WordPress 3.0 makes custom post types much more approachable than ever before. What previously required extensive hacks to accomplish can now be done directly within the WordPress dashboard.

Check out Easy Post Types, an exciting new plugin that allows you to create custom post types on the fly and manage custom fields and categories for each. It offers an easy-to-use interface so that you can further customize the WordPress experience for the types of content you’ll be posting or to make complex post types more approachable (or foolproof) for your web clients. Instead of walking a user or client through a series of complicated steps to separate content on your WordPress site, you can simplify posting by using custom post types to organize them into the main menu of your dashboard.

Organizing your content within the dashboard just got a lot easier. Custom post types essentially give you the option to tailor your user interface to the type of content that you are posting. No more fitting round pegs into square holes.

What does this mean for WordPress as a publishing platform?

In the past, many users complained about the inflexibility of WordPress because its publishing options were limited to posts and pages. The ability to easily create custom post types positions WordPress as the CMS of choice for sites containing portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts and any other content type you can imagine.

How is Easy Post Types different from other custom post type plugins?

There are several options for adding a a UI to WordPress 3.0 for ease in creating custom post types, and there will probably be several more in the near future. Easy Post Types does a few things that the others don’t:

• Create custom fields without having to create keynames and values.
• Use standard WordPress query rules to quickly list content in your page templates, no need for any custom PHP coding.
• With a click, you can connect an existing category with a custom post type.
• You can now create a template override for each custom post type, or even for each custom field.
• More post type settings are available, such as permissions, icons, menu placement, and more.
• You can export the definition of your custom post types with the associated fields, categories, and tags to easily import them into another WordPress implementation.
• Easy Post types can be migrated to regular WordPress posts and the post type can be deleted without loss of content.

A nifty drag and drop interface lets you determine which fields to show in the edit list. And it doesn’t hurt that New Signature’s website has plenty of documentation and video demos, which should help you to create a custom fit for all of your content types.

Imagine using WordPress for the first time. Let’s say all you wanted to do was create a site to organize some project data. Before 3.0, the only options you had were posts and pages. Anything beyond that required you to remember dozens of custom fields in order to get your content to publish correctly. Those days are long gone. Get the most out of WordPress 3.0 with Easy Post Types and start revolutionizing the way you build sites with WordPress.