One of the things I’ve been hoping would be implemented in WordPress for years is the ability to create custom content types. The inability to do this has been WordPress’ weakest point when compared to rivals in the CMS market.
In WordPress 3.0, we’ll have the capability to easily create and manage content via custom post types. Not only that, but you won’t have to rely on a plugin to do this for you. It can be done via your theme’s functions.php file with a few lines of code.
There are other 3.0 features such as menu management and multi-site, but this is the most promising feature coming. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the creation of custom post types and how they can be used for your blog.
Note that I’ll use “post” and “posts” a lot to refer to custom post types in this tutorial. I’ll try to separate this from what you likely know as a post by calling it a “blog post.”
What are custom post types?
Don’t be confused by the term “post” in the name. It is actually an extremely generic term and should not be considered the same thing as a blog post. If you prefer, you can replace it with “content” instead.
Custom post types don’t have any strict rules that define what they are. They can represent any type of content you want. For example, WordPress ships with several default post types.
- Blog Posts
- Pages
- Attachments
- Revisions
- Nav Menus (WordPress 3.0)
You should think of them as a way to create, edit, and store information in the same way as blog posts but with much more creative control.
One thing I would warn against is trying to separate your blog posts in this way. You have categories, tags, and custom taxonomies at your disposal if you’re just looking for a way to label them.
Ideas for custom post types
While WordPress ships with some good default post types that are great for most sites, some of us need alternatives. I’ll list some things below that I think would be useful and link to examples if I can.
- Real estate listings.
- Event calendar (I know a lot of folks are interested in this).
- Movie Database
- Book Database
- A forum without a lot of integration problems.
- A ticket system like the WordPress Trac.
- Design gallery/showcase.
Don’t let your imagination be limited by my list of examples. Also, look for some information on the forum and ticket system ideas from me in the future. Those two are projects I’ve been building and would love to get some feedback on.
Custom post types in the admin
Once you create a custom post type, WordPress can handle all of the admin stuff for you. By default, the administration interface will be the same as what you get with blog posts and pages. Of course, you’re welcome to get more advanced with it and change it into whatever you like.
In this tutorial, I’m creating a post type called Super Duper. With the minimum post type settings, the admin will look like the screenshot below (click image for more detailed view):
Creating custom post types (basics)
WordPress 2.9 introduced the register_post_type() function. It didn’t do a lot at the time, but WordPress 3.0 will make this a powerful tool.
To get the basic functionality of a custom post type working, we hardly have any code to input. Before you start, you at least need a few things: a name, two labels, and whether your post type will be public (you’ll likely want this).
You can either create a plugin file or use your theme’s functions.php file to add the code. I will assume at this point of the tutorial that you know how to work with at least one of those two things.
Let’s set up our Super Duper post type.
add_action( 'init', 'create_my_post_types' );
function create_my_post_types() {
register_post_type( 'super_duper',
array(
'labels' => array(
'name' => __( 'Super Dupers' ),
'singular_name' => __( 'Super Duper' )
),
'public' => true,
)
);
}You’ll notice that there’s not a lot going on there. We added two parameters: a post type name and an array of arguments. All of the possible arguments are detailed in the next section.
If all you’ll ever want to do is something as basic as having a title field and content textarea, you can skip over the next portion of this tutorial.
Creating custom post types (in detail)
In the basic section above, we used two arguments to create our custom post type. However, the register_post_type() function has well over 20 arguments you can use. It gives you a lot of control over the specifics of your post type without a lot of hassle. You can mix and match these in all sorts of ways that I can’t even come close to covering in this tutorial.
Below, I’ll describe each of the arguments available for use. Each section will have an example of how to add the argument to the arguments array.
labels
The labels argument is an array of strings that represents your post type in the admin. Each string is a bit of text shown for particular function in the admin. By default, non-hierarchical post types will have text with “post” in them and hierarchical post types will have text with “page” in them.
It is particularly important that you make these strings translatable if you’re creating a plugin for public use.
This list is a set of general examples of when each string is used. However, each may be used in multiple places in the admin.
name: The plural form of the name of your post type.singular_name: The singular form of the name of your post type.add_new: The menu item for adding a new post.add_new_item: The header shown when creating a new post.edit: The menu item for editing posts.edit_item: The header shown when editing a post.new_item: Shown in the favorites menu in the admin header.view: Used as text in a link to view the post.view_item: Shown alongside the permalink on the edit post screen.search_items: Button text for the search box on the edit posts screen.not_found: Text to display when no posts are found through search in the admin.not_found_in_trash: Text to display when no posts are in the trash.parent: Used as a label for a parent post on the edit posts screen. Only useful for hierarchical post types.
'labels' => array(
'name' => __( 'Super Dupers' ),
'singular_name' => __( 'Super Duper' ),
'add_new' => __( 'Add New' ),
'add_new_item' => __( 'Add New Super Duper' ),
'edit' => __( 'Edit' ),
'edit_item' => __( 'Edit Super Duper' ),
'new_item' => __( 'New Super Duper' ),
'view' => __( 'View Super Duper' ),
'view_item' => __( 'View Super Duper' ),
'search_items' => __( 'Search Super Dupers' ),
'not_found' => __( 'No super dupers found' ),
'not_found_in_trash' => __( 'No super dupers found in Trash' ),
'parent' => __( 'Parent Super Duper' ),
),description
The description argument allows you to write a text string of your post type. Thus far, I haven’t seen this used anywhere in the WordPress admin, but I’m sure custom post type plugins could take advantage of this.
'description' => __( 'A super duper is a type of content that is the most wonderful content in the world. There are no alternatives that match how insanely creative and beautiful it is.' ),public
The public argument is a kind of catchall argument for several other arguments and defaults to false. Depending on whether it’s set to true or false, it’ll automatically decide what other arguments should be unless they’re specifically defined. If you’re looking for finer control over the public arguments, there are three specific arguments you may set:
show_ui: Whether to show the administration screens.publicly_queryable: Whether queries for this post type can be performed from the front end.exclude_from_search: Whether the posts should appear in search results.
'public' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'exclude_from_search' => false,menu_position
By default, a new post type is added after the Comments menu item in the admin. But, you have to ability to move it to a position more suitable for you. Default WordPress menu items are set apart by integrals of 5. For example, using 20 will add your menu item after Pages.
'menu_position' => 20,menu_icon
New post types will default to the Posts menu icon, but if you want to mix it up a bit or give your post type some separation from other elements, you can define a custom icon. You only have to input a a custom URL to an image file.
