Tag Archive for: Edit Flow

Best WordPress Plugins – Miscellaneous

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WordPress is an incredibly flexible, easy-to-set-up and manage web publishing platform that has been downloaded more than 60 million times since its launch in 2003. As of August 2013, WordPress is used by nearly 19 percent of the top 10 million websites. The content management system’s popularity has spawned thousands – nearly 30,000 in fact – of plugins that expand the basic functionality of WordPress. At Connect4, we routinely use 45 WordPress plugins. We use some plugins, for security, admin, and SEO, for example, on nearly every site we create.

The problem with WordPress plugins is that many of them present as much trouble as they do opportunity on a website. Not all plugins play friendly in the same sandbox. And not all plugin developers continue to provide updates for their plugins. Plugins that haven’t been updated in a year make for a security risk. So make sure you consult with your webmaster or web developer prior to installing any of these plugins. It’s always a good idea to make sure you have a backup before trying out a new plugin.

Today we are going to talk about essential wordpress plugins that fall into the miscellaneous category.

Miscellaneous

  1. WP Greet box
  2. Co-Authors Plus
  3. Print Friendly and PDF Button
  4. nRelate Related Content
  5. Edit Flow
  6. WordPress Editorial Calendar
  7. Custom Post Donations
  8. TablePress

WP Greet Box

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to tweet the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with WPMU and various WordPress cache plugins (so you do not have to sacrifice speed).

 

Download WP Greet Box

Co-Authors Plus

Assign multiple bylines to posts, pages, and custom post types via a search-as-you-type input box. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s archive page and in their feed. Co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is core behavior).

 

Download Co-Authors Plus

Print Friendly and PDF Button

This plugin by Joost de Valk (developer of the wildly successful WordPress SEO by Yoast) automatically creates printer friendly and PDF versions of your pages without the hassle of having to create a print CSS file. No coding, hacking or programming required. Simply install the Print Friendly & PDF plugin, activate, and choose settings for full customization. It also gives your user the ability to remove images and paragraphs of text, so they really only have to print exactly what they want.

Download Print Friendly and PDF Button

nRelate Related Content

This is the best way to display related content from your site, and/or your blogroll. Nrelate is not just another related posts plugin. What’s particularly cool is that the plugin continuously analyzes your website content and displays other related posts from your website. This ultimately leads to higher site page-views, and a better user experience.

 

Download nrelate Related Content

Edit Flow

Edit Flow empowers you to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. Edit Flow is modular so you can customize it to your needs:

  • Calendar – A convenient month-by-month look at your content.
  • Custom Statuses – Define the key stages to your workflow.
  • Editorial Comments – Threaded commenting in the admin for private discussion between writers and editors.
  • Editorial Metadata – Keep track of the important details.
  • Notifications – Receive timely updates on the content you’re following.
  • Story Budget – View your upcoming content budget.
  • User Groups – Keep your users organized by department or function

 

Download Edit Flow

WordPress Editorial Calendar

Did you remember to write a post for next Tuesday? What about the Tuesday after that? WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

 

 

Download WordPress Editorial Calendar 

Custom Post Donations

This WordPress plugin will allow you to create unique customized PayPal donation widgets to insert into your WordPress posts or pages and accept donations. WP Plugin for creating custom PayPal donation widgets. PayPal for WordPress. WordPress ecommerce.

Donation Widget Types

  • Standard Donation – One editable donation amount field.(DEMO)
  • Fixed + Additional Donation – One fixed donation amount with an additional editable donation amount field. (DEMO)
  • Per Item + Additional Donation – Fixed donation amount per item with an additional editable donation amount field. (DEMO)
  • Per Item + Additional + Fixed Donation – Same as above, but includes a fixed additional amount. Possibly a shipping charge. (Pro version only)
  • Campaign Donation – Donations plus Fields for Name, Address, Occupation and Employer. Meets Federal Election Commission (FEC) requirements. (Pro version only)

Download Custom Post Donations

TablePress

Even though advances in HTML and CSS have moved web developers far beyond the use of tables for organizing website content, every once in a while you have a need for actually displaying content in a table. The most common scenario is if you need to set up a pricing table. That’s where TablePress becomes a very useful WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) WordPress plugin.

