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Plugin Review: Post Templates

17
responses

What is Post Templates?

If you find yourself writing posts and pages on a regular basis which have the same structure, then this plugin would be a great addition to your WordPress plugin arsenal. Written by Vincent Prat, Post Templates plugin helps you save time blogging by letting you save and recall templates for writing posts and pages.

Screenshots

To create a template from scratch, you can use the new admin bar group “Templates.”

Post Templates Admin Bar

After clicking “New Post Template”, you will be brought to the edit template page.

Post Templates Edit Page

After you’re finished creating your template, you can create a post from that template through the template edit page itself or the template management page.

Post Templates Create Post from Template Edit Page

To create a template from an old post, you can use the “Templatize” button on the post listing page.

Post Templates Templatize Button

What I Like About It

What I love most about this plugin is simply what it does. I am a WordPress plugin developer myself so I do a lot of “plugin updated” blog entries that all have the same structure. Before this plugin, I mimicked this functionality by keeping my own templates as posts in draft status. The problem with my technique is the big blue “publish” button and my tendency to click on colorful things. Classifying these template posts as real templates and removing the publish button just makes sense. There will be no confusion between which posts are a templates and which posts are actual drafts ready to be published. In addition to these benefits, this plugin saves me a lot of time navigating, copying, and pasting my own version of post templates.

The next thing I like about this plugin is the seamless integration with the WordPress admin interface. Just activate the plugin and it looks like your WordPress installation was shipped with this feature. By that, I mean the user interface is quite intuitive and I didn’t need to read any documentation to figure out how to use the plugin.

Another cool thing about this plugin is that it keeps user roles in mind. Authors are allowed to view and use post templates. Editors are allowed to to view, use, create, edit, and delete post templates. Administrators are allowed to do all of those things plus modify plugin options.

Last, there is a support forum up for this plugin and Vincent seems to be quite responsive to questions.

Possible Areas of Improvement

As of version 3.3.0, here are some drawbacks I found in this plugin:

  • It would be nice to have an ability to import and export templates so that users can use the same templates on multiple blogs. Currently, the importer feature is really a converter which upgrades the old plugin’s version of templates to be compatible with the new version.
  • I also notice that custom fields are not saved for templates. I can definitely make use of custom fields in templates.
  • It might be useful to have a link to create a template from the edit post page. Currently, the only way to create a template from a post is through the post list page.
  • Assuming the previous request gets fulfilled, it might also be nice to have the ability to hide the “templatize” button on the post listing page. This is because I don’t think people create templates that often. The button is taking up space when it doens’t need to.

Final Words

If you want to save time writing the same type of posts/pages, you should definitely give Post Templates a try. I know I’m happy with it.

Are you currently using Post Templates? How do you like it? What additions would you like to see in this plugin?

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17
Responses

 

Comments

  1. Chip Bennett says:

    I absolutely love the Post Templates plugin!

    I have several different templates for posts that, prior to using this plugin, I had to take similar measures as the review author. In my case, I kept offline copies of the post template, or rolled a QuickTag (a sub-optimal method for something as complex as a post template).

    The plugin does exactly what it says it will do, which fortunately is exactly what I need it to do. It significantly increases my efficiency.

    I think this plugin should be a strong candidate for core functionality.

    • “I think this plugin should be a strong candidate for core functionality.”

      I agree.

      • AgentSmith says:

        Mos def! In one of the recent polls it was available as an option for the Feature-Wishlist and even before knowing of the plugin I voted for the mere concept of templates for posts.

  2. Jan Alvin says:

    Will it create duplicate contents? I mean, you just said that it will a structure (template) of a post. Right? The spiders might consider it as dupli-content. Or am I just seeing things? 🙂

  3. A.Hariri says:

    Sounds useful 😉

    Thanks for sharing. Going to give it a try on my new blog.

  4. I’m a bit confused about this plug-in.

    On my site I publish reviews for computer hardware/gadgets- usually 2-3 per week. With the design of my website all set through a theme, all I do is login to the backend create a new post, add pictures, select categories etc. and Publish. And the end result looks very much like any other article I’ve done. So how does this plug-in help?

    • What this plugin helps you do is quickly write posts with the same structure. For example my “plugin updated” posts have the following structure:

      Introduction text
      What’s new this release
      List of changes
      Where do I download, file bugs, etc.

      See an example here, “http://omninoggin.com/wordpress-posts/released-wp-greet-box-48/”. Using this plugin will help save me a lot of typing, copying, and pasting. 🙂

  5. This plugin sounds interesting.

  6. John P says:

    Great idea. I could really use this with posts which are essentially the same and are posted annually. However, I will wait until/if it supports creating templates off the edit posts page as you suggested.

  7. RavanH says:

    Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a real addition to WP.

    Anybody know how this plugin holds out on WPMU ?

  8. Hicham Maged says:

    This is an excellent plugin indeed that worthy to be shipped with the core features of future WP releases; 2.9 or 3.0 as 2.8 is already in the beta stage!

  9. Vicente says:

    Seems like Post Templates is not working in wordpress 2.8 – I have no entry field for the template name and no save button as well. Only by clicking on templatize and enter in the header field it is possible to create templates. Renaming is not possible and there is also some strange behaviour of the templatize button.

    The web site of the developer is offline as well – hopefully there will be a new version of the plugin soon. I need this thing! 🙂

    • Chip Bennett says:

      Seems to be working just fine for me, in 2.8.

      The Admin menu works, the template edit works, the new post from template works…

      • Vicente says:

        Thanks for the info. Which browser did you use? I am working in Firefox (latest Version). And how to rename a template or how to save? Can you post a screenshot of your template menu where renaming/saving is visible? Maybe I just didn’t find the controls…

        • Wes says:

          Just wanted to say that you’re not alone! I’m having the same problem with this plugin. Shame, because it seems like precisely what I need!

  10. Neutron says:

    I see that the free version is very basic 🙁 .. This should be a core functionality of wordpress



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