Tagged: widget

Best WordPress CMS Plugins

This post about the best of the WordPress Plugins for a CMS website was originally published on the Fatty Matty Brewing brewlog on June 19, 2009.

After using WordPress for so long on this Fatty Matty Brewing blog, I decided to use WordPress as a CMS (content management) with a few new clients’ websites including Greenspirit Farm and Free Congregation of Sauk County. Each of these unique clients has different business communication needs from WordPress and with the huge amount of WordPress plugins available, I knew I could pretty much accomplish any requests for website customization.

This list of WordPress plugins gives your website flexability to perform tons of fat website functions.

My Favorite WordPress Plugins

(tested on WordPress 2.7.1)

Plugins Used on the Fatty Matty Brewing Brewlog

  • Akismet – A must have spam catcher for ALL WordPress websites!
  • BrewPoll – For all you beer bloggers… Adds a BrewPoll icon to each post on your blog.
  • WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Have you backed up your WordPress database today? Do this before you upgrade to WordPress 2.8!

WordPress Plugins Used on the Greenspirit Farm website

  • All in One SEO Pack – Improve your website’s popularity on Google with super SEO.
  • Force User Field Registration – Forces new users to register additional fields. As a WordPress admin, it is nice to know that your website’s members are human.
  • Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO!.
  • Login Configurator – Sick of looking at the WordPress logo on your website? Get your company logo on the WordPress registration / login page.
  • Multi Column Category List – Want to create a WordPress Page with a list of categories? See the Recipes Category list at the bottom of this page. Requires the use of WordPress Page Templates and some custom coding.
  • Page Links To – This plugin allows you to point a post or page to any URL you want. Very useful if you want a WordPress Page to link an external URL.
  • Simple Login Widget – If you are using WordPress as a CMS, this simple widget will show just the login/logout and register links instead of all the RSS and Meta Feed crap.
  • WP Render Blogroll Links – Display your blogroll or WordPress links on a page like this!

Plugins Used on the Free Congregation website

  • Drop-down menu – Add a cool drop down style page menu to your WordPress theme.
  • Event Calendar – After a ton of searching for the perfect Event Calendar plugin – this one is the BEST!
  • Inline Posts – Allows you to include dynamic WordPress posts in your static WordPress pages (and in other posts). See an example here.
  • Simple:Press Forum – as far as I can tell (and there are not many to choose from) the best WordPress Forum Plugin. See a brand new installation of this WordPress Forum plugin here.
Check out some of our other favorite Free WordPress Plugins.
Watercolor 2.01 by Tim Sainburg

WordPress Themes I Removed

One of the design purposes here is to showcase funky CMS themes which are my favorites from the WordPress.org > Extend Free Themes Directory. My website (at least this one) has many fat features, one of which is using a sidebar Theme Switcher.  I have installed the Theme Switcher Reloaded WordPress plugin which lets you flip between all the installed WP themes on this website. The theme switcher is a sidebar widget which displays multiple theme designs and for this website needs to be active in “sidebar 1″ – always.

Continue reading →

Coppermine Photo Gallery & WordPress

I have spent a fair amount of time looking for a plugin to display my Coppermine Photo Gallery images inside the WordPress GUI. As of today, the best sources on this include Rue Plumet’s CoppermineSC plugin and Cyberspice’s WordPress Coppermine Widget. I have passed over the

CoppermineSC plugin because it is not user friendly enough for my CMS WordPress environment – my website clients need to be able to use a plugin without ANY coding expience.

The best choice is the WordPress Coppermine Widget. The plugin author is currently updating the plugin code to add an option to pop-up the coppermine photo in a new window which would fix a bug I found using IE7.

Another very cool bit of informationwhich I must share is an excellent forum post detailing how to port a WordPress theme into a Coppermine Photo Gallery theme. See an example theme I ported for a clients website – use the sidebar navigation to switch from the client’s “picture gallery” (Coppermine) to their WordPress themed page links.