'menu_icon' => get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/images/super-duper.png',hierarchical
The hierarchical argument allows you to choose whether you want your post type to be hierarchical. It defaults to false. If you set it to true, your posts will behave like pages in WordPress.
'hierarchical' => true,query_var
The query_var argument allows you to control the query variable used to get posts of this type. For example, you could use it with the query_posts() function or WP_Query class. This will default to the name of your taxonomy.
'query_var' => true,capability_type / capabilities
The capability_type argument is another catchall argument for several more specific arguments and defaults to post. It allows you to define a custom set of capabilities, which are permissions to edit, create, and read your custom post type. If you’re unfamiliar with capabilities, I highly recommend reading my guide on users, roles, and capabilities.
If you just want to keep the same permissions you have with blog posts, leave this at the default. Otherwise, you can either set capability_type to something custom or define each specific capability in the capabilities array.
edit_post: Whether someone can create and edit a specific post of this post type.edit_posts: Capability that allows editing posts of this post type.edit_others_posts: Capability that allows editing of others posts.publish_posts: Capability to grant publishing of these types of posts.read_post: Capability that controls reading of a specific post of this post type.read_private_posts: Capability to allow reading of private posts.delete_post: Capability that grants the privelege of deleting posts.
For most people that need control over these things, it’s easier to just change capability_type to something like super_duper. WordPress will automatically switch the other caps to follow this pattern. For example, the edit_post capability would become edit_super_duper.
Of course, capability control means nothing without being able to choose who has the capabilities. That’s what my Members plugin was created for. It’s ideal for this scenario.
/* Global control over capabilities. */
'capability_type' => 'super_duper',
/* Specific control over capabilities. */
'capabilities' => array(
'edit_post' => 'edit_super_duper',
'edit_posts' => 'edit_super_dupers',
'edit_others_posts' => 'edit_others_super_dupers',
'publish_posts' => 'publish_super_dupers',
'read_post' => 'read_super_duper',
'read_private_posts' => 'read_private_super_dupers',
'delete_post' => 'delete_super_duper',
),supports
The supports argument allows you to define what meta boxes and other fields will appear on the screen when editing or creating a new post. This defaults to title and editor. There are several available options:
title: Text input field to create a post title.editor: Content input box for writing.comments: Ability to turn comments on/off.trackbacks: Ability to turn trackbacks and pingbacks on/off.revisions: Allows revisions to be made of your post.author: Displays a select box for changing the post author.excerpt: A textarea for writing a custom excerpt.thumbnail: The thumbnail (featured image in 3.0) uploading box.custom-fields: Custom fields input area.page-attributes: The attributes box shown for pages. This is important for hierarchical post types, so you can select the parent post.
'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'excerpt', 'custom-fields', 'thumbnail' ),rewrite
The rewrite argument allows you to define the permalink structure of your posts when viewing the single post. For example, you may want to have a structure like yoursite.com/cool/post-name. WordPress will set up a default structure based on your taxonomy name. The rewrite argument can be set to true, false, or an array of values. It takes two arguments:
slug: The slug you’d like to prefix your posts with.with_front: Whether your post type should use the front base from your permalink settings (for example, if you prefixed your structure with/blogor/archives).
'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'cool', 'with_front' => false ),taxonomies
If you have some preexisting taxonomies, you can allow posts of this type to also use those taxonomies. You just have to set an array of taxonomy names that you’d like for it to use. WordPress will handle all the administration features for you.
Note that I’ll be covering the integration of post types and taxonomies in more depth in a future tutorial.
'taxonomies' => array( 'post_tag', 'category '),can_export
You can use the can_export argument to decide whether posts of your post type can be exportable via the WordPress export tool. By default, this is set to true.
'can_export' => true,register_meta_box_cb
This feature will likely only be useful to developers. You can create a custom callback function that is called when the meta boxes for the post form are set up.
'register_meta_box_cb' => 'your_callback_function_name',permalink_epmask
I won’t pretend to know much about permalink endpoint masks. I just know you can define a custom one for your post type. Most of you won’t need this. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll leave this at the default.
'permalink_epmask' => EP_PERMALINK,Viewing a custom post type
WordPress will show the singular view of your custom post types without any extra work. Once you create a new post, you’ll be able to view it by clicking on the View Post link.
If your WordPress theme has a single.php template, this will be used to display your custom post type. If not, it will fall back to the index.php template. Since this is a “custom” post type, I’ll assume you want to customize how it’s output. To overwrite the default, you can create a custom template. Our template will be called single-super_duper.php.
You can go as crazy as you like with this template. All of the standard WordPress template tags will work just fine here as well. I could give you endless pages of examples of how to customize this, but I won’t. I’d rather allow you to get creative on your own.
If you’re using a smart theme like Hybrid, this template will be super_duper.php. Hybrid has long supported custom post types and uses a different template hierarchy, which is detailed in its tutorials. WordPress 3.0 will be a fun time to use this theme because of the ultimate control it gives you over templates like this.
Showing multiple posts from our custom post type
Let’s suppose I wanted to show the 10 latest “super dupers” I’ve published. We’ll use the standard WordPress loop for this and customize it however we like. Here’s a basic example:
<?php $loop = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'super_duper', 'posts_per_page' => 10 ) ); ?>
<?php while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
<?php the_title( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="' . get_permalink() . '" title="' . the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) . '" rel="bookmark">', '</a></h2>' ); ?>
<div class="entry-content">
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>Obviously, this is an extremely simple example. Understanding what you can do with the loop is outside the scope of this tutorial. The most important part is giving the post_type argument the name of our post type.
Getting the post type of a post
An old, yet useful, function in WordPress is get_post_type(). It allows you to check the current (if no post object or ID input) or a specific post’s post type. It will return the name of the post type for the post as a string.
$post_type = get_post_type( $post_id );Checking if a post type exists
WordPress 3.0 will introduce a conditional tag called is_post_type() whose purpose is twofold. Its first purpose is to check whether a post type or types exist. In order to use it, you can input a custom post type name or array of names into the function call.
if ( is_post_type( 'super-duper' ) )
echo 'Super Dupers are working!';
else
echo 'Super Dupers are not working!';Checking if a post is of specified post type
The second purpose of the is_post_type() function allows you to check a specific post against a specific post type(s). Let’s assume we want to check if one of our posts has the super_duper post type.
if ( is_post_type( 'super_duper', $post_id ) )
echo 'This is a not a blog post. It is a super duper!';
else
echo 'This is not a super duper. [insert sad face]';Checking if a post type is hierarchical
You may want to treat hierarchical post types differently than other post types. To figure out if a post type is hierarchical, you can use the is_post_type_hierarchical() conditional tag. It will take in a post type name, post ID, or post object as its single parameter.
