Plugin Review: WordPress Filter

Do you have filters set in your email program, be it Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or even Outlook? Anyone who uses filters knows how their ability to improve productivity by getting basic things done easily.

So, why not take the power of filters and integrate it with our very own WordPress? This is what Matt Walters’ plugin WordPress Filter hopes to establish.

Description:

WordPress Filter is a comprehensive post filtering & template system. It allows the user to define a set of simple “Catches” (criteria) to be met by a post, and then have a set of “Actions” applied to the post.

This plugin takes action whenever a Post is published inside of WordPress (including Posts coming in via XMLRPC). It can be used for many tasks, including creating your own mini plugins without ever having to leave your WordPress administration area.

Screenshot:

Review:

Working with this plugin is extremely easy. Follow the installation instructions and head over to Settings > WordPress Filter and begin to add your filters. Adding a filter is extremely simple. You can switch to the Add Filter tab to create filters.

You have the option to select the following criteria to choose from:

• Post Title: Equals
• Post Content: Equals
• Post Content: Contains
• Post Content: Doesn’t Contain
• Post Excerpt: Equals
• Post Excerpt: Contains
• Post Excerpt: Doesn’t Contain
• Post: Has Tag
• Post: Has Category
• Custom Field: Exists
• Post Author: Equals
• Comment Status: Equals
• Ping Status: Equals

Having set one or more criteria, you then need to choose what action(s) you want taking place when the criteria is met. (Yup, I know that’s how filters work 😉 )

The plugin gives you the following options currently:

• Title: Prepend
• Title: Replace
• Title: Append
• Content: Prepend
• Content: Replace
• Content: Append
• Excerpt: Prepend
• Excerpt: Replace
• Excerpt: Append
• Tag(s): Add
• Tag(s): Remove
• Category(ies): Add
• Category(ies): Remove
• Comment Status: Equals
• Ping Status: Equals

Having set this, go about the normal publishing of your posts. Whenever a post is published, the plugin matches it against the criteria lists and takes the appropriate action. This is extremely useful when you are blogging a series or if you are posting from your mobile device.

Then again, it works perfectly, if you want to use shortcuts while blogging and let the plugin do the donkey work.

Future Plans:

I’m going to quote the author on this one.

I am hoping to continue to expand on the Actions available to be taken when a post matches the criteria.  Sending an email has been suggested as an example.  I would also like to expand to allow more complex actions to be taken place.  For example, instead of only prepending, appending, and replacing the Title for instance.  I’d like to give the user the ability to just replace a word or set of words within the title, not the entire title itself.
As well, I am currently working on the ability to Import/Export filtersets (pairs of Catches (Criteria) and Actions).  This would allow users to release their own mini-plugins without necessarily having to know any PHP or any of the WordPress backend.

What would you like to see added to the plugin? Or what would make you use it? What other actions would you like to see added to the plugin?

Would you like to review this plugin?

Due to lack of sufficient entries this week, we won’t be posting the reader reviews. So, it’s in queue for next week. This week, you’ll have yet another plugin to review, viz. this one.

As usual, you’ll have until Saturday, 28th March, 11:59pm EST to submit your review of any one of the following plugin to us.

• Referrer Detector – (Our Review)
• MailPress – (Our Review)
• Post Avatar – (Our Review)
• Yawasp (Yet Another WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin) – (Our Review)
• Autoclose – (Our Review)
• WP Mollom – (Our Review)
• WordPress Filter

Send in your email to submissions AT wltc DOT net with the following information:

Subject line of the email: [APAD Plugin Review]:plugin name. Replace plugin name with the name of the plugin you reviewed.

Content of the Email:

1. URL of the review on your blog. Make sure this is a direct link to the post
2. An excerpt of your post. Maximum 50 words. This will be used by us.