Improving the Free Version of PublishPress Series
One of our favorite things to do is add new features to our Free plugins. It's a pleasure to release improvements for anyone to use.
The latest version of PublishPress Series has several new features that were previously only in the Pro version of the plugin.
PublishPress Series is a publishing plugin that allows you to organize posts into issues or series. This is ideal for magazines, newspapers, short-story writers, teachers, comic artists, or anyone who writes multiple posts on the same topic.
Here's an overview of what's new in PublishPress Series version 2.10.
#1. Add your Series to Categories
The Free version of Series now has “Series Categories”. This gives you the ability to put series together in groups.
Let's take a look at a common use-case for Series Categories. This screenshot below is taken from a monthly publication. The Series Categories are years, such as “2020”, “2021” and “2022.
Inside each Series Category are individual series. In the example of this monthly magazine, each month has its own series. “January 2022”, “February 2022”, and “March 2022” are all placed inside the Series Category called “2022”. You can see an example of a monthly magazine in PublishPress Series by visiting our demo site.
#2. The Manage Series screen
We've also renamed and updated the “Manage Series” feature, which was previously only in the Pro version. This feature allows you to quickly manage all posts linked to a Series. You can use this screen to re-order, schedule and publish all the posts in a Series.
This “Manage Series” screen is available under the “Posts” link in the WordPress admin area:
In the image below, you can see the full “Manage Series” screen with three series:
Here are some of the tools on this screen that you can use to manage your series:
- Series order: This allows you to change the order of the posts in your series.
- Publish or schedule posts: Either publish the whole series now, or schedule it for the future.
- View series in admin: Allows you to browse all the posts in the series in your WordPress dashboard.
- View series in frontend: Takes you to the visitors' view of this series.
#3. Drag-and-drop ordering for Series and Categories
You can drag-and-drop items in the correct order from both the “Series” and “Series Categories” screen. In the image below, the categories are 2022, 2021 and 2020. If you hover your mouse over the category name, you will be able to move it into a new position.
You can also change the order from the “Manage Series” screen. This will allow you to see specific part numbers inside a series. Take a look at the image below, and you'll see that the movies are in the wrong order (if you don't like Star Wars, you'll have to trust us on this).
You can select each row and drag and post it into its correct position.
Give PublishPress Series a Try Today
The Series plugin is ideal for newspapers, magazines and publishers. You can use PublishPress Series to create issues based on topics or time periods:
- Collect posts into monthly issues for a magazine.
- Group together newspaper articles on the same topic.
- Organize chapters into an overall story.
When you’re writing a post, you can easily add a post to an existing series, or start a new series. Give PublishPress Series a try! You can get the free version from WordPress.org or the Pro version here on PublishPress.com.