u/finart_13

Hi guys
I am a concert photographer for over 10 years and my program of choice was always Lightroom. I might get some hate now, but I think it is a great tool...
Anyhow, I always wanted to switch to Linux, since Microslop makes it's OS worse and worse. That also meant, I have to let go LR, which has the goal since a while anyway.
I have tried DT a few years ago, but the hassle to switch, and muscle memory, that has to adjust, and just the lack of time to learn something new, never made it happen.
Until a few weeks ago, when I locked myself into the office for a weekend and just learned the program, as I did with LR back in the days.
It was a journey, but all in all, I am really happy now and some features, like the MIDI support out of the box are just awesome.
So I started to edit my first concert completely in DT.
Around 600 pictures to sort out, 42 to edit and it only took me like twice as long. But practice makes perfect and with a few adjustments in my workflow and reusing using styles, I would say, that I am now probably as fast as with LR. The next gig, a festival where I took over 4000 pics, proved that theory.
But the biggest impact on this journey was the feedback from a fellow photographer, who knows my style well. He was like: "I think the quality, especially the noise reduction and sharpening got better."

So yeah, thanks DarkTable!
Did you have a similar experience or what was your journey like?
Here are some shots from that first gig.

Hey guys

Not sure if this is the place for it, but the Festool service partner sent me the vacuum back, apparently it works normally.

And it does. You turn it on, and it runs. You cover the hose and put some pressure on it, it runs. As soon as I actually use it to get rid of sawdust and such, it turns off and shows a red light.

The machine has a brand new bag (happens also with other bags) and a clean filter. I opened the motor cover and the motor was a little warm, after it ran for 5 minutes in idle, but I would consider that normal.

The inside of the machine looks very clean.

Any ideas what that could be?

I went through this selection and it was a roller coaster.
After the research, I noticed that during the recording for the YT channel, two Plugins got removed again and are not available for download anymore. While PixelVault got removed and is awaiting review, Flexa Block, my favorite one of that batch, got temporary locked because of spam reviews.

Here my thoughts about the first 8.

Flexa Block (temp. deactivated) - block collection and page builder. Solid, many blocks available, nicely designed and worked quite well. Many style and design options but not so useful frontend editor.

PixelVault Media Library Folders (temp. deactivated) - Organizes your media files into folders. Feels fast and responsive, has a gallery block that is pretty cool and zip upload. Drag and drop is a bit inconsistent though, doesn't work on the add media screen, and it's missing feedback when you try to drop something into a locked folder.

TNC FlipBook 3D - turns PDFs and images into a flipbook with lots of customization, UI translated into 20 languages, and a fair free tier with no artificial limits. Small shadow bug when flipping pages and one of the most annoying ways to change the settings. For some reason you have to flip a switch first, before you can change the options.

Flipa, PDF Flipbook - another PDF flipbook plugin, simpler and with fewer options. Simple and lightweight with 20 language UI support, but a lot of the useful stuff is locked behind a paywall.

ProFeed - gets your LinkedIn feed in your post / page. Does exactly what it says, fast, lightweight, 4 themes and multiple layouts. The support is very fast and responsive. Only works with LinkedIn though, so if you need other platforms this might not be ideal.

Accessible Carousel & Slider - WCAG AA compliant slideshow, easy to use and very useful if accessibility is the key focus. It shows you the contrast you should have but not what you actually have, which feels like a missed opportunity, and styling options are limited... which might be on purpose, to keep it accessible.

Lexiata XSlider - does the basic job with no bloat, but the backend UI feels unfinished with several bugs, no Gutenberg block to add the slider, and autoplay didn't work for me.Has some strong evidence that it was AI generated and feels a little unfinished.

Jamie's Front-End Editor for Content Teams - This broke my brain! After activating it, it looked exactly like the frontent editor form Flexa Block. And I mean to the pixel. Same border, same basic function. I do not know, who copied who, but after checking out the code and how it works, there are a lot of similarities...
simple concept, further along than Flexa Block's frontend editor, but it doesn't always save and most of the time, it is only in the way, for example, when you try to click a button. Also no way to toggle it off on the frontend when you're not using it.

Curious what you all think, especially about having two flipbook plugins featured in the same batch. Full walkthrough with front end and back end for each one is up on WP103 on YouTube if you want the details.

https://youtu.be/w-3k93zsa2w

Reviewed 8 more plugins from the WordPress.org featured plugins page this round. Quick summary:

• Senzastile Featured Image Fallbacks (5.0): does one job, does it perfectly, no db changes
• Reviso (4.9): client feedback/approvals for Bricks and Elementor, generous free tier
• Admin Optimizer (4.9): tons of useful hooks and toggles, but the name undersells what it actually does. There is a little bit a lack of documentation on what some settings (like heartbeat control) actually affect**,** but otherwise its solid.
• KineticHub (4.8): creative animated Gutenberg blocks, but the physics engine is locked behind pro and it's not clear what more you even get
• rtCarousel (4.5): lightweight, integrates well with FSE, but no controls for styling or animation speed
• BlockFlow (4.0): polished block library, feels very Elementor-like (which is both a pro and a con depending who you ask), can load many assets and has some unnecessary blocks
• Asteris Blocks (3.9): 50 blocks, generous free tier, but the backend editing view looks nothing like the frontend. Limited styling options.
• Sobi Form (3.5): good feature set on paper, but there's no way to customize the emails it sends out and it has some major bugs.

