Many bloggers use a similar format for many or all of their posts. WordPress provides no native way to pre-fill your new posts with such a template. This plugin provides the simplest solution to this problem. It takes 5 minutes to install and setup. The template allows you to define a title and a body and support HTML and even PHP.  There’s no easier solution.

Version 1.1:

• You can now specify a default excerpt in your template (in case you wanted to)
• Rewrote backend to use standard supported methods and less hacking.
• Completely fixed issue with template content breaking “Insert Template” button. Contents is now encoded to HEX and decoded upon insert.
• Removed upgrade option for legacy versions. I never received any feedback on this feature and suspect it was rarely used, if used at all.
• Redesigned admin panel for aesthetic and informational purposes. Now includes PHP examples and considerations.

Version 1.0.0.1:

• Fixed security issue. Now only Administrators can access admin pages.

Version 1.0:

• Moved all settings to administration pages under Settings -> Simple Post Template.
• Moved content of template and title to WordPress options.
• Provided upgrade mechanism to convert old templates to the new format. (May not work for all applications. Some may work but may be more complex than neccessary.)
• Added optional “Insert Template” button to new post page. You can now determine from the settings page whether or not the template will be automatically applied to all new posts.
• Plugin is now upgrade proof. Settings are stored using WordPress’s setting functions.
• Various other improvements were made to address inefficiencies in the first version.

Version 0.1:

• Original release.

Installation

1. Upload the directory “simple-post-template” to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Go to Settings -> Simple Post Template and enter your desired title and body for new posts. (Feel free to use any combination of HTML and PHP.)
4. If you select “Auto fill new posts with this template.” all new posts will be created with your template. If you uncheck this, the new posts screen will have a new sidebar widget with a button allowing you to apply the template.
5. There’s nothing else to do. Enjoy! (unless you are upgrading, in which case, see below)

ATTENTION UPGRADERS FROM VERSION 0.1, READ THIS:
If you use automatic upgrade from the WordPress plugin screen, WordPress will most likely delete your current templates. Period. I didn’t realize this until after I wrote and uploaded these instructions. If you wish to use the described upgrade feature (that I apparently spent way too much time on!) simply copy your template.php and title.php files to another location before upgrading automatically, OR upgrade the old fashioned way.

Version 1.0 provides vast improvements to the way templates are stored and executed. Consequently, I no longer use template.php and title.php to create templates. The template is now stored in the WordPress database and PHP is processed at runtime using eval(). To assist users of old version, the admin screen provides an Upgrade button for those who still have the old flat files. The upgrade tasks is not fool proof. The original templates were stored in a string in two flat files. I have attempted to copy over that string and encapsulate it in a PHP echo which should keep most HTML and PHP working well. However, the result is likely to be more complicated than necessary…

For example, if you original template had this:
$template = “Hi this is some text and whoops!”.$some_php_variable.” What was that??”;

Than your new template will look something like:
<?PHP echo “Hi this is some text and whoops!”.$some_php_variable.” What was that??”; ?>

Quite obviously, this can be done different/better with the new system:
Hi this is some text and whoops! <?PHP echo $some_php_variable; ?> What was that??

The latter example is obviously much better and will make templates *much* easier to do for first time users. This should be the last time I make large changes to the way templates are done. Because of this, I’m comfortable releasing it at version 1.0 instead of 0.2 or some derivative.

So, once again, the upgrade mechanism is provided as a curteousy. I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to upgrade, but I encourage to fine tune the result of this upgrade and make it your own.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can you add multiple templates that are selectable from a dropdown?
  I intend to do this eventually.
• Can feature x be added?
  Probably! E-mail me: webmaster[at]clifgriffin.com

Download it now…
Simple Post Template 1.1 for WordPress 3.0.4