For example, let’s check if our super duper post type is hierarchical:
if ( is_post_type_hierarchical( 'super_duper' ) )
'Super Dupers should not be hierarchical!';
else
'Super Dupers are definitely not hierarchical! We stick it to the man!';Getting a post type object
In some scenarios, you may want to get the arguments (all those things we went over earlier) for a specific post type. It is extremely important for plugin/theme authors to respect these arguments when creating plugins/themes that interact with custom post types.
Let’s suppose we want to call a specific function if the super duper post type has set show_ui to true.
$post_type = get_post_type_object( 'super_duper' );
if ( $post_type->show_ui )
custom_function_name();Adding and removing support for post type features
The add_post_type_supprt() function is no different than using the supports argument when first creating your post type. This is likely more useful if you’re using a plugin/theme that has defined a custom post type.
So, let’s suppose you’re using a plugin that creates a new post type for you. Your post type doesn’t have support for thumbnails, but you think this feature would work well on your site.
add_post_type_support( 'post_type', 'thumbnail' );The opposite of this function is remove_post_type_support(). So, let’s further suppose that your plugin author added support for excerpts, but you don’t want to use this feature.
remove_post_type_support( 'post_type', 'excerpt' );Checking if a post type supports a specific feature
As a plugin/theme author, this will likely be useful. You wouldn’t want to try and display stuff that doesn’t exist for a custom post type. For example, your theme may wrap post content with a <div> or something of that sort. This is fairly common. But, you may want to remove it if the post type doesn’t have written content.
<?php if ( post_type_supports( 'super_duper', 'editor' ) ) { ?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?post_class(); ?>>
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>Be careful with this though. A post type may have other means of defining something like the content, and this should only be taken as an example of how to use the post_type_supports() function.
Getting registered post types for use in PHP
As a plugin/theme developer, you may need to get all the registered post types for use in a function of your plugin/theme. You’d use the get_post_types() function for this.
In the below example, I’ll output a list of post types by singular label that are shown in search results.
<?php $types = get_post_types( array( 'exclude_from_search' => false ), 'objects' ); ?>
<ul>
<?php foreach ( $types as $type )
echo '<li>' . $type->singular_label . '</li>';
?>
</ul>Help! I’m getting a 404!
If you’re getting a 404 message when trying to view a post, don’t worry. This is supposed to happen when setting up new post types. The easiest way to fix this is to simply visit your Settings > Permalinks page. You don’t have to save your permalinks but just visit the page. This will flush your rewrite rules.
If you’re a plugin author, you can save yourself some support questions by flushing the rewrite rules on activation of your plugin.
Is this a theme or plugin feature?
I’ve had a hard time trying to decide which to call it, and have ultimately decided that it’s both. It’s a marriage of the two because both need to be in sync to fully enjoy the benefits of custom post types.
More than likely, you’ll see post types registerd from within a plugin. But, they have to be displayed by your theme. If you’re creating this all yourself, you can simply drop it all in your theme.
If you’re a theme author, you should be aware that plugins may add new post types. Do yourself and your users a favor by not assuming too much. Keep your code flexible enough to give a default view for custom post types and easy enough to handle when creating custom templates for those post types.
The tip of the iceberg
I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible with custom post types. Even the new navigation menus feature of WordPress 3.0 will be built with them. While I know some people in the community don’t agree with this decision, I wanted to point it out because it’s a unique example of what’s possible.
Of my list of about 1,000 things I wanted to share in this tutorial, I might have covered about 20 of them. Given enough free time, I could write a book on using custom post types. Some stuff should be left open to exploration though, and I encourage you to try everything I’ve written about and move beyond this tutorial to creating something unique for your site.
Awesome Post! Thanks Justin.
Great write up, love how simple this whole process is now.
I have a bunch of ideas stewing about what to do with this…
Thanks for the rundown on custom post types Justin, it’s much appreciated
What happens to posts with a custom post type, if the according plugin or theme’s deactivated? Will they be treated as regular posts instead?
They still exist as they were. They’re just not displayed. They won’t be changed to posts or anything like that.
If no one else gets around to it, I might make a post type converter plugin or something like that.
I predict there will be demand for something like that.
Now post types, precisely because they are so easy to make and use, can give you headaches. Here is a scenario I found myself in the other day:
I installed Brad’s plugin and started playing around. I made a new post type, and published two new posts. Then I decided I did not like that post type and that I was fine with the two default WP types, Posts and Pages. So I deactivated the plugin, and my two posts disappeared!
Which, in a way, is inconsistent with what people are use to in other parts of WordPress. For example, if you delete a category, everything in it is assigned to the default category. So, maybe you expect that something similar will be the case with post types too. But it’s not.
Yeah, it’d go great with that plugin that cleans up orphaned sidebar widgets that you made a while back.
Eventually, something should be added to core to a tleast keep track of all the things WP ends up orphaning in the DB… I’d be willing to help with it.
This should work with a small upgrade: http://www.briandgoad.com/blog/downloads/p2pconverter/
+1 For a Post Type Converter. This is going to be a must eventually. Is there something like this out there yet?
Thanks for this timely and in-depth article. I needed this information right now for a client site who wants to create a directory site for bands, listing their profiles. I’m in over my head, but this article will help. Thanks again!
One of the most interesting tutorials I have seen in a while. Thanks a lot!
Excellent post Justin! For anyone wanting to play with custom post types but not comfortable writing code check out my custom post type UI plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/
Thanks for linking to your plugin. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere on my list of the other 9,000+ things I didn’t cover. I downloaded it a while back and keep meaning to poke around in the zip folder sitting on my desktop to see what the code looks like.
There is also CMS-Press which does a lot of the same as the plugin you mention. Both allow you to create taxonomies and assign them to any post type you create. Neither, to my knowledge, yet allow you to do the same for meta boxes which would be a sensational aspect to add.
In both cases I think that proving the concept of UI based management for post types, taxonomies and meta boxes via plugin is important, and equally something that should make its’ way into core (or canonical at the very least).
Great write up Justin, got me re-excited about custom post types in 3.0…
Time to do some more playing!
Great tutorial. This is definitely one of the most exiting features of 3.0.
Ultimately it’s the user that will benefit from this because as themes developers we wont need to set complicated metadata up and explain how to use them, we will just create the appropriate post type that will handle everything seamlessly.
Let the “CMS” die and bring up the “Framework”.
Excellent. Been looking forward to this post.
