After dabbling in wordpress for the past year and a half, I have come to learn about amazing plugins that just makes life easier when dealing with wordpress as a CMS. Some of these plugins are also great even if you are just using wordpress as a blog platform. I have outlined what each plugin does and how it was beneficial to me, and hopefully you can find the same use out of them for your WordPress driven web site and/or blog.

Exclude Pages:
This plugin is awesome, because it allows you to have multiple pages without listing them in your main site navigation.  When using wordpress as a CMS, you can do the following tag to display the pages that are added into wordpress like this:

<?php wp_list_pages(’title_li=’); ?>

If you are indeed using this method to list your pages created in WordPress, every page you create will be listed in the navigation.  However, the Exclude Pages plugin provides a check button on each WordPress generated page that will allow you to tick “include in navigation”. Obvisously, if you prefer the page to be listed in the navigation, then you would tick this box, if not, simply leave the box unchecked.

Flutter:
This plugin is absolutely a must have if you want to utilize WordPress as a complete Content Management System.  I was actually shown this plugin by the very talented folks at 45Royale and ever since, I have been using it.  It actually allows the user to create custom write panel pages or posts.  You can duplicate fields and groups as well.  Creating any type of field you need and add content for that field quickly and efficiently. I think the best feature of the plugin is the “edit in place” which allows you to edit your text or content on a page right from the front view of the page itself!  Check out this plugin from FreshOut, you will not be disappointed in it!

Disable wpautop
If you have ever used WordPress as a CMS to edit pages you will notice that wordpress likes to add <p> tags even sometimes when visual editor is disabled.  Typically in HTML view you can not see these added <p> tags, but trust me, they are definitely there.  Which is why when you view the page after you have edited it, you will see a slight to moderate pixel gap or padding on the bottom or top.  You can easily get rid of those pesky <p> tags by simply installing the disable wpautop plugin.  No other settings are required, it simply removes ONLY the unwanted <p> tags.

RunPHP
This plugin has been great to me, and I am sure you will find it useful if you need to run any PHP within wordpress pages or posts.  Simply put, this plugin allows you to run PHP commands within pages or posts outside of  ”the loop”.  When installed, each page or post will have a “run PHP code” tick box at the bottom of the page.  If infact your page or post has PHP, simply click the check box and save or publish your page.  Now the PHP will run flawlessly on that page.  You can setup multiple PHP scripts to run on pages or posts also.

CForms II
This plugin is specifically for forms.  It’s functionality is very impressive.  This plugin allows you to setup multiple forms on pages and posts. The forms are extremely easy to setup and maintain, and are completely customizable with CSS.  However, the plugin does provide presets for visual appeal, but I am sure most of you would prefer to customize the look to better match your site.  You have control over every aspect of the form including what the submit buttons displays, the hold message, the success message or page, the failure message, and the error messages.  You can specify a start date and end date for submissions on multiple forms plus setup the form to send out confirmation emails to the users to let them know that the form was submitted successfully. There is really no limit to what can be done with this plugin and forms, it is a must have even if you only have a contact us page.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read this journal entry.  If you have something to say about the above plugins, please by all means leave a comment.  All of the above plugins, I am utilizing on my own site and have found them to be very useful and I don’t think my journal or web site would be the same without them.  I hope you find them just as useful as I did.