12 Essential Plugins that Extend WordPress as a CMS
Over the past couple of years WordPress has grown into much more than just a blogging platform. People are now using it as a CMS (Content Management System) to power many different types of websites. Using WordPress more as a standard CMS often requires some creative thinking when building themes and setting up the structure of categories and content. In this article we present to you 12 very useful plugins that will give your WordPress install extended CMS functionality.
Pods CMS
Pods is a CMS framework for WordPress. It’s a plugin that sits on top of WordPress, allowing you to add and display your own content types.
Flutter
Flutter is a plugin that gives the administrator custom write panels with the ability to add radio buttons, file uploads, image uploads, checkboxes, etc. Another key feature of this plugin is simplified templating.
WP-CMS Post Control
WP-CMS Post Control not only allows you to hides unwanted items like custom fields, trackbacks, revisions etc. but also gives you a whole lot more control over how WordPress deals with creating content! This helps you use WordPress more like a CMS, alowing you to totally customise what your authors see and use.
PageMash
PageMash give you an Ajax interface allows you to drag-and-drop the pages into the order you like, modify the page structure by dragging a page to become a child or parent and toggle the page to be hidden from output.
Role Scoper
Role Scoper is a comprehensive access control solution, giving you CMS-like control of reading and editing permissions. Assign restrictions and roles to specific pages, posts or categories.
CForms II
CForms II is a powerful and feature rich form plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.
Scissors
Scissors adds cropping, resizing, and rotating functionality to WordPress’ image upload and management dialogs. This plugin also allows automatic resizing of images when they are uploaded and supports automatic and manual watermarking of images.
TinyMCE Advanced
TinyMCE Advanced adds 15 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras.
Side Content
Side Content enables you to define a set of widgets which are effectively placeholders. Each one is empty until you assign content to it when editing a page. This enables you to extend the content of the page into the sidebar.
Multi-level Navigation
Multi-level Navigation adds an SEO friendly, accessible dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog.
Dashboard Pages
Rather than have a majority of the dashboard widgets focused on new blog posts and comments, Dashboard Pages puts the sites page listing front and center in the dashboard for easier and quicker content management.
Custom Admin Branding
The Custom Admin Branding Plugin allows you to re-brand the WordPress login screen, the admin header and footer with your own custom images.
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38 comments
stooni
October 29, 2009Here can finde other good themes
http://designdisease.com/
—- Stooni
Sander
October 29, 2009I would also suggest the remove top level catogories plugin, as found in this plugin http://fortes.com/projects/wordpress/top-level-cats/
Rilwis
October 29, 2009Thank you very much for this cool list. I like the Pod plugin most
, it’s really useful for creating more type of posts.
I’ve created a plugin Private Messages For WordPress. How do you think about it? It’s unmissable tool for a real CMS.
ThemeDigital
October 29, 2009Awesome list – Flutter and the Custom Admin Branding plugins are really useful for client work
Thanks!
designfollow
October 29, 2009thanks for this pluqins
akagitano
October 29, 2009I will also suggest wpml.org that transform wordpress in a multilingual content management system.
dave
October 29, 2009great list, bookmarked and off to try out pagemash now. I’ve found tdo miniforms to be invaluable for clever form to post functionality in CMS type sites I’ve built in the past: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tdo-mini-forms/
krike
October 29, 2009really nice, tinymce and pagemash was exactly what I was looking for
Dharak Sandeep
October 29, 2009Cool, This is nice post for word press themes. Thanks a lot for sharing wordpress themes.
Shanker Bakshi
October 29, 2009Good Share, i need to build a static website for one of my client next week , surely will fill in couple of plugins from here into that.
mkjones
October 29, 2009Great posts but Flutter is buggy and Pods is a little too far removed from the WordPress flow IMO.
I’d recommend ‘More Fields’ or ‘Custom Field Template’ which both do the same:
http://mkjones.co.uk/wordpress/2-wordpress-alternatives-until-flutter-is-ready
Ray Gulick
October 29, 2009I thought I knew about most of the CMS-enhancing WordPress plugins, but you’ve listed 3-4 I never heard of and can’t wait to check out. Thanks for this post.
zack
October 29, 2009I’d stay away from Cforms — it’s a beast of a plugin that doesn’t support automatic upgrading (and it prompts for an upgrade what seems to be every other day). Contact Forms 7 is much leaner, easy to customize, and painless to integrate.
kyle
October 29, 2009good post. I use most of those on my sites.
