your podcast media host)
• Podcast Subscription Buttons

We also had a question about Plugins and GPL. Kinsta has an article called WordPress and GPL – Everything You Need to Know that you should read.

Deborah also shared her article What’s the Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

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Favorite Plugins Shared at June 2017 Meeting

The June 2017 meeting was all about members sharing their favorite WordPress plugins.

Deborah (@redcrew) shared ManageWP (ManageWP Worker plugin directory listing), a plugin that automatically creates monthly backups of your WordPress installation. For $2 per month, you can get daily and on-demand backups. VaultPress is an alternative plugin with similar features.

Andy (@andymelichar) shared Duo for WordPress (Duo for WordPress plugin directory listing), which adds two-factor authentication to your site’s login. After you enter your valid username and password, you’ll need to prove your identity via SMS or push notification to your mobile device.

Andy also shared iThemes Security (iThemes Security plugin directory listing). This plugin guides you through securing your WordPress site, thwarts malicious attacks against your site, and notifies you of files that have changed on your site. An alternative plugin is WordFence.

Randy (@randywalker) told users about Zip Recipes (Zip Recipes plugin directory listing). If you frequently share recipes on your website, Zip Recipes makes it easy to format those recipes. Just type in your ingredients, directions, and other information, and this plugin will embed a gorgeous, printable recipe card in your post.

Jason (@jbigelow1) gave a demonstration of Showcase IDX (Showcase IX plugin directory listing), a powerful Real Estate listing tool. If you sell homes, this plugin is an inexpensive ($60 per month) way to present listings and saved searches on your website. Visitors can share these listings via social media. The agent can export contact information of potential leads. iHomefinder Optima is an alternative tool.

Takeaways from May 2017 WordPress Q & A Workshop

At our May 2017 Q & A workshop, our WordPress experts answered questions about website performance, web hosting, styling content, setup and configuration, child themes, and plugins.

I joined Eric Malcolm, Andy Melichar, and Randy Walker in helping our members with their WordPress questions.

Before we broke out into small groups, we had a good discussion among our Metro Detroit WordPress members about performance, themes, and identifying the goal for your site.

Here are the top takeaways from the workshop:

Troubleshooting a WordPress Site: Where Is My Sub-Menu?

At our September 2016 meetup, we held a Q & A workshop where our Metro Detroit WordPress members can get answers about their WordPress site from other members. Or they can ask specific questions about WordPress features and functionality.

Because it’s community-focused, the Q & A workshop is one of my favorite meetup formats. It’s where we learn about each other sites and what members do.

Our Q & A workshops are casual, with people moving from table to table to help each other. Or just listen in to hear what other people are doing on their site.

What’s the Issue?

One of our members was having issues with her self-hosted WordPress website, where the sub-menu wasn’t displaying.

She was using the Divi theme on her site, one of the drag-and-drop premium WordPress themes, which has a lot of built-in functionality that’s usually provided through plugins.

Divi recently released version 3.0, which none of our Metro Detroit WordPress members had worked with.

Nevertheless, several people stepped up to the challenge to try to find a solution. Which they did!

Troubleshooting

Knowing others go through similar situations, trying to figure out why some feature isn’t working as expected on their site, we wanted to document the steps.

1. Backup the Site

Before making any changes, backup your site. That means backing up both the files and the database.

You can find lots of free backup plugins in the WordPress repository. Additionally, there are many premium backup solutions.

WP Beginner recently published a review of several WordPress backup plugins.

Luckily our member already had a backup plugin installed on her site, so a backup was quickly completed.

2. Update WordPress

You always want to have the most current version of WordPress installed on your site.

WordPress releases major updates and security updates regularly, it’s important that your site has the latest version to stay secure.

One of our members helped to get the latest WordPress version updated on the site. Still, the problem persisted.

3. Update Themes and Plugins

As with WordPress, you want to make sure you have the latest versions of the themes and plugins installed.

Developers update themes and plugins to incorporate new features from the latest WordPress version, to fix bugs, and to add new plugin functionality.

If you’re having an issue that is theme- or plugin-related, it’s possible the latest version will fix your problem. Why waste time searching for a solution when an update will resolve the problem?

Her site themes and plugins were updated, but the sub-menu still wouldn’t display.

4. Activate the Latest Twenty XXX Theme

This is a tried-and-true solution to many issues.

The latest Twenty XXX theme is the default theme installed with every new WordPress installation (at the time of this post, the latest is the Twenty Sixteen theme).

These themes are used to rule out any issues that might be theme-related.

Review in Other Browsers and Devices

At times, a browser or device might be the culprit.

Checking the site in different browsers or on different devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) can help narrow down the cause of the issue.

This wasn’t the case for our member’s site.

Unfortunately, the sub-menu wouldn’t display in other browsers, nor in other devices.

Theme Options

Many free and premium themes have Theme Options that control fonts, CSS, menus, and other features in the theme.

Voilà!

That was where the issue was, a custom CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) setting was the reason the sub-menu wasn’t displaying.

The existing CSS code in her site was copied to a text file for safe keeping. The CSS was updated, saved, and the sub-menu displayed.

In Conclusion

Troubleshooting the WordPress theme on our member’s site only took a few steps. We were lucky it wasn’t a more involved issue, with conflicting plugins or an issue with the web host.

If you find yourself needing to troubleshoot your site, always start by:

1. Backing up the site, both database and files
2. Updating to the latest WordPress version
3. Updating to the latest theme and plugins

Shoutout to our members Angela Samuels, Randy Wright, Andy Melichar, and Eric Malcolm for their help in troubleshooting the issue!

Photo credit: Randy Wright

The Power of Plugins

Anthony‘s talk from February WordPress Meetup.