WordPress › Support » Custom post types plugins : benchmark

nicomollet
Member
Posted 2 years ago #
WP3 is out and some plugins try to give a nice UI to manage custom types, taxonomies, and custom fields.

The goal is for example, to create with a UI, something like :
- Custom type : Movie
- Hierarchical taxonomy : Movie genre (in : action, romance, historical)
- Keyword taxonomy : Actors
- Custom fields :
  - Text field : Director
  - Date field : Release date
  - Upload file/image : Movie cover
  - Select field : Movie type (short movie, long movie)
I found 4 plugins that can do that, partially :

Easy post types > custom types, taxonomies, and custom fields.
Features / limitations :
- Only 1 field metabox by custom type.
- Taxonomies are not shared with other types
- No upload file field
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-post-types/

Custom post type UI > only custom types and taxonomies, but no custom field (buggy, last time I checked : 23/06/2010)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/

WP post type UI > only custom types and taxonomies, but no custom field (custom fields enabled by “Custom Field Template”)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-post-type-ui/

More types > still alpha version : only custom types (fields & taxonomiy with More fields & More taxonomies)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/more-types/

I eventually will write a benchmark of theses 4 plugins (and the ones to come), if anyone is interested in helping me with that ?
MichaelH
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

You might also look at:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cms-press/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-taxonomies-tools/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-field-taxonomies/
choibc
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

You also have to look at
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/more-fields/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/magic-fields/
nicomollet
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Thanks for your answers.
nicomollet
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Here is my benchmark of the following plugins :

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-post-types/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-post-type-ui/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cms-press/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-taxonomies-tools/

I only selected plugins that managed custom post types creation. It means the plugins related to taxonomies or fields only are excluded.

You will see at the bottom of the spreadsheet, compatibility with custom fields / meta boxes plugins.

See the benchmark as a spreadsheet :
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Am1DW8BAAHkZdFlvWjZUZ252U0ttMlM5OUN6U2g3a3c&hl=en&output=html

The final word on this benchmark, my personal choice would be Custom post type UI + Verve Meta Boxes.

I think I will benchmark some of the field plugins like Verve Meta Boxes or Magic Fields.
yumiam
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Great Nico !
Thank you for this sharing !
binarybit
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Sorry for this longer post but this is the only place I feel smart people might visit who can advise me to my taxonomy issue:

I am attempting to achieve something which I thought would be really simple with wordpress 3.0 but it seems to be far more complicated than I originally thought. My hope is that someone (maybe you: nicomollet) can correctly provide me some example code on how to achieve this.

In its most basic element lets just say that I am creating a custom post type for "news" which I have in place already. Now... all I want to really be able to do is create a simple drop down where the author selects the news "source". For example one entry would be the "The Washington Post".

Up to this point I think everything works perfectly fine but were my complication comes into play is that I want to associate a custom thumbnail image with each of these new sources.

Now... my hope was that I could setup each "new source" as a taxonomy entry so I could manage of all of them from one interface but it seems that each taxonomy can't have any custom meta-fields associated with it.

Just to clarify this once more: I believe the solution is creating a custom meta box with the ability to upload a image and associate it with a specific entry to specific taxonomy group (in this case news sources).

Naturally it would of course be possible to add such a meta box directly into the custom post type for "news" or hard code it into the post type but this won't work for me because news sources are being added all the time.

By being able to have custom fields associated with each taxonomy entry I would be able to just query the custom fields for that taxonomy and present the applicable image.

Am I loosing my mind here or is this really not possible? If not I would be shocked because there are so many areas where I would see such functions as highly valuable.

If ANYONE might be able to provide me with what I need to enter into my functions.php file to make this work I would GREATLY GREATLY appreciate it!

BTW - nicomollet... excellent writeup, this helped me out a great deal. The only thing I believe you did not cover which I was always curious about was the actual system load these plugins have when comparing them to one another and then comparing the use of using a plugin compared to writing the code in manually into your functions.php file... anyone have any comment on this? I am always worried about when systems like this start bogging down the entire site...

Thanks in advance to anyone who might respond here!
nicomollet
Member
Posted 2 years ago #
@binarybit :

Adding a custom field to a taxonomy is not a native feature for wordpress.
There may have some plugins enhancing a taxonomy,...

Anyway, one alternative way is :

Example, your taxonomy term "The Washigton post" has a slug which should be "the-washington-post".
Assuming you created an image name "the-washington-post.png" in your : wp-content/themes/yourtheme/newssources/the-washington-post.png

Now in your template "single-news.php", with :
```
$terms = wp_get_post_terms( $post->ID , "news_source","");
$first_term_slug = $terms[0]->slug;
$first_term_name = $terms[0]->name;
echo '<img src="wp-content/themes/yourtheme/newssources/'.$first_term_slug .'.png"/>'.$first_term_name;
```
I assume it's not that you wanted because, this way you can't upload the image with WordPress, and you have to upload it by FTP.
You also loose the thumbnail generation by WP which works great.
nicomollet
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

@binarybit :

Maybe this plugin will help you adding a thumbnail to taxonomies.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/taxonomy-images/
binarybit
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Thanks guys for your assistance here but I was just using that taxonomy image as one example.

Without going into a great deal of details... I need custom meta values for various areas. For example... regarding the Washington Post one... I wanted to have a page dedicated to that specific term on which I can show a bunch of meta fields/details on each news source (an image being one of them).

I am almost shocked that this is not available...?..!

I thought I read somewhere that the wp-users database and the categories database now allows for additional custom meta fields to be assigned... Am I wrong with this?

Anyone happen to know if I could just trick the "description" field into thinking its the "meta" data field, removing it from the admin UI and creating my own meta field essentially replicating the same functions used for post types?
taghaboy
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Great work Nico
thanks for the analyse
fusionserve
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Totally agree binarybit not being able to have custom fields on a custom taxonomy kills this for me
jeneenj
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Great analysis! thanks so much!

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