I have checked out Pods and agree that's likely the best option out there for most customized scenarios. The fact that it allows you to create entirely new post types, rather than building on top of current "Pages" and "Posts" can be more intuitive for CMS users, and better for database performance to my understanding.

The last time I checked out the Pods CMS plugin I found the interface a unintuitive and a bit more difficult than some of the other options out there. I've heard that Pods UI is supposed to be a solution to this.

Lately I've been using Flutter, and love the ability to duplicate Write Panels and custom fields. Can Pods handle that sort of thing?

Thanks for the post, it's very helpful. I'll have to explore pods a little more.

It's also awesome that you can share or save your different pods, templates and helpers through the "Package Manager", and that you can set your whole pods customization as a plugin.

Links for going deeper:
Intro video: http://wordpress.tv/2009/10/30/pods-cms-basics/
PodsCMS User Guide: http://pods.uproot.us/codex/
PodsUII User Guide:http://ui.podscms.org/
Video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW4pOjJAdcw

I certainly think you can accomplish this with podsCMS and podsUI
With these you could create a section in their dashboard to add custom music albums, event dates, etc… you name it. The great thing is that you can make your pods implementation a plugin in itself which then you could share accross your WMPU network.

Check this links
Intro video: http://wordpress.tv/2009/10/30/pods-cms-basics/
podsCMS User Guide: http://pods.uproot.us/codex/
podsUI User Guide: http://ui.podscms.org/user-guide/
Another 5 part video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW4pOjJAdcw

I found pods because when I was researching on custom fields and what they were.

Pods seems like a far better idea if it's not just a couple of custom fields you want.

PodsUI extends the podsCMS functionality and makes it really easy to create custom menus on the dashboard to start adding different custom content types as "Add movie" "Add album". You set the different columns for each content type, and then format the output with templates. You can even let users update some of the fields on the frontend. It's genius!!

The other great thing is that you can create your own set of content types and enable/disable it (and share it) as a plugin.

You all should really check it out to build complex solutions with WP.

Here are the best resources I've followed. I love screencasts!!

podsCMS User guide: http://pods.uproot.us/codex/
podsUI User guide: http://ui.podscms.org/user-guide/

This should be the best starting point: http://wordpress.tv/2009/10/30/pods-cms-basics/

Here's the beginning of a 5 part series in youTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW4pOjJAdcw

From what I've seen Flutter has a nice feature set, but I remember it being a little tough to setup compared to some of the others. It was also a little lacking when it came to documentation. This was a year or two ago, so I'm sure things have changed.

In general, did you find it easy to setup?

Thanks for replying.

As I mentioned I have tried your highly recommended plugin (and read your article as well), but I think there is a conflict with CForms plugin.

My custom fields panels are now done and so is the template for it all to fit into.

I am now hacking away at this tutorial – http://thedeadone.net/how-to/tinymce-tdomf/ – to see if I can get tinyMCE on the textarea input.

I know absolutely nothing about php and JS, so I just pasted the whole lot in the function.php and it seemed to work until the page refreshed automatically, then error messages came good and proper.

If your interested here is the code for the new custom fields http://pastie.org/677275 if you feel like being a cyber-detective.

Also, did you know that if you use 'add_meta_box' you then lose the ability to use 'the_meta' and 'get_post_custom' both keys and values! I read it on their forum.

Oh well, chat soon

You may want to check out this post:

http://www.kevinleary.net/advanced-content-manage...

You should be able to complete your requests using the Custom Field Template plugin. That post is basically of how-to walk through showing you how to get started. It does involve some PHP work, but it's much less daunting than the hands on dirty approach.

Thanks for reading, if you ever have any suggestions for posts please drop me a line

Great blog and good follow up comments – something most bloggers forget about!

Regarding the above, I seemed to find you recently by searching for help with 'custom fields', 'adding new meta boxes' and 'making new admin panels'.

I would love to go down the 'hands dirty' approach but being a php newbie I'm at a loss. Here is the final goal. Two extra 'custom field/panels' in the write page area with tinyMCE editor and then the input is saved along with the post and becomes the post meta (from there I have done, due to testing with normal custom fields). That's it!

Any ideas. It is the tinyMCE that is making me use plugins and I try to keep them to a minimum where possible. I have already tried More Fields and Custom Field Template, but there seems to be conflicts and weird results are noticed.

I look forwards to any ideas!