Great work
First off Justin, excellent guide. I also like the idea of calling them custom content types. However, even after this guide, I still don’t get it. I hear people describe custom post types and all I can think about is why not use categories, tags, etc as they seem to address the problem already. What are the differences between using that and this custom post type stuff? I don’t understand the limitations of how the current system works via pages, posts, etc versus custom post types.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: If it can be a blog post, it should probably be a blog post. Most of us get stuck in this “blog” mindset so often and think of things in terms of posts and pages. But, in reality, other types of content don’t have to be nor do they need to be defined by the strict rules set up for posts and pages.
Let me propose a counter-question: Why have pages and attachments if they’re really just posts?
In the “Ideas” section early in the article, I mentioned creating a forum with a custom post type. You wouldn’t want to lob all those forum topics in with your blog posts, would you? Of course not. You certainly don’t do this at WP Tavern. You’d want your forums as a separate section of your site. You’d want a forum-friendly permalink structure. You’d want to set up custom forum-type stuff for it.
Let me add that many end users – people actually creating content – have trouble understanding why they should press ‘Add new post’ while they really want to add a new event or product.
Agreed… this is the biggest problem when teaching clients how to update their site. Pages is simple term to understand where as posts sugests a blog.
I really seems obvious at first to separate in different post type, but I´m also trying to understand what else do I (not a programmer) have to do to use them.
Two things are not clear to me yet:
1. Sharing tags, I created a tag taxonomy for my new post-type, but it´s no shared with posts and pages. So far I learned you can share a new taxonomy with different post-types, but can you share the tags (and categories) too?
2. The new custom menus for 3.0 are great, and different categories are already listed to be used as menu items, but what about custom post types? I have the new taxonomies I created and also the individual items in the new post-type, but not the whole list like I would automatically have if I used choosen to separate it as a category.
As a reference to others, after reading this: http://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-and-custom-post-types/ it became clear to me that I shouldn´t be using custom post-types.
Now I understand why I was having to search so much for for answers of how to consolidate it to the default posts. It´s because that´s not why it was made for.
I recently created a site for a horse farm using wordpress. They list all the horses as posts, and the owner can’t create the new listings as she has SEVERELY limited computer skills. Each horse needs birthdate info, breed, and heritage info.
Now I can create a new post type with info boxes for the Name, birthdate, breed, heritage and other info. She can fill these in and I can output a nicely formatted ‘post’ for her without her being able to mess up the formatting.
This also allows news posts to continue without interruption.
Been waiting for this for a very long time. Thanks for the detailed write up.
Justin
when you create new post types, do they get stored in the posts table?
if that’s the case, I don’t think it’s very efficient for any kind of database driven application.
If you’re using a relational DB, then it should use normalization, primary and foreign keys,etc…
I think that’s something that PODS does.
for example, if you have movies, actors, genres, etc… how is this translated to the DB schema?
Actually, normalization of database schema is slower. By a long shot. Many table JOINs are expensive as heck.
The purpose of normalization isn’t efficiency; the purpose is for data integrity. When your data is normalized and you have proper foreign keys and constraints and such, then it’s possible to ensure that you never enter invalid data.
In this case, that’s not the primary goal, because most any type of data you could enter would be valid. So efficiency and speed-wise, it’s faster to store all the posts (regardless of type) in the same place. Good indexing solves the speed issues. And your JOINs are greatly reduced when you’re not having to pull from multiple tables to retrieve multiple types of things.
yes I suppose data retrieval is more efficient, and that’s how it’s done with data warehouses, where all data is in one table for faster queries.
As a developer on the Pods CMS project, Otto is *half* right.
Yes, it’s usually quicker if you can avoid using joins. Custom post types by themselves don’t need joins since they’re in the posts table.
However, custom fields do require table joins…
I’ll go out on a limb and say that a lot of people are going to want a unique set of custom fields for each post type. Not only that, but they’ll want to filter based on one or more of these custom fields.
For example, for an “Event”, you may need custom fields for latitude, longitude, end date, address, speakers, etc. What if you only want to show events within a certain lat/lng range?
For these situations, Pods is *vastly* more efficient since you’re only querying a single table. With Pods, all the (non-relationship) fields for an event are stored in a single row.
On the other hand, WP needs to JOIN with the postmeta table (at least once). Since postmeta data is always LONGTEXT, indexing is a huge challenge and the data isn’t subject to any MySQL optimizations.
Yep, they get stored in the posts table. I’m going to leave the answer to Otto though. He usually knows what he’s talking about.
Matthew Muro wrote this:
“@Matt Rude
I, too, was having problems with pagination on a page template with my custom post type. However, I discovered that you cannot create a Page using the same string name as your registered custom post type.
For example, if you register_post_type(‘podcast’); you cannot then go create a Page called Podcast and expect it to still work with pagination. Either changing the name of the Page or the register post type string will fix your problem.”
I have the same problem, and I could/can fix it as Matthew Muro describes it. But I really WANT to have the same name for the page as for the slug of the custom post type. In my case it’s “work”. Is there no possibility to make this work?
Would be sooooo great of you (or anybody else) to help me out! Thank you very much.
Dennis, did you solve the problem. I am talking about it here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/pages-and-custom-types-cannot-have-the-same-name-so-how-to-structure-permalinks
Hope that a guru such as Justin will drop by and leave feedback about it.
Hey Justin, I just started with wordpress and tried to figure that out by myself – No way! Thank for thi great solution, nice tutorial ;
O`Reilly still havent called you ?
I’m still waiting.
Awesome tutorial. One thing I frequently use wordpress for is basic e-commerce. Usually I use pages as products with a custom template and custom fields for things like prices. Is there anyway I can add an extra input box for “price” rather than forcing the user to to use the slightly more confusing custom fields? I don’t really care if the data is stored in a custom field, I just want the boxes to be easier to understand.
Also, how can I make a custom post type default to a specific template rather than forcing the user to keep selecting one?
Thanks foe the awesome tutorial!
Andy – Check out this tutorial on creating meta boxes with custom post types. The data is still stored in custom fields but it shows up in the admin area in code-defined ways. So you could have price, inventory, available sizes, etc all within a “product details” meta box that goes along with the standard description + photos in the editor window.
All stuff you *could* do before 3.0, just a lot easier to explain and tailor to terminology clients are familiar with now.
To add a custom meta to a post, even in custom post type, you can see an easy way in this tutorial. It’s easy to define and create some additional meta data for posts.
@Andy Idealien is correct. You could create meta boxes. I would also look into creating taxonomies for better content organization.
Thanks so much Justin. Lots of great information there.