 

 

Download TablePress

 

How to Improve the WordPress Admin User Interface

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Initially WordPress was just for blogs. But now WordPress commands roughly half of the website content management market, taking over market share from Joomla and Drupal and other content management systems. This is mainly because WordPress is so easy to use and administer. The one drawback – and a significant reason why many still use Joomla – is the admin user interface. The admin area is the heart of any WordPress-powered site – it’s where everything is controlled – posts, pages, media, comments, etc. – A site with more than 10 pages and galleries can be difficult to manage in WordPress. Difficult, that is, without adding some of the following plugins. Plugins allow you to customize only what you need.

For example, suppose you have someone on your staff composing blogs for you. The out-of-the-box WordPress admin interface does not have a robust feature for editorial control and review.

Today, we will introduce you to a number of fantastic plugins that will enhance your WordPress website in some way. These admin plugins are all free to download from the official WordPress plugin directory and will help protect your website, give you more control over users or automate the editorial process. As always, we recommend that you consult with your website administrator prior to installing any new plugins since they can occasionally conflict with each other and break your website.

Post Scheduling & Management

1. Editorial Calendar

This is the perfect plugin for managing the scheduling of your posts. Editorial Calendar adds a calendar page to the post section of your admin area. Each day shows the posts that are scheduled for that day. Multiple posts are listed in chronological order.

Watch the Video to learn more

Editorial Calendar: Download

2. Peter’s Collaboration Emails

This is a great plugin for managing the editorial flow of blog posts. When a contributor submits a post for review, the plugin emails the specified users to let them know there is a post to review. Once the post is approved, the contributor gets an email letting them know it has been accepted. If the post is changed back to “Draft,” the contributor is advised that it has not been accepted and is sent a link to edit the article.

Peter’s Collaboration Emails: Download

3. Peter’s Post Notes

On its own, this plugin adds a panel to the sidebar of the add and edit post / page screens so that users can add notes for themselves or others and keep track of these notes. Whenever you save a post, you can type a note to be displayed along with the post in the edit view. When used with Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 and up, the notes are sent along with the e-mails in the collaboration workflow. There is also a general and private notes system on the dashboard.

On the dashboard, there’s also a summary of the most recent notes. By default this shows notes by all people on relevant posts / pages. There is also a general and private notes system.

peter's_post_notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter’s Post Notes: Download

4. Content Audit

Content Audit lets you and your staff easily review old content and determine if it’s still relevant. The plugin works with posts, pages and media. You can automatically set content as outdated after a set period of time and notify post authors about it. Content can be marked as redundant, outdated or trivial. You can also mark content as needing a review of SEO or style.

content-audit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content Audit: Download

5. Edit Flow

Edit Flow empowers you to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. It’s feature rich and comes with a calendar, custom statuses, editorial comments, notifications, story budget, and user groups.

edit-flow

 

 

 

 

Edit Flow: Download

General Admin

6. Adminimize

This is a great plugin that let’s you hide parts of the admin dashboard that you deem “unnecessary”.  You can change back-end options; global options; dashboard options; write options for posts, pages and custom page types; link options; and menu options.

Adminimize: Download

Security

7. WordFence Security

This is an incredibly valuable plugin that is completely free. WordFence includes a firewall, anti-virus scanning, cellphone sign-in (two factor authentication), malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence is the only WordPress security plugin that can verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups.

wordfence-security

WordFence Security: Download

Summary

The great thing about WordPress is that the default installation doesn’t overwhelm you with options. This allows users to choose the plugins that best meet our particular needs and disregard those that don’t.

You might find that some of these plugins can be disabled after you use them. I recommend reviewing your situation every month or so and remove any plugins that aren’t being used regularly. Also it’s a best practice to remove any plugins that have not been updated (by the plugin developer) in at least a year. Old plugins increase the chance that someone can hack into your site. Update plugins regularly and delete plugins that you don’t use.