Strong Testimonials wordpress plugin resources analysis

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Name	Strong Testimonials
Version	1.15.4
Author	Chris Dillon
Rating	96
Last updated	2015-03-10 03:05:00
Downloads	19859
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Home page

Delta: 0%

Post page

Delta: 0%

Strong Testimonials plugin has no negative impact on PageSpeed score.

Home page PageSpeed score has been degraded by 0%, while Post page PageSpeed score has been degraded by 0%

Strong Testimonials plugin added 55 bytes of resources to the Home page and 51 bytes of resources to the sample Post page.

Strong Testimonials plugin added 0 new host(s) to the Home page and 0 new host(s) to the sample Post page.

Great! Strong Testimonials plugin ads no tables to your Wordpress blog database.

Resources Added (Post page)

Description

Use your previous customers to bring in new ones with the strong social proof that testimonials provide.

How to get started: Add the submission form to a page to start collecting testimonials. Review and organize them into categories. Position them throughout your site using shortcodes, widgets or templates.

TL;DR

Categories, excerpts and Featured Images (thumbnails) are supported. Other display options include random order, pagination and slideshows. There's a customizable form with anti-spam options and a notification email. Shortcodes, widgets, and template files. A deep and wide demo site and a developer who's on your side.

Screenshots | Demos | Feature Requests

The Form

Right out of the box, the testimonial submission form has fields for a name, an email address, a company name and website, a heading, a photo, and of course the testimonial content. Need to add a field? Want to remove one? No problem. Use the fields editor to customize the form to your specific situation, including the field order, the text before or after, the placeholder text, and required fields.

Example: A dog trainer serving a wide geographical area added fields for the dog's name and the city to the form which encouraged people to upload pictures of their dog instead of themselves! Displaying the city demonstrated her willingness to travel near and far to help her customers.

The form also offer anti-spam options like honeypots and Captcha via these plugins: Captcha, Really Simple Captcha, Simple reCaptcha. The form messages for the required fields, the success and error messages, and even the Submit button are customizable too. It's pretty cool.

Review, Organize, Publish

Testimonials are a custom post type that uses the standard post editor, so no new UI to learn there. Just like posts, they can be organized into categories for easy segmentation. Categories are by far the best way to show the right testimonials on the right page and to spread them out across the breadth of your site.

Submitted testimonials will be in Pending status by default or they can be published immediately (use with caution!). You can send a notification email to the site administrator (or any email address) with submission details.

Show Them Off

Show the newest first, the oldest first or in random order. Show one, ten or all of them. Show the full testimonial, the excerpt or up to a specified length - which is great when you have both long and short testimonials.

With the excerpt and short version options, you can add a "Read more" link to the full testimonial, which works well when you have long testimonials that really tell a story and when you have prospects that do their due diligence and read every word on your site.

There are a ton of benefits to this approach. Viewing the full testimonial uses the single post template in your theme (or a custom version) so your site's look and feel remains the same, including the previous/next post links if used in your theme. That consistency reflects back on you and only adds to the (hopefully) positive experience your visitors have on your site. Being able to read them one at a time helps your visitors focus on the story, look for similiarities between your customer and themselves, and imagine themselves using the product or service being described.

Many people sprinkle testimonials around their site and add a link to their full testimonials page. That's a great way to pique someone's interest without bombarding them with all your testimonials up front.

When you have more than ten or so testimonials, a popular approach is to paginate them, only showing 5-10 per page. The plugin offers simple pagination controls (1 2 3 ...) that can be placed above and below the testimonial group.

Example: A computer repair guy in business for 15 years had hundreds(!) of wonderful testimonials. Fearing a mammoth page of testimonials would, at best, never be read and, at worst, turn people off, he organized them into categories by year and by service (hardware, network, mobile, etc.). Paginating them allowed people to take their time flipping through them. For the kicker, he compiled the top ten spanning all his years in business into another page so his prospects would quickly appreciate his longevity and experience. A nice balance of quick-and-to-the-point and here's-the-whole-story.

Slideshow

A well-thought-out slideshow can be a great selling aide and looks great on an otherwise static page or sidebar without being distracting. Use the Excerpt feature to craft quick and simple one-liners that tell prospects exactly what they need to hear from your previous customers. Really make it sing with the Featured Image.

