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How To Efficiently Manage Post Series in WordPress

Last updated on August 5th, 2014 by Editorial Staff

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How To Efficiently Manage Post Series in WordPress

Long posts can be dull and uninteresting, but if you cover topics that need lengthy posts then you must have considered breaking those posts into series. The problem with post series is that it is not easy to organize and arrange them manually. One obvious way to do this is to add a little text before each post telling the users that this post is part of a series and then list rest of the posts in the series at the bottom of each post. The hectic part is that you will have to update all posts manually as you publish a new post in the series.

WordPress introduced custom taxonomies to deal with this and other similar situations. You can create a simple taxonomy, name it series, and create a series whenever you want. However to do that you will have to write manual code, create a template for the taxonomy, and this is probably just a lot of extra work for people who just want to share their content without going through the code. In this article, we will show you how to efficiently manage post series in WordPress without ever having to mess with code. We will utilize a plugin called Organize Series which solves the problem of managing series posts. Let’s take a look at what it has to offer.

Features

Uses built in WordPress custom taxonomies feature to create and manage series.
Users can create a series of posts or pages.
Each post in a series displays the link to the series page and other posts in the series are displayed in a nifty meta box.
Add images or icons to your series posts, this will make them standout from regular posts.
This plugin supports permalinks, e.g.: http://www.example.com/series/name-of-series-as-slug
Works out of the box for beginners, so no coding or messing around with templates required.
Advanced users can use template tags, modify css, and tweak core.

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Installation and Set up

Organize Series works out of the box so for a non-developer blogger all you have to do is to download, install and activate the plugin. The plugin settings page has options which you can look at and change if you want. The plugin options page itself is well documented and explanation is provided along with each option.

Using Organize Series Plugin

The plugin adds a meta box in your Post Edit screen. If you are writing a normal post which is not part of a series then you can completely ignore this box. But if you are writing a post that is part of a series then using this box you can create a series, or choose an existing one. You can also give your post a number and if you don’t then it automatically appends to rest of the post. Like for example if you have written three posts in a series then a new one in the series without a number automatically becomes the fourth post.

Since Organize Series uses custom taxonomies, there is a “Manage Series” menu item under posts. This is similar to how you manage categories in WordPress except that it is called Series and that you can associate an image or icon to a Series by editing it in Manage Series.

Customization and Add-ons for Organize Series Plugin

Organize Series plugin is well documented and easy to customize even for a beginner with basic WordPress skills. The first thing that most users would like to modify is probably the CSS. There is an option on plugin settings page to upload your own stylesheet.

By default the series are named “Series” but you can change it to anything you like. For example if you want to call your series, episodes or something else, then there is an option to do that on plugin settings page.

A free add-on Organize Series Publisher is also available as a separate plugin. This add-on allows users to hold on posts in a series and publish the whole series at once. More add-on plugins and customization instructions are available on the Organize Series’ official website.

Organize Series is a fine example of using the built-in custom taxonomies feature of WordPress to organize content for easy publishing and navigation. However, there might be some users who would still like to manage their series manually or use some other plugin/tool. Tell us how you like to manage your post series in the comments below.