Jeffro – For me, I think the power of custom post types is that you can control which panels appear on the edit screen based on the type of content the end user is adding. Imagine creating a site for a client that needs an event log and customer contacts. Events & Contacts could be 2 new content types each with edit screens tailored for the type of content being added. The edit screen would have less clutter and would be less confusing to end users whose job is to simply add content.
I am beginning to get into them in a big way and am very to happy to see this post. The codex is slim right not on all of the options. It looks to me like the power will be in adding other content types as well, and I am not finding a lot of details on that. I am going to take a look at wp-includes/post.php and see if that sheds any light.
thanks for all you do!
Danny
Great work explaining things here Justin. A lot of this should be copy & pasted into the Codex entry for register_post_type()!
One of the big gaps in custom post types is the lack of a proper landing page index for your post type. (eg http://yourdomain/super_duper/) I made a helper class for that in my post Smarter Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0.
@MattW – Another option is to create a page template (page-{posttype}.php) that has a separate loop and display the contents of the post type as Justin has demonstrated above. This would be closer to using category-##.php if you were using posts / categories to achieve the same result prior to 3.0. The rewrite => ‘slug’ option even allows you to have ‘/toplevelpage/subpage/reallydeeppage/’ as the permalink so that you could have all your custom data types show up within the same area that you have the page permalink. This might require your settings -> permalink to be /%postname%/ I think.
I’m very happy that this has come to core with 3.0. If nothing else it means that I can stop development for my Category Enhancements plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/idealien-category-enhancements/) as the ability to use single-{posttype}.php and page for collection display is really all that it offered.
Indeed, the page template idea would work fine. But you wouldn’t get pagination with it, or feeds, which my helper class gives you.
I’m in agreement about the recent discussions on creating an index page for custom post types, or at least having an option to. At the same time though, not all post types need an index page. For example, pages and attachments don’t have one.
Right now, I just use a custom page template, which can allow pagination. I haven’t looked into making a feed for it yet though.
Justin,
Above you talk about adding pagination to a custom post type index page while using a page template. How are you doing this? I have not been able to get a 2nd (or 3rd) page on my twitter post type, only the first.
Thanks
@Matt Rude
I, too, was having problems with pagination on a page template with my custom post type. However, I discovered that you cannot create a Page using the same string name as your registered custom post type.
For example, if you register_post_type(‘podcast’); you cannot then go create a Page called Podcast and expect it to still work with pagination. Either changing the name of the Page or the register post type string will fix your problem.
Matthew Muro, you are a champion! Thanks for that. After 2 days of trying to work this out I just found your post. If you were in Dublin right now I’d buy you a pint.
… and breathe!
Do you have a screenshot of what the finished product would look like? I’m in the middle of working with a Wordpress-based website that I’m creating, and I am discovering that to convert my blogger blog to the Wordpress site has really messed up my blog posts…Is there any easy way to fix this without having to re-write each one?
You’ll probably want to head over to the WordPress support forums. Someone should be able to help you there.
Wonderfully written Justin.
It’s time for a big ‘Find & Replace Operation’ in everything that has ever been written about WordPress. Because it’s so much more than blog software.
Is that the reason I get a 404 when I run this code? My theme has a single.php.
I’ve really enjoyed using Magic Fields up until now, and supposedly, this makes Magic Fields obsolete.
However, I’ve run into a couple of roadblock here as far as doing client work:
1) I liked how Magic Fields made it really easy for clients to upload images into the custom fields instead of having to perfectly type a long and ugly URL. Looks like using Custom Post Types is a downgrade in that this functionality is now lost
2) If a site is using a home page slide show for blog posts and I want to mix some of my new Post Types in with the blog posts for the homepage slide show, even if I add the correct category using the Custom Taxonomy, my theme is not registering the custom posts as a regular blog post, so there does not seem to be an easy way to have these posts appear on the homepage slideshow.
If anyone has any ideas of how to overcome these 2 issues, that would be great.
Either way, thanks for the great post Justin!!
Doron
OK, so I’m now able to get my new custom posts working with my homepage slideshow as these new custom type blog posts are being mixed in with my regular blog posts.
The instructions are here:
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/02/02/showing-custom-post-types-on-your-home-blog-page
Still curious about creating a more elegant back end for the client to upload images into like I had with Magic fields, any leads would be awesome!
Thanks!
Doron
I’m guessing the Magic Fields plugin simply doesn’t support custom post types yet. You could ask the plugin author if this is in the works for 3.0. It would likely be a simple change to the code.
It looks like you’re right Justin. I just got the following tweet from one of the developers of Magic Fields (@magicfields):
“When WP 3.0 is stable we change the write panels for Post-types and make the relationship between PT and custom fields
”
Definitely glad to still be able to offer this slick interface to my clients while staying current with WordPress technology.
Thanks!
If you can find the hook for you plugin, you can add the metabox to your own custom post types. just replace “post” or “page” with your custom post type name. this worked for me to add the Vimeo for WordPress functionality to my media post type.
Great article Justin. I’m sure this is going to come in real handy
A small aside, and I could be wrong here, but is there a slight typo in the code?
should the code in the grey code for singular_label be
instead of
Yep, you’re right. I just updated the post.
Ok, just got email back from wp-testers, be sure to regenerate your permalinks after adding new custom posts, or you may not be able to see them, that was my problem above.
Could something like this be used to allow for publicly submitted events to go into a moderation queue?
Or know of anything?
Thanks.
It’d take some custom work to make it operate correctly, but it could definitely be used for something like that.
And, I’m guessing a good events plugin will be one of the first plugins to take advantage of custom post types. This is probably the thing I hear people wanting the most.
Yep, that’s a great use-case. We’ve already talked about switching the Events Calendar plugin over to using custom post types.
I’m using Gravity Forms + custom post types to let users suggest their own events. Gravity Forms lets me set publish_status to Draft and although right now you need some basic coding skills , I’m sure Gravity Forms will have full support for custom post types and taxonomies very soon.
Yes, I think the Events Calendar has a lot of potential to roll out events-based websites. The problem is that it is still immature and has a few bugs, but I see the developers working very hard on getting this up to speed.
Thank you for such a detailed description. I’m starting to get excited for WordPress 3.0. I’ll have to chew on the possibilities here for a while.
Great write up Justin,
Hope you can follow up with more on this topic.
For me, Custom Post Types are really only useful when you can search for things via the custom taxonomies (and more than one at the same time).
Using the Movie DB example, I’d want to give the users a search where they can specify the actor name and the genre. eg: find me movies with actor=”Matt Damon” and genre=”Espionage”.
I haven’t looked into how to do this yet, but it seems no one has either. If you know how, I’d love to read how!
Scribu’s Query Multiple Taxonomies is the only thing I know of that comes close to this.
