5 Sweet Wordpress plugins that you should have

Corey — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:35:16 +0000

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:

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

tags even sometimes when visual editor is disabled. Typically in HTML view you can not see these added

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

tags by simply installing the disable wpautop plugin. No other settings are required, it simply removes ONLY the unwanted

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.

The new CoreyMade is finally alive

Corey — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:54:12 +0000

Hello everyone and welcome to the all new CoreyMade web site. It has been a very long time that my site has been out of commission due to lack of backups, coffee and extreme client work. However, today is the official launch of the all new brand. I have decided on making the site more professional, and sleek. If you recall the other site was good, but in retrospect was just not working out for me. As you can see I have a whole new look from the logo, to the journal that you are reading now. I get asked a lot why I always change my site design. It’s actually quite simple. I get tired of things really quickly. However, with this design I have vowed to keep it and update it as much as possible with new portfolio entires, interesting journals and useful screencasts. I hope everyone likes the new design as it took a long time to get things put together. However, as the old saying goes, hard work pays off at end of the day. Here are some changes that I have done

General Layout:
The layout is completely different from previous versions of CoreyMade. In older versions, I used a lot of vector such as my last live site was compromised mainly of vector graphics. This current design as you can see, steers away from the vector based graphics. I have tried to keep the layout as simple and clean as I could while staying focused on my brand!

Phases:
In previous versions of CoreyMade, I did not list my phases that I do from start to finish on design projects. However, I thought it is an important aspect that clients would like to know how I handle things from the moment I start on a project. I have also limited what services I offer and stick typically to web design and compliant code.

Portfolio:
I have limited my portfolio entires by quite a bit, only listing nine different case studies at a time. I gave this much thought, and the final conclusion was I wanted to list my best web designs, and provide actual history and outcome to each. In previous versions of CoreyMade, I did not infact have what the project was about or how it ended. As you will see in this version of CoreyMade, I have expressed the client project in detail.

Well thats about it folks, I hope you enjoy the new site and please leave comments!

CoreyMade » Technology

5 Sweet Wordpress plugins that you should have

The new CoreyMade is finally alive