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.
Lorelle Says:March 21st, 2005 at 11:19 am
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.
ColdForged Says:March 21st, 2005 at 10:33 am
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.