Which has a wonderful drill-down widget in the latest version.
Will be bookmarking this really nice and helpful tutorial. Thanks so much!
No dice on the WP 3.0 beta
tried a few times but can’t get the rewrites or query vars to work. It keeps giving bad requests, not playing nice with permalink settings :O
Hope it gets smoother in WP3.0 full release!
A quick solution is to reset your permalink settings. Go to Settings > Permalinks and press Save settings. Rewrite rules usually work fine after this trick. Weird, but true.
Hi Justin,
Thanks so much for your write-up on this subject! It is great to at least be able to understand a bit of all these new functions in the upcoming WordPress version.
I agree with for example Brad, that for an end-user the dashboard can become much more intuitive with using custom post types; normally it takes quite a bit of effort to let them understand what Posts exactly are, now you can just give them the exact name.
I have one question, that perhaps you can help me out with. As I am in Europe and (have to) make quite a few projects in multiple languages, how does this work for naming the custom post type? Take for example your “books” suggestion. In other European languages, books obviously is a different word. Is it possible to use get_text calls in naming the custom post type or not?
Again thanks so much for this tutorial!
Piet
The examples in the tutorial are localized, at least the parts that can be. The
label,singular_label, anddescriptionare the specific things that are translatable.perfect, thanks for confirming that!
This bog is really useful for the word-press user who more ever work over on it. thanks and keep it up …
Thanks for the guide Justin, that’s exactly what I was looking for!
BTW, where can I read more documentation on Wordpress 3.0?
Cheers.
The new features WordPress 3.0 aren’t fully documented yet. You’ll want to surf popular WordPress blogs for upcoming features.
Oh, I see… I’ll keep checking your blog for more tuts like this one then. Thanks for the quick reply!
Which of the following do you think makes the most sense and a few questions on how to achieve…I am trying to create a custom post type that is “as close to completely idiot proof and self-explanatory” as possible. Using the scenario of creating a custom post type that stores quotes for display throughout the site (sidebars, etc).
1) Customize the text from ‘Enter Title Here’ to say “Enter Quote Author” so that I can use the title field to generate the quote slug. If I do not use the title field the slug gets generated as ‘auto-draft #’ and you lose the ability to quick edit / trash from the edit menu.
2) Register a post type with only a meta box (no title, editor) to capture all details (author, quote, author title, etc). What action / hook / filter to connect with to modify the slug generation to match a meta box field? How to specify a column in the edit table view should have the quick edit / edit / trash UI options applied to it?
I would lean toward option #2. The big thing I’d do differently is use the post editor as the quote box. For the most part, you’ll just have to tinker around with each to get something to your liking.
Yes. I did end up going that way. This tutorial – http://www.shibashake.com/wordpress-theme/wordpress-custom-taxonomy-input-panels – was also excellent reference for method to include a taxonomy as a drop-down within a meta box so that all of the non-quote / author text is within one meta box rather than multiple.
The cleaner, the less questions customers raise
Thanks Justin!
Hi Justin,
Great post. One feature I haven’t seen covered anywhere in articles related to custom post types is a listing feature. Do you know if there is an implementation similar to wp_list_pages() or wp_list_categories() that has the power of those functions? Something like wp_list_super_dupers()?
I’m particularly interested in a function that would list your custom post types, create sublists for children, and echo classes (ie. similar to current-cat, current_page_item, current-cat-parent, etc.) for hierarchical and active relationships in a post or page method (depending on how you enable the custom field).
If there isn’t one, there desperately needs to be, in my opinion. That would seal the deal.
…or, thinking about it a bit more, a function a bit more broadly applied, like:
wp_list_custom_post_types()?
I don’t think there’s any equivalent to the
wp_list_pages()function for other post types, but I’m not sure there should be either. What I mean to say is that I’d rather there’d be focus on making sure custom post types work rather than building extra functions for them (in core). Then, allow developers to extend them with functions like this.On the other hand, in 3.1, I’d love to see some consolidation of functions into flexible, generic functions that can be used across any post type.
Another reason wordpress is the best. New to blogging so can’t say i’ve wanted this for a long long time, but one of the many reasons i’m choosing wp.
Are there any event plugins that take advantage of custom post types and have a calendar? If not, I may build one.
Great and very helpful post. I have my custom post type all set up, however, I was wondering how you get the correct category archive setup for these posts? Right now it’s only displaying posts from the blog.
They are adding the archive template functionality in 3.1, stay tuned!
Question for Justin or any guru.
I’ve noticed that creating a just one custom post type adds about 15 new rewrite rules. (18 or 19 if you use CMS Press or Matt’s wrapper for index page archiving –> #comment-188177)
My question is this. I have a current site, which I’d like to port to wordpress to handle the content, and I can foresee at least 10 – 15 different “custom post types” that I’m going to need to set up.
15 post types * 19 rules/post type = 285!
Is that number high? I’m worried about performance. The site currently gets roughly 1000 visitors a day, but peaks at 3k.
What is an acceptable number of rewrite rules?
Are you using an efficient permalink structure? I’m no permalink guru, but using inefficient permalinks may hurt you here.
Thanks for the link, great info although much was way over my head..
It seems that no matter what I put for the permalink structure, the custom post types url will always be:
domain.com/post_type_name/post_title
which gets stored as 15 different rewrite rules in the wp_options table.
Otto, any wisdom on this?
“It seems that no matter what I put for the permalink structure, the custom post types url will always be: domain.com/post_type_name/post_title”
I am getting the same thing here. If I set my permalink structure to “/%category%/%postname%/” and my rewrite slugs to ‘rewrite’ => array( ‘slug’ => ‘events’ )
My url then become http://www.example.com/events/event-1
Instead of
http://www.example.com/events/category-term/event-1
Is there any way to fix this?
It’ll be fine unless they’re in your .htaccess
I Not Yet understand with this, but thank you very much for sharing. I’ll come back again to learn this.
Great post Justin!
It’s curious that menu_icon was added to show in the left-hand-menu but something like editwindow_icon which displays the larger 32 pixel version (/wp-admin/images/icons32.png) along with the Add New / Edit [Post Type] Title was not.
@Idealien, I agree. It seems kind of stupid to have the correct menu icon not have the option to create a larger one for the specific pages.
Hi Justin,
I’m relatively new to WP and I’ve been looking for a solution to paginate custom post types for quite a while now with no success yet.
Your suggestion works to the point of displaying my custom posts list. However, pagination is broken. Using wp-pagenavi, only a box with “Page 1 of 0″ show below the post list which I limited to 2 posts for testing. Using wp default pagination tags, nothing shows below the posts.
