WordPress MU

Hello,

I am creating a blog for the class of my daughter.
Is there a way I can store address information of the children in a structured manner?

Entering all adresses in a textarea of the page object isn't what I want.
Can I introduce a new database table and maintain in through the admin interface or are there other options?

Welcome to the problem.

I've been searching for a plugin solution for a month and haven't found any that actually work. What you are talking about is using wpmu as a CMS. I need to store info about organizations in my area and would like to use wpmu for that purpose. I can create such a beast in Drupal or some other CMS, however I'd like to stick to my current problems and not introduce a new batch by firing up a full blown CMS just for a structured DB of names, address, contact info.

Most 'solutions' are overwhelmingly underdocumented and don't really fit. I just kinda gave up and put that on the back burner. Just to save you and everyone else some time I'll reply here again after I review all the plugins and solutions I attempted.

brb :)

Burt

Ok. I'm back.

While I was reviewing all the diff plugins and methods I've tried I seem to have stumbled on a combo that works. (Thanks!) One of the probs is that I can cram all the custom field data into a post I want but then I have to hack the theme to get it back out. That is what I wanted to avoid.

I found a plugin that allows building custom field templates. There's a bunch of them. This one seems to work. You can build a template that drops down under the wp post/edit area and just fill in your handy custom fields. These fields get saved with that post.

Now, it just occurred to me that one of the php exec plugins I've been playing with would allow me to pull that data out of the post custom fields. By executing a little chunk of php in any post that contained my post custom field template I could display it in the post automatically.

So here's my solution:

More Fields plugin to build post/page custom field data templates:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/more-fields/

Include It plugin to exec php inside of a post or page. To use Include It you simply place a tag such as:

[include file=/pathto/yourphpfile/yourphpsnippet.php]

This pulls whatever file you specify and inserts it in place of that tag in the post. Text, php, html whatever. I just create a snippet of php that would normally be stuffed into my template into a text file. Seems to work.

Include It:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/include-it/

Here's a link to some urls I found that discuss wp as a cms:

http://pastie.org/308474

I wanna thank you for getting me to go back to this problem and see it in a different light. Perhaps it was just a nice time interval between techno frustration and you that allowed me to solve my problem. These two plugins are not the only ones out there of their respective types. I needed a custom field template plugin and a exec php plugin. I found these two. Browse around.

Hope this helps. Your mileage may vary.

Burt

One more thing. More Fields has a newer version. See the plugin website:

http://labs.dagensskiva.com/plugins/more-fields/

Burt

Burt,

Thanks. I found this one:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-table/

works for me with MU 2.6.3

Thanks for the table plugin. I've tried to create and maintain tables in tinyMCE advanced and it just don't work well. Even I trash 'em and I theoretically know what I'm doing.

I was playing around with my plugin mashup solution for structured data and decided to just use More Fields. Drop the Include It part of the solution. It introduces a big security hole in that blog and I can't rely on end users to remember to include the proper tag in the post to pull in the data. Oh, well. Off to hack my theme. ;)