Jon Brown

joeguilmette

<p>Through constants defined in wp-config, you can disable plugins, disable the  loading of external files, set search engine visibility, display or hide the admin bar, display the server name and change the color of the admin bar, or literally anything else you can think of. All without touching the database, so you can push and pull without worrying.</p>
<p>For support, pull requests, and discussion: https://github.com/joeguilmette/wp-local-toolbox</p>
<h4>Admin Bar</h4>
<p>Change the color of your admin bar and display the name of the current server environment. Green for local, orange for staging, and of course, red for production. You can also force the front end admin bar to hide, to display, and can even set it to display when logged out.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_SERVER</strong>: The name of your server environment. It will be displayed in the admin bar at browser widths greater than 1030px. If left undefined, the plugin will make no changes to the admin bar.</p>
<p>If not defined as <code>PRODUCTION</code> or <code>LIVE</code>, the plugin will enable ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ to prevent your development and staging servers from being indexed. This option is not stored in the database, so your production server will still look to the actual setting on the Reading page.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_COLOR</strong>: Determines the color of the admin bar. You can set this to any CSS color. If left undefined, will use the following defaults:</p>
<ul>
<li>PRODUCTION / LIVE: red</li>
<li>STAGING / TESTING: orange</li>
<li>LOCAL / DEV: green</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_ADMINBAR</strong>: Show or hide the admin bar on the frontend. <code>FALSE</code> will force it to be hidden, <code>TRUE</code> will force it to display, <code>ALWAYS</code> will display the admin bar even when logged out. These settings will override the ‘Show toolbar’ setting in the ‘Users > Your Profile’ options panel and <code>add_filter('show_admin_bar', '__return_false');</code> in functions.php, but doesn’t attempt to overcome any CSS based hiding of the admin bar.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>In wp-config.php:</strong></p>
<pre><code>// set server environment to 'LOCAL'
define('WPLT_SERVER', 'local');

// set admin bar color to #800080
define('WPLT_COLOR', 'purple');

// show the admin bar even when logged out
define('WPLT_ADMINBAR', 'always');
</code></pre>
<h4>Disable Plugins</h4>
<p>Pass a serialized array in this constant to disable plugins. This does not store any data in the database, so plugins that are manually deactivated or activated through the admin panel will stay so.</p>
<p>In order for this feature to function properly, WP Local Toolbox must be installed as an mu-plugin. You can read more about mu-plugins here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins. We’re investigating ways to avoid this requirement; if you have any ideas we’d love to hear it!</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>WPLT_DISABLED_PLUGINS</strong>: A serialized array of plugins to disable.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>In wp-config.php</strong>:</p>
<pre><code>// deactivate a set of plugins
define('WPLT_DISABLED_PLUGINS', serialize(
    array(
        'hello-dolly.php',
        'w3-total-cache/w3-total-cache.php',
        'updraftplus/updraftplus.php',
        'wordpress-https/wordpress-https.php'
    )
));
</code></pre>
<h4>Post Update Notifications</h4>
<p>Receive notifications when any page, post, or attachment is added or updated. Notifications can be received via email, or can be sent to a Slack channel via their Incoming WebHook API.</p>
<p>This is helpful in production to see if a client has submitted a new post, or in development to see if data is being added to the staging environment so you don’t accidentally overwrite new posts when pushing databases around.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_NOTIFY</strong>: Define this constant as the email address where you’d like to be notified of post updates. You can specify either an email address or a Slack Incoming WebHook URL. You can set up a Slack Incoming WebHook URL here: https://my.slack.com/services/new/incoming-webhook/</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_NOTIFY_CHANNEL</strong>: If WPLT_NOTIFY is set to a Slack Incoming WebHook URL, you can specify the channel that the notification will be posted to. If left unset, it will post to the default channel specified in Slack’s Incoming WebHooks settings page.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>WPLT_DISABLE_ATTACHMENT_NOTIFY</strong>: If set, this will disable notifications for attachments.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>In wp-config.php</strong>:</p>
<pre><code>// send an email to someone@somewhere.com 
// whenever any post or page is updated
define('WPLT_NOTIFY','someone@somewhere.com')

// or, send a notification to a Slack channel
define('WPLT_NOTIFY', 'https://hooks.slack.com/services/etc');
define('WPLT_NOTIFY_CHANNEL','#channel');
</code></pre>
<h4>Airplane Mode</h4>
<p>Control loading of external files when developing locally. WP loads certain external files (fonts, gravatar, etc) and makes external HTTP calls. This isn’t usually an issue, unless you’re working in an evironment without a web connection. This plugin removes / unhooks those actions to reduce load time and avoid errors due to missing files.</p>
<p>On and Off: Can be toggled from the admin bar by clicking ‘Airplane Mode’. In the admin bar a ✗ or ✓ will indicate if Airplane Mode is enabled or disabled.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>WPLT_AIRPLANE</strong>: Set this to anything to enable the Airpane Mode toggle.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>In wp-config.php</strong>:</p>
<pre><code>// enable the Airplane Mode toggle
define('WPLT_AIRPLANE', 'true');
</code></pre>
<h4>Modification</h4>
<p>You can add code that will be executed depending on server name by modifying the following in wp-local-toolbox.php.</p>
<p>I’d love a pull request if you come up with something useful.</p>
<pre><code>if (strtoupper(WPLT_SERVER) != 'LIVE' && strtoupper(WPLT_SERVER) != 'PRODUCTION') {
    // Everything except PRODUCTION/LIVE SERVER

    // Hide from robots
    add_filter( 'pre_option_blog_public', '__return_zero' );

