Posts in a Series

Writing a series of a posts on a given topic is a great way to write about something that you’re passionate about and yet not overload a given post with too much detail.  We’ve done a few series here at MInTheGap, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to break down the topic and discuss complex issues this way.

One of the problems with a series, however, is that when people enter in the middle they may be interested to see what has come before.  The related posts plugin works well, but it does not always give you the remaining posts you have not read, and it’s not very good and letting you know if there’s more out there.

Some blogs actually go in and code a link to each part of the series by hand– that way you can move about freely and know how many parts are in the post.  This takes some time, and a lot of fetching of links.

I was just about to do this for Godly Wife and Godly Husband when I found In Series.  In Series adds a new menu to your post screen.  On that screen you can select a current series and add the post to the beginning or end of the series.  You can also create a new series.

Once you’ve done this, you have a wealth of presentation options at your fingertips.  You can choose to have a Table of Contents and have it at the beginning or ending of the post.  You can have link to the previous and next post.  You can show these links in the single and/or multiple post view, and you can have the series title automatically injected into your post header.

This is a great plugin, but I have had one catch and one improvement.  The catch is that the drop down for selecting a previously creates series does not work with 4.0.x versions of MySQL.  The enhancement was actually being able to go in and create style markers for the title and content so that I could make it blend with the rest of my posts.

I’m very happy with it, and I’m sure that if you try it you will be too!