Custom Post Type Code Generator by Themergency

This is because I think it is the ideal tool for those who are put off using the functions.php method when creating a custom Post Type, as all it requires is some form-filling. So it took all of (the famous WordPress) 5 minutes to go from this empty form:

to this lot of code (full sample code after the cut):

This nifty tool was only released earlier this month (May 2011) and you can read about how Brad Vincent developed the generator (using Gravity Forms) and from his comment on 16th May, the plan is to release the plugins that generate the code once he has ‘refactored’ them.

So if you’re using a plugin like Custom Post Type UI (one of my favourites) to create your custom post type and want to try the functions.php method instead, why not start off with the Custom Post Type Code Generator?

The resulting code generated from the form-filling exercise:

add_action( 'init', 'register_cpt_wine' );

function register_cpt_wine() {

    $labels = array(
        'name' => _x( 'Wines', 'wine' ),
        'singular_name' => _x( 'Wine', 'wine' ),
        'add_new' => _x( 'Add New', 'wine' ),
        'add_new_item' => _x( 'Add New Wine', 'wine' ),
        'edit_item' => _x( 'Edit Wine', 'wine' ),
        'new_item' => _x( 'New Wine', 'wine' ),
        'view_item' => _x( 'View Wine', 'wine' ),
        'search_items' => _x( 'Search Wines', 'wine' ),
        'not_found' => _x( 'No wines found', 'wine' ),
        'not_found_in_trash' => _x( 'No wines found in Trash', 'wine' ),
        'parent_item_colon' => _x( 'Parent Wine:', 'wine' ),
        'menu_name' => _x( 'Wines', 'wine' ),
    );

    $args = array(
        'labels' => $labels,
        'hierarchical' => false,
        'description' => 'Wine Portfolio',
        'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'thumbnail' ),
        'taxonomies' => array( 'country', 'region', 'supplier_company', 'company', 'brand', 'product_type', 'grape_type' ),
        'public' => true,
        'show_ui' => true,
        'show_in_menu' => true,
        'menu_position' => 5,

        'show_in_nav_menus' => true,
        'publicly_queryable' => true,
        'exclude_from_search' => false,
        'has_archive' => true,
        'query_var' => true,
        'can_export' => true,
        'rewrite' => true,
        'capability_type' => 'post'
    );

    register_post_type( 'wine', $args );
}

The site has released 3 lovely and free WordPress themes to date, including Imbalance, Paragrams and iPhonsta. You can see a screenshot of Paragrams below, courtesy of WPShower.

Sadly there is no ‘About’ page, so we don’t know much about the person or people behind the site, but going by the comment replies on Imbalance, the admin has the nickname ‘Leg’. You can also keep up-to-date with WPShower via their Twitter.

I am really impressed with the releases so far and feel a bit sad that none of my projects are very graphics-oriented content-wise, so the designs would be rather wasted if applied to those sites. Fingers crossed that the next WPShower release will be more text-content friendly!

There are quite a number out there (at least 8!) that do the job, but it was difficult to sieve/test through so many when the new site was going live in a very short time, and it was then that I stumbled upon Chris Cagle‘s excellent article:

The Definitive Guide on WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins

The article gives a comprehensive review of 8 different code syntax highlighters that work for WordPress 2.6, including (in alphabetical order)

• Code Colorer by Dmytro Shteflyuk
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress by Peter Ryan
• Highlight Source Pro by Christian Knoflach
• Snippet Highlight by Roland Rust
  
• Syntax Highlighter Plus by Fred Wu (with matt, Viper007Bond, mdawaffe)
• WP-Chili by Andrea Ercolino
• WP-Codebox by Eric Wang
• WP-Syntax by Ryan McGeary

The plugins have then been ranked in terms of their overall rating in ‘colouring/coloring abilities’ (with colour screen-shots for comparison included!) and their ‘ease of use’, where WP-Chili came out top in the colour rankings (which is what Chris Cagle is using, and he has helpfully provided what he uses on Cagintranet Web Design) but Syntax Highlighter Plus was #1 for ‘ease of use’.

I found the whole guide extremely helpful, and have now ended up using Syntax Highlighter Plus for WP Snippets – it did help that it was ranked #1 overall! However, given that Andrea Ercolino has updated WP-Chili since the review, I really might look into changing over!

If you are looking out for a good WordPress plugin that highlights code in colour/color for WordPress 2.6, then The Definitive Guide on WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins is definitely the article that you would not want to miss reading. To be fair, not every plugin has been updated recently (at least two are from 2007, and the most dated plugin in the list is Code Colorer from May 2007) but nevertheless, it is still an excellent guide worth archiving!