One of the things that strike people as somewhat limiting in the WordPress installation is the post list in the administration interface. Sure, you have the power to search the posts, but it lacks any kind of paging or category browsing options whatsoever. The hue and cry have resounded recently, so I decided to leverage some of my experience doing similar things for comments and make a plugin to provide some needed functionality. This is a sneak peak at that plugin as it currently exists for Posts. Note that I intend similar functionality for Pages.
Why am I doing a “sneak peek” instead of just releasing the damned things? Feedback. I want to hear from people what additional things I should put in to the plugin before it goes out the door. So, take a gander at this image (click on it for a full-size one).
That shows the paging options available. It’s identical to those available in the paged comment editing plugin so if you’ve seen that you know what to expect. See anything missing? How about this one.
That shows the level of browsing and searching support that’s available. Seem to fit the bill? Note that I don’t want to “cram everything but the kitchen sink” in there, so a suggestion to be able to browse by everything under the sun probably won’t be acted upon, but useful suggestions almost certainly will.
So, sling those suggestions into the comments if you would.
12 Responses to “A sneak peek at the “Enhanced View” plugin”
Some of you may ask why I don’t replace the existing “Posts” menu option like I did with the comments. The answer is that, due to the vagaries of the WordPress menu handling even in 1.5.1, it is currently almost impossible to do for that particular menu. I could replace the “Pages” menu item with my custom view, but it would be a bit non-intuitive to have the plugin create a new menu for “Posts” but hijack the existing “Pages” menu item for pages. Sorry about that.
Looks like what I’ve been wanting! The only thing I can think of that you might want to add is a search by author.
Looks great. When I first started with 1.2, it took me a while to figure out that searching by month was the only good way to manage posts. This should help tons!
I was considering it and you pushed me over the edge… it’s in.
There is a way to hijack Posts. I’ve coded up a mockup that I can send to you. It doesn’t have the ‘show X posts’ box or list all the ‘paged pages’. All it has is a previous and next link, but I imagine you could fix it up with the additional content.
Let me know. You’ve got my email and I’m sometimes on #wordpress.
This looks very promising. I look forward to you releasing this. Anything plugins made to “enhance” the admin panel are welcome in my book.
My only suggestion is maybe, if it is possible, to have a small preview of each post… Before I had to scrub my server I had thousands of posts my dozens of users, and when i would take a vacation I would see dozens upon dozens of posts, and going through each post one by one is annoying… But maybe that is just me…
And like Shawn said, anything that adds funcionality to the admin area is great in my book. I think 80% of my installed plugins are only seen in the admin area. =)
Brilliant. Exactly what I’ve been looking for. I see that others are looking for sort by author and other features. This would be brilliant enough for me, and the many, but if you are taking requests….trying to push you over the edge, I know….it would be neat to consider a sort/search by post ID#. Had several incidents today where I needed that, but I’m asking too much.
This is brilliant. And much needed. GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!!
thanks!!!!!!
Just noticed the page option and the Show # of Posts – what expression am I allowed to use here that expands the four letter words of joy and extreme happiness? Abso-frackin’-marvy-licious!
Totally brilliant and wonderful. Want it NOW more than ever!
I’m a huge fan of sortable columns. They let me see the information how I want to see it. Especially if they can be combined with filters like ‘browse category’. I can filter to the category and then sort by name to quickly zero in on a post.
This is great. I be using it as soon as it’s released. Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Here’s where I stand in terms of functionality.
After hearing back from mdawaffe I’m converting over to his method of adding content to the existing “Posts” display. It’s exceedingly clever and tickles my “sneaky” bone perfectly so I have to do it that way. Unfortunately I had precisely zero minutes to work on it this weekend so I have a ways to go in the conversion.
Sortable columns will make it in. As with the author thing I was already considering it. I’m iffy on the sortable ID only because it’s not easily added, but I’m going to attempt to get it in as well.
The post preview will not make it in… since I’m working within the confines of the existing “Posts” view, adding a new column is not really feasible. I’ll keep it in mind for the future — perhaps making the title column be an URL to the post and having the title attribute of that URL be an excerpt of the post so that a hover will display the excerpt — but it won’t be in the initial release.
I’ll likely be rolling an enhanced version of the Paged Comment Editing plugin in as well, with additional features like the column sorting that the Posts will have. What’s good for the goose, etc, etc.
My goal is that this one plugin will modify the existing “Posts”, “Pages”, and “Comments” views with my versions. Barring any technical problems that is what will happen. The only unfortunate thing is that this will require a version 1.5.1 of WordPress as there are some known plugin functionality bugs in 1.5 Strayhorn that I can’t work around. What will likely happen is I’ll have a version check to see which version is running and if it’s 1.5 Strayhorn I’ll only modify the “Posts” page and nothing else. If it’s 1.5.1 — including 1.5.1 alphas and nightlies for you early-adopters like myself — (and I can get it working technically correct) you’ll get the whole ball of wax.
Oh, wow, oh, my, wow again. This is so far above anything that I considered when I posted my plea and beg. This feature will revolutionize the power of the concept of “Manage” in WordPress.
I know this is taking precious time away from your life, but it is so awesome. We will have to make a special hall of fame just for you. With a little corner for Michael to share some of the limelight. So I request the great cosmic mcmuffin to eliminate all pounding drums and haunting threats and surround you with glory for such incredible work.
You are a star!!! Thank you.