Other relevant details:
- I placed the query on a page template (see below), created a new page and chose this custom page as the template.
- This page is not my front page. It’s accessed by a wp_page_list menu item.
Isn’t it possible to paginate custom post types? I don’t believe so. I prefer to believe it’s my fault. Can someone please help me out of this problem? I’m almost throwing the towel. Thank you in advance.
My template code:
Sorry, the code was posted wrongly. How do I post it right?
Will this replace custom fields?
Oh btw Justin, where is your search box in this blog?
No, this won’t replace custom fields. Custom fields are metadata you attach to a post (or any post type).
Right now, there’s no search form for this blog.
Could exist a structured combination between Custom fields & “Post Type”?
Hi Justin,
Really helpful article to get me started on the WP 3.0 beta but I have one thing which I have been stumped on for a few days! Not sure if it’s something I am doing wrong or if it hasn’t been implemented in the beta yet!
Working completely I have :
domain.com/post_type_name/
domain.com/post_type_name/post_title
Is it possible to have :
domain.com/post_type_name/post_type_category/
This page would list all the custom post types that are within that category. I know I can create a Page for each Category and have a different WP_query on each page, but when this is dynamic and more Categories are added there is a problem!
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks
If you’re going to mix custom post types and taxonomies, you need to make sure the slugs in the rewrites don’t conflict.
So, let’s assume we’re creating a movie post type and have a movie category taxonomy. The rewrite arguments would look like this:
I’ll cover this a bit more in depth in my post type and taxonomy tutorial.
Wonderful Tutorial…
Awesome tutorial. By far the best one I have found regarding custom post types yet.
I got the custom post type working for the most part and can query them just fine but I am having trouble filtering the posts using permalinks. In the left nav I did a list of the taxonomies to use as navigation but the permalinks arent working. They’re going to the 404.
I tried changing the slug to what you listed a couple posts up but that broke all of it.
Here is my code for the custom post type and the taxonomy:
I went ahead and replaced register_post_type() on my wordpress install with your create_my_post_types() function.
So many comments!
This seems like a great plugin to help with creating new custom post types: http://vocecommunications.com/services/web-development/wordpress/plugins/cms-press/
I found it not too long ago and I don’t know if many people know about it yet. Anyone have a review for it? It does work as advertised, but only an expert would know if it goes about custom post types the right way. I’m curious…
With 3.0 beta2 I have started developing websites with custom content type. I keep coming back to the article – it is such an amazing work putting that together Justin – Thanks very much!
BTW – It seems I’m the 100th commenter
Justin, thank you for this. As always, you’re a great resource.
One thing that I cannot grasp. When I first heard “custom post types” for WP I was very excited because I envisioned something similar to “Custom Content Types” that Drupal offers.
The most important feature being the ability to EASILY add custom fields to these content types. So the user who is writing the post would not only see “Title” and “Content” fields for a “Movie” post type, but would also see “Actor” “Director” (etc.) fields where they can easily input the info and it would be displayed in the main body of the page with the content.
I don’t see how Taxonomy solves this. They are still just tags and do not appear in the main body of the post.
This is the main reason I must use Drupal for some jobs instead of WP. Some clients need many custom content types (Events, News, Reviews) that need specific fields they can easily fill out and then be displayed.
I am probably missing something, but adding Custom Fields to a new Custom Post does not seem like an easy task via the control panel…. lots of code customization? I hope I am wrong.
You may find what you look for in plugins like More Fields, Magic Fields , Verve Meta Boxes and Custom Fields template, once they are updated for 3.0.
quick fyi
Verve Meta Boxes was updated today and works perfectly with 3.0 so far. I am very happy with it.
If by adding ‘actor, and director’ in the admin panel, you mean simply adding in the name of the actor and director, then taxonomies are perfect for that. It’s fairly simple to get the taxonomies related to a given post to show up on a page. Check out Justin’s movie post and you will see it in action exactly as you described.
Now if you are talking about giving the user the ability to also assign meta data to the actor such as a picture and description as well, then…
currently I only see 2 possible solutions to this issue, which is exactly what I am working on myself.
1. taxonomy metadata plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/taxonomy-metadata/
I have only just begun to play with that plugin, but it looks like it is almost perfect for the job. I only wish the author would have given some clear examples of how to implement it. Right now it’s more for php jockies than regular users.
2. relational post_types plugin (posts-to-posts)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posts-to-posts/
This one I have actually had a bit of luck with, and can see some serious potential, esp since Scribu wrote it, and he’s the master when it comes to post_types. Give it some time though, as it’s only a few days old.
Either one, or a combination of the two, should accomplish 95% of everything your mentioning. Especially when Scribu adds the ability to edit one post_type within another post_type admin panel.
If these don’t fit your needs, check out pods. It does exactly what you are after, and 10x more. For me at least, I prefer for now to stick with native wp functionality, and frankly pods was above my pay grade lol..
justin, great tutorial
i’m wp newbie , for this custom type,
how to make pagination with this custom type
seems i have wrong permalinks
i’ve this post-type url (standard slug from register_post_type):
wp/post-type/post-url
after click next page, this is the url:
wp/post-type/page/2
then redirected to home
can you help me.
thanks
Justin
Is there any way to get a hierachy or the category in the url? i have tried ‘hierarchical’ => true, but nothing changes… have i done something wrong?
I want something like:
example.com/images/category-name/custom-post-type-name
where ‘images’ is the post type.
Thanks
David
One of the most interesting tutorials I have seen in a while. Thanks a lot
how can i copy single.php to single-book.php ,I want to do how to use this page
This is my first time I have visited here. I found a lot of interesting stuff in your blog.Thanks a lot.
If you create a type for example called portfolio and your example content might /portfolio/postone/ should you be able to view anything at /portfolio/ like an archive or something or do you have create a page and fake it.
Driz, this is exactly what I’m trying to figure out… I tested many possibilities, but without sucess until now. I have 3 post types. I created different template files for each one of them, the content opens perfectly, like /event/staff-meeting. But when I try just /event/ to have a list (loop) of all events of that post type, I’m not getting sucess. Someone knows how to make this possible?
Afff… Finally I got an answer to this! Permalink structure for pages is actually what we want. A page called “Event” will have /event as its permalink (since ‘event’ is its slug). What I did was, create a page and call it “Event”. Making use of WP template hierarchy, I created a file and called it page-event.php. And then I placed my post-type query for events in it:
Not found message goes here…
<?php the_title();
Does someone have a better idea? Suggestion?
Thanks for this excellent post Justin!