} else {
    // PRODUCTION/LIVE SERVER

}
</code></pre>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p>As a special thank you, this plugin will remove the ridiculous <code>Howdy,</code> that is prepended to the username in the admin bar.</p>
<p>You’re welcome.</p>
<h4>Credit</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Plugin disabling from <a href="https://twitter.com/markjaquith" rel="nofollow ugc">Mark Jaquith</a>: https://gist.github.com/markjaquith/1044546</p>
<ul>
<li>Using this fork from <a href="https://twitter.com/rarst" rel="nofollow ugc">Andrey Savchenko</a>: https://gist.github.com/Rarst/4402927</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Airplane Mode from <a href="https://twitter.com/norcross" rel="nofollow ugc">Andrew Norcross</a>: https://github.com/norcross/airplane-mode</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Always showing the admin bar from <a href="https://twitter.com/perishable" rel="nofollow ugc">Jeff Star</a>: http://digwp.com/2011/04/admin-bar-tricks/</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A healthy refactoring from <a href="https://twitter.com/jb510" rel="nofollow ugc">Jon Brown</a> of <a href="http://9seeds.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">9seeds</a></p>
</li>
</ul>


WP Local Toolbox

A simple plugin to help manage development over local, staging and production servers.

Themeisle

<p>Add a maintenance page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance, add a coming soon page for a new website or create a landing page for an existing site. User with admin rights gets full access to the blog including the front end.</p>
<p>Activate the plugin and your blog is in maintenance-mode, works and only registered users with enough rights can see the front end. You can use a date with a countdown timer for visitor information or set a value and unit for information.</p>
<p>Also works with WordPress Multisite installs (each blog from the network has its own maintenance settings).</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fully customizable (change colors, texts and backgrounds).</li>
<li>Subscription form (export emails to .csv file).</li>
<li>Countdown timer (remaining time).</li>
<li>Contact form (receive emails from visitors).</li>
<li>Coming soon page;</li>
<li>Landing page templates;</li>
<li>WordPress multisite;</li>
<li>Responsive design;</li>
<li>Social media icons;</li>
<li>Works with any WordPress theme;</li>
<li>SEO options;</li>
<li>Exclude URLs from maintenance;</li>
<li>Bot functionality to collect the emails in a friendly and efficient way;</li>
<li>GDPR Ready;</li>
</ul>
<h4>Bugs, technical hints or contribute</h4>
<p>Please give us feedback, contribute and file technical bugs on <a href="https://github.com/andrianvaleanu/WP-Maintenance-Mode" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub Repo</a>.</p>
<h4>Credits</h4>
<p>Developed by <a href="https://themeisle.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Themeisle</a></p>
<h4>What’s Next</h4>
<p>If you like this plugin, then consider checking out our other projects:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://optimole.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Optimole</a> – Optimole is your all-in-one image optimization solution for WordPress & beyond.</li>
<li><a href="https://wpshout.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">WPShout</a> – In-Depth WordPress Tutorials for Developers</li>
<li><a href="https://revive.social/" rel="nofollow ugc">Revive Social</a> – Revive Old Posts helps you keep your content alive and in front the audiences that matter.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.codeinwp.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">CodeinWP</a> – CodeinWP stands for all-things-WordPress. From web design to freelancing and from development to business, your questions are covered.</li>
<li><a href="https://domainwheel.com" rel="nofollow ugc">DomainWheel</a> – Free Short Website name generator, with the help of AI, for instant ideas.</li>
</ul>
<p>Check-out <a href="https://themeisle.com/blog/" title="Themeisle blog" rel="nofollow ugc">our blog</a> to learn from our <a href="https://themeisle.com/blog/category/wordpress/reviews/" title="WordPress Reviews" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress Reviews</a> and see other <a href="https://themeisle.com/blog/category/wordpress-plugins/" title="WordPress Plugins Comparisons" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress plugins</a>.</p>


LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder

I discovered some times ago that there is an add for Otter Blocks in Custom CSS setting in Gutenberg. I did not investigate and the last update of Lighstart force to install Otter Blocks when you go to Gutenberg management for Maintenance Page. Deactivating Lightstart resolves the problem. So don’t install this plugin, there is a bunch of alternative.

Add Ad for Otter in Custom CSS setting in Gutenberg


Initially I installed the plugin and there was an "optimize images" checkbox (enabled by default), that I did not look carefully into. After the plugin was installed, I noticed that some kind of optimization plugin had been installed. That was fine as I felt it was my mistake for not looking into that more carefully,



Today I find another plugin on our site, a plugin called "Otter Blocks".



This is quite a shady practice - probably done to boost the installs and visibility of the other plugins.


Installs other plugins without notice


After installing a plugin that initially appears uncomplicated and straightforward, you are immediately greeted with aggressive promotions for Otter – Page Builder Blocks & Extensions for Gutenberg. In a short span, a new message emerges: "Elevate your content's visibility with ease! Discover Revive Old Posts, a state-of-the-art plugin from the creators of Otter – Page Builder Blocks & Extensions for Gutenberg. Effortlessly reshare both old and new content on social media platforms, attracting unprecedented traffic."



Given that "unprecedented traffic" seems to be just a catchy phrase coined by marketers to lure in users, the entire promotional tactic can be overbearing for those seeking a clutter-free experience. Such aggressive marketing feels intrusive, disregards user preferences, and does not align with a community-oriented ethos.


Bombarded with excessive promotions


This plugin installs other crap ware on your site. Stay away.


Installs crapware


Theoretical this is a great plugin allowing users to design and change their "Maintenance" page in Gutenberg. But in reality it hung my WP admin upon activation. And the site is not available. Too many re-directs.Also the so called templates do install an extra plugin "Otter" which might be handy. But a little confusing. 


Looks great, but has issues

Easy Drag & Drop Page Builder that adds a splash page to your site that it's perfect for a coming soon page, maintenance or landing page.

WP Local Toolbox vs LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder