Plugin Page
Organize Series
Description
The Organize Series plugin helps with the organization and presentation of articles/posts you write as part of a series. It helps make it easier for readers of your blog to discover all the series you’ve written and also to easily find post that are part of the same series.
Features
- Integrates with the category system of WordPress
- Robust administration options menu for the plugin that allows you to control much of the output of the plugin to suit your own tastes without having to open the plugin file and edit things manually.
- Automatic tag insert for displaying a "container" on the full post page that will show what series it belongs to and other articles in the series.
- A custom .css file (orgSeries.css) accompanying the plugin to make it easier to make changes in the display of various elements (for those familiar with .css).
- Two simple tags for easy insertion in your theme if you want to have more control over the way your series are presented.
- Tested on and works in WordPress 2.0.6-2.1
- Makes managing and viewing the series you write on your blog a whole lot easier.
Demo
– http://www.unfoldingneurons.com/category/series/
– http://www.unashamedsermons.com/category/series/
Future Plans
- Streamline the creation/editing of series by implementing a version of category icons right in the plugin code and making everything work more intuitively (possibly by including series creation right in on the write/edit post screen)
- Make positioning of various auto-tags selectable in the plugin options page
- Add the ability to edit the .css style via the options page (thus making it possible to tweak everything about the plugin via the options page without having to go into any of the .php files.)
- Create an option to "hide" series categories from the core template tags for listing categories and along with this create a template tag to display all the series that have been written as a list for display anywhere on the blog.
- Create a template tag for displaying a "feature" series.
- Better documentation
- Write a series of articles describing all the various ways this plugin can be used
- Write a series of articles showcasing various people who are using this plugin.
Review
Organize Series is a plugin I haven’t given a complete test, but intend to do so as part of the series I run on my tech blog. It is also strange that I haven’t implemented it yet!
Anyway, the plugin does what it says it will do and that is help you run a series on your WordPress blog.
Installing and using this plugin however isn’t for total beginners to WordPress, but with a little patience this can be done, because the author has detailed the instructions very clearly on a the plugin page. Kudos for that!
The installation requires you to create a category for your series, feed the category ID to the plugin via the Options page and copy a category template file to your theme and maybe customize the look of it to fit your blog.
For more advanced users, the plugin provides a good number of template tags that you can use to customize the posts of the series. This ensures a perfect integration with your blog, limited by your imagination (and what the plugin provides 😉 )
Overall, the plugin is impressive. I would like some feedback from users who are using the plugin already on their blogs.
How has it been performing for you? How easy was it to setup the plugin and the series on your blog. Do put in the URLs for the series so that we can take a look.
Thanks for the review Ajay. I too am interested in how it’s been performing for others — I’m always looking for ways to improve it 🙂
I just had a quick look at the examples and there is one thing missing: there was no link from one part of the series to the other parts..
This would be the most important feature for me. I mean if somebody stumbles in from google I would like to give him a chance to navigate to the other parts of the series…
@ovizii
The examples take you to the series “table of contents” pages. That is, the page that lists all the different series on the blog. So, to see the list of posts in that series you just click on the series you want to read.
If someone stumbles in from google they most likely will land on the post page in which case there is a box that lists all the other posts in the series.
Ajay, I also meant to add, if you need help with using this plugin on your tech blog let me know. I’d be glad to assist. One cool thing with this plugin is that you can add it to an existing blog with a series of article and with a few tweaks of the category structure, reorganize all your existing “article series” categories into the new structure. You don’t even have to edit each post and add it to a new category! Of course, this isn’t for the fainthearted (especially on blogs with lots of posts) but definitely does cut down on the time it takes to implement!
The In-Series Plugin predates this and (while minus some of the bells & whistles) is pretty solid.
I’ve reviewed them both and I prefer the control in the In-Series Plugin as well.
Hi Darren,
Thanks for the offer.. I’m gonna give it a shot and buzz you in case I am stuck.
@SR and Lorelle, will take a look at this plugin as well…