Sometimes, managing WordPress sites with lots of content can be a real pain in the ass. I mean, I love WordPress — and managing sites on WordPress really is usually very simple. But, when you’ve got a website robust with content and images, things can start to get a little hairy.
We’re working on a project right now that is a HUGE website. This client is a content-generating machine! In their case, the standard pages and media managers just won’t cut it.
Here’s a highlight of 3 awesome, free plugins we’re using to make managing their new WordPress site even easier.
Plugins to the Rescue
Wrangle Tons of Nested Pages
Like I said, this site has a ton of content. Most of it very well organized, with pages nested several levels deep. The WordPress page manager is just too cumbersome for a site of this size, so I found an awesome alternative.
The CMS Tree Page View plugin by Pär Thernström (@eskapism) takes you from a sprawling list spread out over several pages to a concise, expandable tree structure. You can even easily bulk-add subpages with just a few clicks. Drag and drop to organize your pages? Oh, hell yah!
I love that this plugin also supports custom post types — we haven’t tested it on one yet, but I can only assume it works as well for them as it does for pages.
Find Where the Heck You Saved That Page
In a perfect world, the page title, H1, navigation label, and what your brain will actually remember a page by, would all be the same thing. Buuut… this is the internet — and it’s not always ideal.
In this case, the clients have very carefully crafted their page titles for SEO, but they have a much easier time identifying those pages by navigation label, or sometimes even just an internal identifier. Enter the next awesome solution.
Admin Content Labels by Robert Neu (@rob_neu) and WP Site Care (@wpsitecare) is exactly what we needed for this (and several other) sites. Quite simply, it adds a field to the publication meta box that lets you define what shows up in the page manager.
This plugin also supports custom post types!
Manage the Media Library
Ah, the WordPress Media Library. A necessary, but somewhat frightening, place that most clients never even realize exists.
If you’re not familiar, the Media Library is where you can browse all the images, videos, documents and such that are uploaded to your WordPress site. Out of the box, it’s not very elegant. Finding the files you need here (or when inserting them in a page or post) can be quite the chore, but I found an elegant little plugin to help with that.
The Enhanced Media Library plugin by wpUXsolutions.com extends the library with the ability to add Media Categories. Just like you organize your posts by category, you can now organize your media library. You can also create categories for different types of PDFs, graphics, logos, awards etc. Subcategories EVEN!
This plugin is a new standard of all of our sites (because managing more than just a handful of images without it just doesn’t make sense.)
What About You?
What WordPress plugins have made your life easier? What tricks and hacks are you using to make the WP Dashboard a more friendly place to be?
