5 WordPress 3.0 CMS Plugins You Need to Know  About

Due to popular demand, I’ve added another list of premier WordPress CMS plugins for use specifically those trargeted at tapping into the new 3.0 features we’re all so excited about. That’s right, I’m talking built-in post types, the sliced bread for all you WordPress CMS gurus.

1. Easy Post Types

Easy Post Types by New Signature Labs provides a simple visual interface for creating the new WordPress 3.0 Post Types. It also allows you to create your own custom meta boxes for use in your custom post types.

2. Custom Post Type UI & WP Post Type UI

Custom Post Type UI by Web Dev Studios is what I’ve currently been using. It’s a simple visual interface for creating custom post types, much like Easy Post Types. With this plugin you can quickly create custom taxonomies for use within a post type, something that Easy Post Types doesn’t seem to currently offer. You cannot, however, create meta boxes or custom fields for your post types. Combine this with Verve Meta Boxes and you have a heavy hitting post type creation combination.

A branch of the Custom Post Type UI project is also available over at CodeWork, it’s called WP Post Type UI. The goal is to create a similar setup that uses the traditional, simplified WordPress UI.

3. Contemplate

Contemplate by Press Coders is a new plugin that allows us to modularizing snippets of content across an entire site. I’ve seen this approach used in Business Catalyst, and if used correctly I know it can be a highly effective way to maintain a large scale site with repeating content. I believe there’s also a Contemplate Drupal module out there too. Using Contemplate you can store a snippet of HTML in one centralized options page, and then reference that snippet in the TinyMCE editor, or widgetized sidebar, anywhere in the site. If you change the HTML on the options page, it will change throughout the site wherever a snippet is reference. Right now the repository shows this as being supported up to 2.8, but I recently heard from the author that full 3.0 support is in place, giving it the potential to be a viable plugin for use into the future.

4. Front End Editor

Front End Editor by Scribu.net allows you to provide your administrators with a simple way to edit the content of their WordPress site inline, while browsing the site. I’ve seen this done within other CMS’s, such as the small yet powerful Unify system, and it makes editing things much easier and faster.

5. Multiple Post Thumbnails

As advertised, Multiple Post Thumbnails adds the ability to add multiple post thumbnails to a post type. This allows you to have more than one Featured Image on a post or page.

6. Bonus! WP-Table Reloaded

This beast will allow you to easily manage tabular data outside of the WYSIWYG editor using a robust table management interface. Once you’ve created and entered data into a table, you can enable JavaScript/jQuery sorting, style odd or even rows, and even export the data as a CSV, HTML or XML file. CSV, HTML, or XML Imports are also allowed during table creation.

Have a cool CMS plugin I need to check out? Let me know.

Still want more?

These sites can help…

  1. Essential Plugins for WordPress 3.0
  2. WordPress Plugin Releases for 07/04
  3. WordPress Plugin Releases for 06/27
  4. New WordPress Plugins tagged with “CMS”

Meet the Author

Kevin Leary, WordPress Consultant

I'm a freelance web developer and WordPress consultant in Boston, MA with 17 years of experience building websites and applications. View a portfolio of my work or request an estimate for your next project.