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Organizing Content with Custom Post Types and Taxonomies
- 1. Organizing Content with Custom Post Types and Taxonomies WordPress RI Meetup @WordPressRI #RIWP @emagineusa
- 2. Who am I? Ryan Holmes Developer at emagine
- 3. What is a post type?
- 4. Post • Great for blogs • Chronological • Non-hierarchical (Can’t be nested) • Built-in taxonomies • Category • Tag
- 5. Page • Non-chronological • Hierarchical (Can be nested) • No built-in taxonomies
- 6. Attachment
- 7. Menu Item
- 9. Reasons to use CPTs • Content separation • Improved admin experience • Easier templating for devs • Single template - single-{post-type}.php • Archive template - archive-{post-type}.php • User/Robot-friendly URLs
- 10. When to use CPTs • Multiple pieces of similar content • Content needs to be ordered, sorted or filtered • Want to create content relationships
- 11. Different kinds of CPTs • Hierarchical or Non-hierarchical • Public or Admin only • Has an archive or not
- 12. What is a taxonomy?
- 13. What is a taxonomy? • “Grouping mechanism for some posts” • Made up of “terms" • Hierarchical (category) or Non-hierarchical (tag) • Can be registered to one or multiple post types.
- 14. “As an example, if I was writing a blog post on baking apple pie, I would categorize it as ‘desserts’ and would tag it with ‘apples.’ Then when I write my blog post on stuffed pork tenderloin (which includes apples) I would categorize that as ‘entrées’ and tag it again with ‘apples' and ‘pork.’” Christian Nolen VP, Web Development emagine
- 15. Demo Time!
- 16. Demo Recap • Namespace your post type and taxonomy slugs. • Nothing is permanent. Update as you go. • Make slugs singular, and then use slug rewrites to achieve better URLs, if desired. • Hierarchical or Non-hierarchical? • Take advantage of the WordPress templating system.
- 17. Resources • Custom Post Type UI - https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/ • Post Types in the Codex - https://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types • register_post_type - https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_post_type • Taxonomies in the Codex - https://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Taxonomies • register_taxonomy - https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_taxonomy
- 18. Questions?
- 19. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Post types are a means for you to organize your site into different content groups. The most obvious examples are posts and pages, which are two different post types baked into WordPress. Though similar, they have some key differences that demonstrate the flexibility that custom post types offer.
- The “post” post type is what WordPress was founded on back in 2003, when it was strictly a blogging platform. Posts typically display in chronological order, with the newest posts showing first. They are an example of a non-hierarchical post type, which means that they can’t be nested inside of each other to create any sort of hierarchy. Posts, also, come with two taxonomies built-in: categories and tags. We’ll go over taxonomies more later on, but simply put, they are an additional means of organizing your posts into groups.
- The “page” post type was introduced in 2005 and helped WordPress become a more legitimate CMS. Where posts typically display in chronological order, pages usually represent timeless content, so the date it’s published doesn’t matter so much. Pages can, also, be nested under other pages, which makes it a hierarchical post type. And pages have no built-in taxonomies, though you can register existing and custom taxonomies to work with pages if you wish.
- WordPress has other post types built-in that aren’t as obvious. Attachments, for example, which can be used in posts and pages, are just another post type.
- So are menu items, which you use to build out your site’s menus. There are other built-in post types that WordPress uses, but these the most common ones you’re likely to interact with. Hopefully, this begins to show you how versatile post types can be. WordPress uses them to organize the admin into more manageable sections, and provide a tailored editing experience for the content you’re working with. You can further customize your site by implementing your own “custom post types”.
- Custom post types were introduced in 2010 and give you the ability to organize your site’s content into groups that you define. This is one of the most powerful features in WordPress, and one of the reasons it powers 31% of the web.
- There are tons of good reasons to use custom post types, but one of the biggest is content separation. It is so much easier to navigate the WordPress admin, and find your content, when you know where to look. When you create a custom post type, you can choose to display it in the admin sidebar navigation, making it super easy to find. Developers can easily create custom templates that target the post type’s single post presentation, as well as how an archive of posts displays. And you have complete control over your URL structure, which is great for creating URLs that are easy for your users, and search engines, to read.
- Now just because you can create custom post types, doesn’t necessarily mean you need to. You should analyze your content before making any decisions and see if you’d benefit from creating a custom post type. There are some easy ways to determine if you need a custom post type. If you have a group of similar content items, like news or events, it’s time to consider a custom post type. If your content items will need to be ordered, sorted or filtered, in a way that other post types don’t support, then it’s time for a custom post type. And if you want the ability to relate your content items with other content, then you’ll likely want a custom post type. Some great examples of custom post types are: news, events, resources, people and products
- Once you’ve determined that you need a custom post type, there are some other decisions to make that determine how that post type functions and displays. Earlier we went over the post and page post types which are a perfect example of the difference between hierarchical and non-hierarchical post types. Posts, being a non-hierarchical post type, cannot be nested within each other, whereas pages can. You can configure your post type either way, so think about your site architecture to see which method would benefit you most. Post types can be public-facing or admin-only. A good example is of this is the WooCommerce plugin which registers a public-facing “products” post type and an admin-only “orders” post type. By making the orders post type admin-only, it’ll never display in search results or get indexed by search engines. Lastly, when defining your post type you can decide if there should be an archive page that lists out all the posts of that type, or not. Developers can create custom archive templates that target that post type very easily.
- Now that we know all about custom post types, it’s time to look at taxonomies. We touched briefly on what taxonomies were earlier when talking about the “post” post type, which has two built-in: categories and tags. Combining custom post types and taxonomies together gives you endless flexibility for how you organize your content.
- WordPress defines a “taxonomy” as “a grouping mechanism for some posts”. Like post types are made up of “posts”, taxonomies are made up of “terms”. Similar to post types, taxonomies can be hierarchical or non-hierarchical. The “category” taxonomy is an example of a hierarchical taxonomy because you can nest categories inside of each other, whereas the “Tag” taxonomy is an example of a non-hierarchical taxonomy. Taxonomies are a great way to further organize your posts, and they can be registered to one or multiple post types. This is great if you want multiple post types to share the same taxonomy to create relationships between different types of content.
- If you want to register post types and taxonomies via php, I’d recommend putting that code into a plugin. This way, you can easily migrate to a new theme if need be.