Full walkthroughs and the reasoning behind each rating are in the video.
What are your thoughts? Will you install anything?
I will for sure keep the Senzastile and Admin Optimizer in mind, maybe also KineticHub. For the rest, there are better alternatives.

https://youtu.be/tEAI0MIA9_k

This question comes up quite often here in the WP subreddits and in general, so I figured I dive in a little deeper.
The two most common errors are;

• 500 - An error that happens before WP can load the core
• Critical Error / Fatal error - An error caused by a plugin conflict or faulty plugin / theme

The way I recommend to fix those;

• Check your email first. If WP could detect the crash, it auto-emails you a recovery link plus the exact plugin and line number that caused it
• Use that recovery link, it pauses the broken plugin without fully deactivating it
• No email or recovery link working? Go straight to your hosting error logs. Look for "fatal error" near the bottom, it will name the file and plugin
• Can't get into wp-admin at all? Rename the plugin folder via FTP or your host's file manager. WordPress can't load it then anymore
• Visit the Plugins page once to deactivate the plugin and rename it again. Update or remove it completely.

I made a full video walkthrough including a real world example where two plugins broke each other through a hook conflict.
See it in detail here:
https://youtu.be/YLiOuI1YTrk?si=P9V83tqyq6lG02xD

New month, new batch of featured plugins. Tested all eight on a clean install, here's the quick rundown.

The good ones:

• BoxCart is a click and collect shop system that doesn't need WooCommerce. Clean design, import/export settings, clean uninstall, very dev friendly.
• Alpaca Issue Tracker - A Lightweight kanban-style issue tracker inside wp-admin. Fast, no artificial limits, email digests. Great if multiple people work on a site and need to report issues.
• Notice Vault Collects all admin notices into one place and strips the styling out of them. If your dashboard looks like Las Vegas, this is for you.
• Subtle Icons Adds four icon blocks and to show inline SVG so no extra requests, custom SVG support.
• Mission Is a highly customisable donation plugin with a nice on-boarding and a proper cleanup function.

The mixed bag:

• PingBlink - A Floating knowledge base widget. Solid idea, but bright primary colors break the text contrast and it faces some technical issues.
• Search URL Beautifier - Does what it says, but didn't work on all of my test setups and it quietly excludes WooCommerce products from search results in the free version.
• Scroll Chart adds animated diagrams with AI generation. The AI generation broke completely during testing and the data it pulls is questionable at best. Charts also live on their servers, so if the service dies, so do your charts.

What are your thoughts? Did you find anything that you will use?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FVB_AN-tWE

Every time I login into a admin dashboard, that I did not visit a long time, I get something like this.
Ads for Pro versions / upgrade notifications, data collection requests or Review requests among other unnecessary notifications.
Especially annoying when those are shown on every page, which is often the case.

I am aware that this problem is not new, nor easy to fix given the openness of the plugin-permission-structure.

What is something you hate / dislike about working with WP and its ecosystem?

Yet again, another round of fresh plugins in the directory. This is the third part of my plugin check.
Standouts were HeySpark, a self-hosted live chat widget that needs zero third-party accounts and sends no data anywhere.
MoCursor Smart TOC is one of the cleaner table of contents blocks I've tested, lightweight and it shows you exactly where you are on the page while scrolling.
And PhotoGlue makes creating photo montages surprisingly painless, eight templates, drag and drop, done.

Good: Smooth Custom Cursor gives your cursor more pop, but the colors are wrong in the light mode and Vercel AI Gateway Provider is useful, if you use Vercel. 16Deza Block Curator is useful for limiting blocks for your editors but lacks permission settings.

Less exciting: Pixel Next Clean Pop-Up is too limited to recommend over what's already out there.

The Desktop Mode plugin was featured in the last part already, therefore got skipped.

Full hands-on walkthrough: https://youtu.be/lslZm_cc8Ts

What do you think? Did you discover something that is useful for you?

Second half of May had some genuinely useful ones. Standouts were Desktop Mode which turns your entire WP admin into a desktop OS with draggable windows and a dock, GuestDock which lets you invite guest authors with time-limited access, word count limits and required fields before submission, and PDFDraft for building PDF templates with dynamic WordPress content fields. 16Deza Table Cell Extras and IndieTech Popup Builder are also worth a look if you need lightweight block table formatting or a solid popup solution.

On the less exciting side, Flavor Restaurant Menu looks great but the free version is basically just an ad for the pro tier, GT Table Block does so little you could replace it with a few lines of CSS, and Noted Visual Feedback has a good concept but is buggy enough to get in the way.

Full hands-on walkthrough: https://youtu.be/07V7SVLpm5c

What are you installing?

WordPress now rotates its featured plugin section every two weeks and honestly it's overdue.

To qualify, a plugin needs to tick all of these boxes:

- Fewer than 10,000 active installs

- Listed in the directory for 12 months or less

- No open security vulnerabilities

- Compatible with the current major WordPress release

- Updated within the last 6 months

Developers building quality plugins actually have a shot at visibility now, which is great to see.

The May batch already has some good ones. Bolt CTA Button, KeepInMind, and FlowForms are worth a look. Broke them all down in my latest WP103 video if you want the details.

Anyone here tried any from the new rotation? Curious what the community is finding.

https://youtu.be/X9d1v4ckbcU

Started with a fresh install, added plugins in batches of 10 sorted by popularity, and monitored load times, PHP memory and error logs after each batch.

A few findings from my test:

- The first server error hit at around 60 plugins

- The 512MB PHP memory limit killed the backend before the frontend

- WP-CLI stopped working well before the site actually went down

- At 305 active plugins both backend and frontend were finally dead

Most popular plugins behaved pretty well. The lesser known ones are where things got messy.

See the Video here: https://youtu.be/BCHNzvZq5jE

Curious how many plugins people are actually running. What's your count?