[Plugin: Pods CMS] Best plugin for wordpress ever. period

Hi IEBA

No to get involved in something I really shouldn’t, but you mention the following:

If you came to me to produce a TV show for PBS, I would not look down at you because you couldn’t produce it yourself and meet PBS’ engineering, timing, and delivery specifications. That’s not your job. It’s mine. So don’t look down at those who don’t get involved in helping code open source software.

You mention that producing the TV show is you job. Exactly, you get paid to do it, so you better do a damn fine job.

Plugin developers are putting the work out there for nothing. They have day jobs.
Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy it, and really want feedback. We understand you are using the our plugins because you might not be a PHP developer, and in most cases happy to bend over backwards to help. But it strikes a nerve when people expect stuff for nothing.

Anyway, logikal16, I haven’t used PODs yet myself, but I have a friend who can’t stop raving about it. Keep up the good work!

Just stepping into this thread… and I have to say…

Go here https://pods.uproot.us/about/

You see how much work has gone into this plugin, and how many people have actually worked on it since it’s conception.

It is quite amazing. I actually wonder if any of you guys have slept in a while or if your dreams are haunted with code, logic, and error messages.

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I wrote in another thread that after trying Pods I believe it is doing something so simple and yet so beautiful in which how it handles the database.

How many CMS systems are out there using Open Source as their base and their mission? Drupal, Joomla, WordPress to name the big three. I believe they could all learn a big lesson with the simple logic behind Pods.

Features are exactly what the word means, FEATURES. The base system is very simple and I am having a ball with it myself. Features will follow, and users shouldn’t say it is unusable because a button isn’t blue or the WYSIWYG isn’t WordPressified. It is being worked out, just like WordPress itself! (Page Ordering, for the love of @#$)

I have a personal WordPress framework I have built and have been using based entirely on Widgets, and I wanted to get it to a point so I can release. Now I also want to get involved with Pods, so I’m torn thank you very much. I guess I’m going to have to fart this thing I have out the door as soon as I can so I can get into Pods more heavily.

Thank you guys again for actually thinking before building. Believe me it shows ??

Oh My God I no longer need Drupal. Amazing ??

I’ve been doing lots of tests with both Pods and Flutter over the past few weeks.
In the beginning I thought both were a different approach to the same problem (custom content types) and I guess in some ways they are. But it’s not that simple. It’s perfectly OK to use Pods and Flutter alongside eachother, in fact they are quite complementary.
In my view, use Pods if:

1. You need custom content that is totally separate from your Blog posts and is structurally very different, ie. not ‘post-like’ at all. Like restaurant addresses or a product catalog.
2. You know your PHP and MySQL and need a platform to integrate your own expertise and code into WordPress without inventing the wheel all over again.
3. You want an efficient database structure because the amount of (custom) data is rather large
4. You don’t need/want to tag or categorize your custom content via the WordPress taxonomy system

Use Flutter if:

1. Your custom content is basically a ‘post with benefits’. All Flutter does is add a more user-friendly interface to custom fields. Which is exactly what you need in many cases. Some examples would be a blog where you post different types of articles: a ‘video’ post, a book review, a how-to article, etc.
2. Your PHP knowledge is limited, you just want something that works right away in a transparent fashion.
3. You want your custom content posts to appear alongside your ‘regular’ posts in the loop, category overviews, etc.
4. Your website is more like a ‘flow of updates’ (blog) than a ‘data repository’ (wiki/catalog)

This is the result of my own personal research, other people undoubtedly have other opinions/experiences. I’d like to see what the creators of Flutter and/or Pods think of this comparison, though.

Personally, I think there is a gap between these two plugins for another kind of ‘in-between solution’. Allow me to explain:
A plugin that, like Flutter, uses posts as its basis for content. This would mean that any piece of content needs at least a title, an author, a category and a body (description).WP experts, correct me if there are any other required fields.
But, unlike Flutter, this plugin should store its metadata not in wp_post_meta but in separate tables based on the content type, like Pods.
This would include custom content types in the loop automatically, but it would also make the database cleaner and easier to manage/export/scale.

The documentation is a bit sparse and I’m definitely no PHP expert, but I kept at it. The forums are good and so far as I can see every issue gets an answer.

The devs are excellent. Scott and Logikal helped me when I was stuck and even logged in to my site and solved my final issue. You can’t get better support than that – absolutely wonderful !

There are some things which did really frustrate me: date-handling and search being the main ones, but overall this is a fantastic addition to WordPress.

To get started you really need to watch the excellent video tutorial. (I wish they’d make some more!)

Here’s the tutorial:
https://vimeo.com/6957771

PODS is definitely THE best plugin for WP. Sure there’s room for improvement, or better documentation, but this thing makes WP so much more versatile. No more hassling with custom fields etc, but seperate tables with all kinds of data you want. Built in editors and uploaders etc.., magic tags etc..

And if you know PHP, this extends WP even further, endless possibilities.