I also like the sidebar generator plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sidebar-generator/
Andrei
October 29, 2009Truly good. More NGO projects should use these
Waheed Akhtar
October 29, 2009Great list of CMS plugins. Never heard most of them. Would definitely give some of them a try.
Thanks for sharing
Ozh
October 29, 2009“WordPress as a CMS” bwahahaha.
Greg
October 29, 2009I like the list 2 thoughts/questions:
I found RoleScoper had too much going on and worst of all Does not uninstall nicely which to me is a HUGE negative. I use Role Manager now it’s quick and easy.
Flutter: I’ve tried this because it seems to have great potential. My only problem is that there is not much documentation on it to really get into it; however, if any one has a good resource on it that would be a great share
KDzyne
October 29, 2009Sweet list dude, thanks!
Noel Wiggins
October 30, 2009I really dig the PageMash one !
–
Thanks and Regards
Noel for Nopun.com
a professional graphic design studio
spoetnik
October 30, 2009WordPress as a CMS?? Why don’t just use a CMS then??
GIVISION | Jiri Mocicka
October 30, 2009Thanks for the WP-CMS Post Control.
lmjabreu
October 31, 2009Dear lord, hacking a blogging platform into a rudimentary cms.
Adam Hermsdorfer
November 1, 2009Good list. I’m going to try out the custom admin branding plugin.
yudhistira
November 2, 2009nice info, I’ll try it out thanks
Henning
November 3, 2009Yes, WordPress can run as a CMS! But there some changes to make – a site like http://www.prepaid-kreditkarte.com/ use WordPress.
leon
November 4, 2009I don’t understand why all ‘WP as a CMS plugins’-posts list Pagemash. It’s only compatible up to WP 2.7.1.
Gabi
November 6, 2009I don’t understand why people complain about using wordpress as a CMS, it manages content! Ok, it doesn’t have some of the functionality out the box as some of the other competitors do, however, this is an excellent product.!
Kevin Behrens
November 11, 2009If you read the Role Scoper FAQ, I clearly state that its functionality is entirely different from Role Manager. Role Scoper is all about assigning category-specific or page-specific restrictions and roles. This brings a lot of implications and options. Role Manager / Capability Manager simply changes the capability set for blog-wide WordPress roles. If that’s all you want, the solution is to install RM/CM and not Role Scoper
I don’t know what Greg meant about not uninstalling nicely. In 18 months of release, that has not been a complaint I’ve heard. I will check with him directly. If anyone else has a problem, feel free to leave a detailed description in the Role Scoper support forum.
Michelle
November 18, 2009Thank you for this information. Lends a little insight in some areas.
InspiredCSS
November 22, 2009This is a great list and just what i’m looking for. Thanks for the information
Nina Anthony
November 27, 2009I’m researching forms plugins so appreciated the info about cFormsII. @Zack: I appreciate your feedback about cForms complexity and will check out Contact Forms 7. I also really like Kiernan O’Shea’s calendar plugin and would appreciate any feedback about that plugin.
waqas
December 4, 2009nice collection
Shahzad Hassan
February 1, 2010thanks …using all tips in my blog..keep it up..
nice posts
Tristan Botly
February 25, 2010FYI Guys
If you would like to display your pages in a windows explorer style drop down on your dashboard then I built this plugin:
http://www.tristanbotly.com/projects/easily-navigate-pages-on-dashboard/
Any feedback or issues would be really helpful on the comments section thanks.
Tris
Jason Pelker
March 5, 2010You missed a very important plugin I found last week–CMS Press: http://vocecommunications.com/services/web-development/wordpress/plugins/cms-press/ .
It’s not in the repository, but it gives you the ability to create and manage custom content types and taxonomies for your WordPress site (introduced in versions 2.8-2.9).
It’s basically the precurser to built-in functionality that’ll be included in 3.0 and the missing piece to the CMS puzzle.
Erwin Caravana
July 11, 2010Thanks for the list with pictures. Made it real easy to find which plugins that I was missing. I found atleast 4 new plugins here. Nice work.
Shepdaddy
October 8, 2010Thanks for the posts. I use WP as a CMS all the time and some of these plugins look useful.