Better Practice, Dec. 2018

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Custom Post Types in WordPressFEATURE

Custom Post Types in WordPress

Andrea Roenning

Custom post types are the key to taking a WordPress website from a simple blog to

a robust system for managing many types of content and data. They help create a

WordPress administrator experience which makes it easy for editors to add and edit

repetitive content and gives the developer flexibility to create unique web pages to

fit the site’s individual needs.

Not that long ago, I was a WordPress

hater. On top of some bad experiences

with plugins and themes, I found the

editing tools to be limited and some-

times confusing to clients for whom

I was building sites. But working with

custom post types has opened my eyes

to the fact WordPress can be much

more than a blogging platform—it can

be a powerful content management

system (CMS) I can design myself with-

out needing a ton of third-party plugins.

I can customize the WordPress Admin

(WP Admin) editing experience to

make it easy for site managers to update

data in a way that fits their site’s needs.

Why Use Custom Post Types?

The Board of Directors Page

Dilemma

An excellent example of when to use a

custom post type is a page that displays

a grid of photos and names, such as a

board of directors page.

You could do this in WordPress out of

the box by writing some HTML inside

the editor. Perhaps you’d wrap a div

around each photo and name group

and give it a class. Then you would write

some CSS, either in your custom theme

or by adding it to the theme you’re

working in to help with layout. (Or

perhaps you’d use the Gutenberg editor

to create a column with this informa-

tion.) Then copy, paste, copy, paste.

Easy, right?

But, then, what if your client asks:

• Can you sort these alphabetically?


• Can you add three more people?


• Can you give each person a bio

page linking from their picture?

• Can we also list the board of direc-
  tor’s names on this other page?


• How can I edit someone’s name
  without “breaking” the layout?
  If you set up your photo grid page
  using HTML within the WordPress
  editor, all of these tasks can be time-con-
  suming and require a web developer to
  move around the HTML code if the
  user isn’t comfortable making these
  edits. And, if you manual repeat data
  on another page, you risk the two sets
  of data falling out of sync.

Custom Post Types to the Rescue!

Since we’re already using a CMS,

surely there’s a better way to manage

this content. The board of directors

page is a perfect example of when to use

a custom post type:

• Each listing shares a common set of
  components (name, bio, photo).


• You can leverage WordPress’
  built-in tools to display this data
  (the_title, the_content, thepost
  thumbnail).


• You can design a custom template
  to query and filter based on this
  data (for example, to sort alphabeti-
  cally or only show people who have
  a photo uploaded).


• Links to individual bio pages for
  each person can be easily added.


• This data could be easily queried
  and added to additional pages.


• Your WP Admin users could easily
  edit or remove existing members
  of the board or add new ones using
  the same WordPress tools they use
  to writing posts and pages.

Custom post types are great for all

sorts of structured data. I’ve used them

for ad delivery, conference sessions,

ebooks, testimonials, calendar of

events—pretty much any time I find

myself wanting to copy and paste a

block of frontend code to repeat some

data in WordPress.

Using Custom Post Types

1. First, create your custom post type.
   2. Next, add some data to your Word-
   Press admin panel.
   3. Third, create a template to display
   the data (or use the WordPress
   fallback pages).

Using a Third Party Plugin

There are several WordPress plugins

which make it easy to create custom

post types.

The plugin CPTUI^1 provides an inter-

face for creating and managing your

custom post types. If you’re just getting

started with custom post types, explor-

ing this plugin’s options is an effective

way to learn about all of the WordPress

options for custom post types.

Registering Your Custom Post

Type In a Theme

With minimal knowledge of PHP and

the WordPress documentation, you can

create a custom post type in a custom

theme by adding code to your theme’s

functions.php file.

1 CPTUI:

https://phpa.me/custom-post-type-ui