Both the shortcode and the widget can be a slideshow. Multiple slideshows can be used on the same page by a shortcode or widget with different styles and speeds. (Can other testimonial plugins say that?)

Style

Testimonial plugins typically offer either no styling at all or a handful of predefined layouts that may or may not look good in your theme.

Strong Testimonials offers one layout for the shortcode and one for the widget inherited from the original version (GC Testimonials) that is just generic enough to look good in most cases with maybe a few tweaks (I always remove the gradient background ;)).

Its stylesheets are largely structural and can be easily overridden by your theme or a plugin like Simple Custom CSS. You can also skip loading each stylesheet (page, widget, form) and let your theme handle it from the ground up.

In fact, for any plugin that affects output, I draw the line at around five CSS overrides. Any more than that and I skip its stylesheet and start from scratch. More work up front but easier to maintain long-term. Just my two cents.

Need help matching your theme? Got some weird spacing or floating? I'm here to help.

For ultimate control and seamless integration with your theme, the plugin also offers template files. (Tutorial coming soon.)

One shortcode to rule them all.

The [strong] shortcode is unique and versatile. Most attributes act as on/off switches. For example, [strong title random] means "show testimonials and their title in random order".

Other shortcode examples:

[strong title category="3" count="20" per_page="5"]
  [client]
    [field name="client_name" class="name"]
  [/client]
[/strong]

[strong slideshow show_for="5" effect_for="1" length="200"]

[strong thumbnail random excerpt more_post more_text="more..."
 count="3" class="three-across"]

Learning a new plugin, especially one that makes heavy use of shortcodes and attributes, can seem like learning Klingon. If you have any trouble, take it one bite at a time with the demo site as your guide. By all means, use the support forum for help or contact me directly. You will be fluent soon!

Translations

The plugin includes a POT file and Hebrew, Russian, Spanish and Swedish translations. It is currently undergoing testing by the generous folks at WPML who will recommend how to make it WPML-compatible.

Support

As a technical support veteran and seasoned developer, I am dedicated to your success. I will move mountains to fix bugs, to resolve conflicts with other plugins and themes, and to craft elegant solutions to fragile workarounds. Just ask Grant, hnrocket and Anna.

Future

As Strong Testimonials grows, I want it to remain simple enough for beginners yet robust enough for pros. I embrace the challenge.

There is a long list of feature requests and new ones come in every week. I love that! I have some of them organized over at WP Mission so if you have an idea on how to make Strong stronger, please head over there and browse the current feature requests first. Vote for the ones you like and submit new ones. The site is functional but still a little rough around the edges :)

Please keep in mind the original scope of this plugin: to showcase customer testimonials on your site. There are several variations of that and I'm open to hearing them all but I will not throw in everything but the kitchen sink. I believe in the WordPress philosophy.

The Point

Putting yourself in the shoes of your prospect may not always be easy but the dividends are clear: Well-planned, well-organized and well-placed testimonials will contribute much more to your site's overall message and hopefully will help convert more prospects into customers than simply throwing a spinning widget in sidebar.

And that's my mission: to build a strong yet flexible tool to help you do that.

Screenshots | Demos | Feature Requests

The Weaknesses

The [strong] shortcode can be overwhelming at first. There's no shortcode builder thingy in the page editor. A better solution is almost ready.

The plugin may seem a bit disjointed; or maybe double-jointed is a better word. The [strong] shortcode was meant to replace the original [wpmtst-*] shortcodes but I haven't phased those out yet.

The admin pages for the original shortcodes and settings are mixed in with the admin pages for [strong] and the newer features. It can be unclear which settings affect the new shortcode, the old shortcodes, or the widget.

The template files and functions can be vastly improved.

Admin Menu Post List provides a list of your testimonials right there in the admin menu.
Debug This to peek under the hood when troubleshooting.
Proper Network Activation (multisite) ensures the plugin is properly activated in each site in your network.
Simple Custom CSS is my go-to plugin for quick CSS fixes.
Wider Admin Menu lets your admin menu breathe.

Known Conflicts

Page Builder 1.x by SiteOrigin - The widget settings are not being saved properly in the drag-and-drop builder. Update to the excellent Page Builder 2.x if possible.
Warp Framework by YooTheme - Custom templates for custom post types are not being found since the framework seemingly supplants the WordPress template hierarchy.