The first and most popular article to date on this site is a list of CMS plugins for WordPress. That list is by no-means comprehensive and I wanted to present some additional plugins I have run into that will enhance Wordpress as a CMS.

I’ve tried to find plugins that aren’t as well known so hopefully you’ll see something new and cool you can use.

I’ve tried and tested most of these plugins on WordPress 2.5.1 and they all worked great at the time of testing.

As always, the comments are open and is great place for you to share the plugins that make Wordpress work as a CMS for you.

WP Help

WP Help is a plugin that allows an administrator to create a help and or instructions page in the WordPress admin for new users. It creates a top-level menu item that presents a page of content you define to all WordPress users who can access the admin section.

It is very helpful if you create a lot of WordPress sites for clients and you want to give them some simple instructions they can quickly refer to on how to use the site or a particular plugin.

http://pressingpixels.com/wp-help/

Admin Management Xtended

This is a cool little plugin that lets the admin user edit properties of posts and pages quickly without having to open up each individual post/page.

You can change page order via drag-and-drop, change posts/page title, change tags, change comments status and much more.

http://www.schloebe.de/wordpress/admin-management-xtended-plugin/

WP-Add Quicktag

WP-Add Quicktag allows you to quickly and easily add your own custom quicktags to the write panel. I’ve used this to create a button for myself to add in custom classes for images but could easily be used to insert custom code for client installs as well.

http://roel.meurders.nl/wordpress-plugins/wp-addquicktag-plugin-for-adding-quicktags/

FormBuilder

While not as complex or feature rich as some other form creating plugins for WordPress, the FormBuilder plugin is very easy to use and may be exactly what a client install needs.

The Form Builder Plugin for WordPress allows you to build complex forms in the WordPress administrative interface without needing to know PHP or HTML.

http://truthmedia.com/wordpress/formbuilder/

Flexible Upload

Flexible upload enhances the image upload functionality built into WordPress and brings in some much needed features.

It will re-size pictures to upload at the size you specify, insert captions, include watermarks, and will create custom sized thumbnails.

http://blog.japonophile.com/flexible-upload/

Page Category Plus

Page Category Plus allows you to assign categories to WordPress pages, which WordPress in it’s natural state does not do.

This is a great plugin if you need to be able to customize your installation just a little bit more. It gives you the hook in your templates to be able to call pages by category which opens up all sorts of new possibilities when creating themes and sites.

http://www.stuff.yellowswordfish.com/page-category-plus/

Tags 4 Page

Like the Page Category Plus plugin, this plugin brings a feature only in posts to pages.

With the Tags 4 Page plugin you can apply tags to pages. Again, this gives you another hook to use in your development and will bring back additional results when a user is searching.

http://www.michelem.org/wordpress-plugin-tags4page/

Search Custom Fields

If you just want your default WordPress search to search custom fields, then you will be happy with the Search Anything Plugin. But if you want to display a form that will specify what custom field to search by you will want to check out this plugin.

This plugin automatically creates a form with select boxes for each custom field you have created. All of the values for the custom field will be in the select box. You can add and remove the fields it uses in the plugin.

*Warning* The site I originally got this plugin from has been listed on search engines as a dangerous site that contain malware. I’m not sure if this is true or if the site just got hacked. Either way the site is not up anymore.

You can download the plugin here at your own risk. I am currently using it on a site and have had no problems. I have checked the code with the knowledge I have and it appears safe. If any other experienced coders want to give it a clean bill of health that would be helpful.

Again, I’m using the plugin on a large site and have not had any problems.

http://pressingpixels.com/projects/wp-plugins/search-custom.zip

WP CMS

This plugin strips out all the blog functionality of WordPress and leaves admin users with just the ability to create and manage pages.

This could be a great plugin for very simple sites with very simple people needing to manage them.

http://www.gilbertpellegrom.co.uk/wp-cms/

Role Manager

This is a very poplular plugin and no list of WordPress CMS plugins would be complete without it.

WordPress Version 2.0 introduces the concept of Roles. Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. This Plugin allows you to define and manage multiple subscriber profiles - called Roles and their Capabilities.

It allows you to specify what exactly each person can do administratively. There are a number of other plugins that work in conjunction with the role manager plugin as well.

http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/

Hide Dashboard

The Hide Dashboard plugin removes the dashboard from the admin. When users log in they will see their profile instead.

Users with Administrator credentials will still see the dashboard.

http://www.deepwave.net/articles/hide_dashboard/

My Dashboard

The MyDashboard plugin is designed to replace the standard, but limited, WordPress dashboard with something a bit more useful, extendable and skinnable.

It is based on the igoogle, Pageflakes and Netvibes style of home page and is designed to be easily extendable and skinnable.

Features include: Drag and drop gadgets, CSS style chages, and standard gagets.

http://dev.clearskys.net/Wordpress/MyDashboard

My FTP

My FTP is a file management Plugin for WordPress that enables a blog administrator to (much like an FTP client) navigate folders and files on the server where their WordPress installation is hosted.

The administrator can then edit, delete or upload files on the fly from within the WordPress administration panel.

It is also possible to create new folders and upload complete directory structures.

I’m not sure how safe this plugin is so use at your own risk.

http://trialsoftwarez.com/wordpress-myftp/

Upload Plus

This plugin let you clean file names from unwanted characters while you upload them.

If you are building a site for clients that requires the uploading of pictures or other files they often will upload stuff with the wackiest file names known to man. This plugin cleans all that up so that there are no problems related to file names.

http://pixline.net/wordpress-plugins/upload-plus/en/