WordPress is one of the CMSs available on the market, but has its share of limitations. Unfortunately one of the biggest limitations is on the area where it stops being a blogging platform and you use it as a CMS.

The main difference between blogging and CMS is the first is focused on posts (time based articles) while the later focuses on pages (generic articles that are no time dependent).

WordPress has been built and in it is being built with a fairly limited number of pages in mind (Contact/About etc). With a standard installation you can go to an apx 5-10 of pages and if you use custom menus and dropdown menus is ok to go up to 25-30  pages (5 main pages each with 5 subpages).

But what do you do when you have, let’s say 300 static pages? The first answer will be: who needs 300 pages in a CMS? Well, on an academic website you can reach that number very easy. There are a lot of programs, departments, classes and staff and posts (or custom posts) are not the solution.

For this type of project I used a 3 columns theme and i wanted a simple feature: have one main menu on a column, and on a second column show subpages, but only when available. For a few years I have used a unupgraded version of GD Navigator. Once I have upgraded both the WP and the plugin a few errors started to appear: the GD Navigator widget was gone and when I have re-added it, no matter of the configuration random subpages kept appearing.

The best solution for WordPress Submenu Widget

Looking for an alternative wasn’t an easy job, most of the alternatives being either dead or too complicated. Finally I have found the simplest, working plugin, BE Subpages Widget by WP Consultant Bill Erickson . The plugin is extremely easy to use and has only two options:

• Title – this one is optional and I don’t recommend you to use it. Basically you could put in there something like “Submenu”
• Use top level page as section title. – Check this instead of using a title. It will show the parent page and can be used as a breadcrumb
• Make title a link – Also check this to make the parent page act as a true breadcrumb

There. Problem solved. A working implementation you can see over here 

Incoming search terms:

• SubPage Widget

Today, by chance, I’ve discovered one of the greatest resources on WordPress that I’ve seen this year. I’m talking about Vladimir Prelovac, a croatian wordpress developer (and at first look a pretty darn good SEO guy). One of his biggest projects is ManageWp.com. What can you expect to find here:

• add multiple (self hosted) wordpress instalations
• create groups of blogs
• quickly post articles / pages in one or more added blogs
• quickly upgrade plugins / installations

For more details you can check this post.

Usage ideea:

If you are a freelance developer that has a focus on wordpress (or even if you are a web agency), create a sample wordpress install on your server and add all the plugins that you regularly use. Once you’ve done that, add the newly created blog to ManageWP.com. Each time you will need to create a new blog, just use the cloning feature and you are good to go. Now, 1-2 hrs of working have been reduced to a few simple clicks.

TIP 1: If you create themed wordpress installs (presentation, blog, CMS, ecommerce) make as many installs as you need

TIP 2: Before cloning make sure that all plugins and WPs are at their latest version

P.S. If you are worried giving to a third party your wordpress credentials, Vladimir is preparing a self hosted version of the plugin

WordPress › Multi-column Tag Map « WordPress Plugins

Multi-column Tag Map display a columnized, alphabetical and expandable listing of all tags used in your site. This makes it easier for visitors to quickly search for topics that might intrest them.

This is a plugin that I’ve searched for almost 2 years. Before this plugin, I have used static pages to list tags alphabetically but this was to hard to maintain (on an instance where you have more then 900 tags). Mostly is for WordPress CMS cases because it targets those users familiar with a certain niche and taxonomies within it, making it easy to locate a certain tag.

Use cases:

• Music blogs where tags are bands.
• Blogs about celebrities

In a few days I’ll post a link to a live demo

Incoming search terms:

• tag index wordpress
• alphabetic index plugin for wordpress
• alphabetical plugin for wordpress
• wordpress alphabet index
• wordpress alphabetical list of categories plugin
• wordpress alphabetical list plugin
• wordpress plugin alphabetical list

I have always recommended (where it was possible) WordPress as a CMS platform. One of the main reasons is its extensibility and that for almost any task there is a plugin or one can be easily developed. I’m checking daily the WordPress Plugins section of WordPress.org and you can see my favorite plugins on del.icio.us. From today, I’m going to post them here too.

WP Download Codes

From developer:

The plugin enables to generation and management of download codes for .zip files.

Applications:

• Use it for any limited downloads that you might have on your WP based website (EX: release a beta software to a limited number of users)

Booking Calendar

From developer:

Using this plugin, you can add booking service to your site. Your site visitors can make booking of one or several days. Its can be interesting for hotel reservation service, rental service or any other service, where is needed making reservation at specific dates.