More Fields + Idealien Category Enhancements makes this easy as 3.141592654
Customized Write Panels courtesy of More Fields
The biggest knock against WordPress as a CMS platform in the past was that it could not easily do custom data types easily. Custom fields have long given the ability to store meta data but they are something of a usability nightmare, expecting users to add or select particular fields from a drop-down and then entering the necessary value.
That all changed (for me) when I discovered More Fields, a great plugin that “enables you to define post types, which are custom Write/Edit pages that contains a pre-defined set of boxes.” When used in concert with my own Idealien Category Enhancements plugin, WordPress now has easy solutions for the backend data capture and frontend customized presentation for almost any data scenario imaginable.
This Idealien Templates section will be a regularily updated area where I share individual templates (and the More Fields structures which drive them) that I have built for various projects. In most cases I will try to deliver two versions of each category / post template:
- Kubrik – The default installation theme for WordPress may not be the most beautiful design, but it’s code is easy to understand and modify for your own purposes. If you are unsure which version to use – start with this one.
- Thematic – Thematic is a “highly extensible, WordPress Theme Framework” that I have used as a base for my own site. If you design more than one site on WordPress, using a Theme Framework is going to save you lots of development time. The code for these versions might be a little more confusing if you aren’t familiar with Thematic, but in my experience the learning curve is worth it.
Planned Templates
- Events
Example: www.sawdustandglass.com
Category view is a table showing name, date and location.
The post view has more detailed version + google map courtesy of Google Map Advanced - Frequently Asked Questions
Example: runforawish.innovapost.com/faq
One version will be a traditional anchor link list driving to the full content view.
The second version will use some jQuery to make the page a little more interactive. - Random Quotes
A customization of the WordPress Loop to extract only results based on a custom field value and limit the result set. Each time you refresh the page, you get a different result. This one will be more focused on the code (from functions.php) than any specific design magic in the template. - More
Got any suggestions of things you would like to do with WordPress? Post them in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list.
4 Comments
hi, i have been using ICE with Flutter, which is similar to ‘more fields’ but a zillion times better.
thanks for the great plugin!
How about a simple photo gallery where people can comment on individual photos like on facebook or myspace? I guess this would have something like a post for each photo and is organized into albums via tags and a landing page that shows all of the albums… and if that template already exists somewhere, PLEASE let me know where that is
Wow, fantastic plugin, I am enjoying working with it quite a bit.
I ahve a ‘techy’ question though:
I am running wordpress-mu and host a number of client websites. Here is my scenario, just curious if what I need is possible with this plugin.
say I want to create a network of sites where musicians can come and signup, receive their own wp blog. No problem there, that’s what mu is built for.
Then I use your plugin to create a custom input template and also output templates. Once again, no problem that is what your plugin is for.
Here’s where I get stuck.
I want to ‘export’ my custom input/export templates to a new plugin that is available for all the blogs to use, even those blogs that do not yet exist.
think of it like a musician signs up and already has the tools prebuilt in to create their own custom albums using the forms I built previously.
that pretty much sums it up. I have tried numerous plugins like this, but none seems to allow me to ‘export’ my work into a plugin that can be auto activated for new blogs.
How would you ‘attack’ this issue?
@Rich – I don’t know of a template like that yet, but would be interested to see it created. I’d happily promote / share it here if someone did. The great thing about ICE is that it makes the naming of template files more meaningful and separates them from having to change based on the category ID you want to use them.
@shawn – I don’t know that a plugin is what you are looking for. Part of what you are asking for can be handled by parent / child themes which ICE supports. The parent theme that you maintain contains all of the templates which a band / musician might need. They then select which categories get assigned through the post > categories menu. If you need to customize them for their specific site, you can override the logic via the child theme.
However if you are customizing the actual process of adding content to posts / pages / media / etc, then ICE won’t make any difference. I haven’t heard of anything – outside of Gravity Forms – which would help, but the vision for that sounds much different than what you’re after.