Trying the code again…
`
Not found message goes here
`
dont know if its new, but you can simply copy your existing category.php/archive.php file and rename it to archive-{posttype}.php. Now /portfolio/ works as an archive of custom posts.
Honestly… you’re a genius. I’m in the process of building my first web site (wordpress platform) and this info is priceless. I think I will print the page to have it close by. Thanks for the info. I’ve bookmarked your site and I will surely return.
I’m sorry… how can I show the php code on this comment form?
Instant bookmark… gonna be needing this in the next few months for sure!
Thanks for taking the time to go through all of these features.
I think there is a but in WP 3.0 b2 when using the is_post_type() function…
I tried adding the following code in my sidebar:
if ( is_single() && is_post_type(‘post’,$post_id) ) { include ‘datasheet.php’; } ?>
So the idea is that when viewing SINGLE pages and only of the type POST (the default post type), it would then include the datasheet.php
However, it happens that datasheet.php is being included when viewing ANY post type. Besides the default post type, I have 3 others. The datasheet.php appears when viewing any of those posts.
Now for something curious: If I type for my post type name something that doesn’t exist, say:
if ( is_single() && is_post_type(‘garblegarblegarble’,$post_id) ) { include ‘datasheet.php’; } ?>
Then the datasheet.php is NEVER included when viewing a post…
Probably a bug, right?
I posted about it on the forums: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/402823
Regards,
P.
This is an excellent post for us wordpress bloggers. Lots of useful information, thank you for posting it.
This is just awesome! I have several ideas already for what to do with this.
But is there any way to attach per-user metadata to custom post types, like a rating or an event attendance status?
Great guide! I’ve learned a ton off of all these little tips! Thanks for the great advice! Absolutely incredible info. Thanks again!
Hi Justin,
along with almost everyone else, we’re really looking forward to custom post types in WP, but we’ve got some niggling doubts about the implementation, or about how various WP blogs are suggesting post types be implemented. Primarily, isn’t functions.php the worst place to set up post types, since register_post_types also affects the GUI of wp-admin – which is never usually theme-related? If one sets up post types within a theme-specific file that also happens to be subject to fairly frequent changes and improvements during build and once a site is live, aren’t there several big risks? Namely:
1) you could register a new custom post_type, start inserting posts, and then (you, a co-worker, a hacker, an ftp error) could willingly or inadvertently change functions.php and change the definition of the post_type (which, being a theme file not core wp-admin, wouldn’t run checks/validation of the definition against the database) leaving all the posts already entered either orphaned or broken, and the database cluttered with irretrievable junk.
2) your register_post_type function will get called at every page load: isn’t that wasteful at best, risky at worst?
3) you (or your client) could switch theme and, in doing so, lose the custom post_types – not just their display, but their admin too. It’s one thing to need to re-jig a theme to display them properly, but surely quite another to have to redefine their structure?
Although you mention in the article that register_post_types could be called from a plug-in, this also seems contradictory for such a deep-rooted new feature: we can imagine lots of competing plug-ins emerging, some with checks and balances, some without; some with neat admin GUIs, some without. Maybe that’s a benefit – natural selection will ensure the best plug-in emerges eventually – but in the meantime, WP support risks being flooded with desperate cries for help.
People often mention drupal and the CCK module… the point with that seems to be that the development path happened the other way round to WP and custom post types: CCK was developed (and evolved) as an external module for adding custom node types. It was only taken into drupal core once it (and its administration and security models?) were judged mature, stable and useful enough. With WP, what appears to be happening is the opposite: a core feature is added, but apparently without a good wp-admin section or data security features, and its implementation is being left up to non-core plug-in developers and, even worse, themers like me.
Doesn’t this risk making implementation of the new custom post types feature patchy and buggy, reducing WP’s perceived simplicity and strength? Custom post types seem to us to be so important that their registration and management should be in core wp-admin just as most of the best new features of recent releases have been.
Our understanding of the way post_types will work may be flawed or incomplete, in which case we’d LOVE to be reassured/corrected, because we really can’t wait to use them and feel that they’ll make WP an even stronger system for even more flexible sites. But we’re a bit worried at the moment.
Any comments?
I have been looking around the database and found that custom post types are implemented very cleverly. First of all, it is not really going deep rooted, its just an attribute in wp_posts table, all the magic is done on php level and everything is based on (imho) already perfectly working post/page post types. I believe they have been already making code level changes for custom post type to be possible for a long time (like unifying the editor page for posts and pages).
My 2Cs;
1-) functions.php is one of the right places to make the registration, custom post types can be seen as a feature of the theme.
2-) all logic regarding finding and displaying custom posts created when the theme is loaded. Therefore WP_Query and co is aware of the new custom post type after register_post_type() has run. There is no database query to ‘discover’ their presence. I find this effective, fast and flexible.
So, I think there is no need to worry,
Cheers
The major functionality I was waiting from WP 3.0 was Custom Post types. But I still don’t see how to determine exact custom fields for custom type.
I mean: we create movies database and create custom field “Actor”. Is there a way to only show this custom field when editing custom post type “Movies”? Because when I create a usual post I see “Actor” in custom fields and so on…
Curious about how to do certain things:
* Create an archives page (both a list and a search result page).
* Create sidebar navigation that lists “categories” and recent “posts” from custom post types.
I wanted to create a section on my site that would allow me to post different articles, and while I can do work-arounds for some things, I’d rather have a cleaner, easier, and much more organized way of doing things before I implement some of my ideas.
Any way I can achieve those things without to edit a thousand files or create an additional plugin to use?
Great post! Many thanks for this, you’ve cleared up a load of questions I’ve had!
One thing I can’t seem to be able to do is to perform a query from a custom post type within a specific category:
I can display the results of the query ok without the category_name, but once I add that it doesn’t display anything!
Any thoughts?
This was a good article and proceeds with a good discussion. I am fairly new to PHP programming. I’ve created a custom post type fine and added some meta boxes. I have some questions with regards to creating a meta box for uploading images.
My custom post type is “Case Studies” which I have the editor registered to show a description for what the project was about. I have a custom meta box for showing the “Services Provided” (which is just a check box group). The final thing I want to be able to do is create some sort of image uploader. For each “Case Study” I want to display images. I would like to use some javascript on the presentation part to display these images.
Magic Forms was mentioned earlier about easily adding images but I want to stay away from using plugins if at all possible.
Do you have any suggestions or could you point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Justin,
I have really been thinking about custom post types as a great way to have a simple forum that uses the standard WP database tables. I even started hacking some stuff in WP2.9, but decided to wait for 3.0. So I’m VERY interested in your work on a forum “plugin”. Your screenshot you posted looks absolutely perfect as I was thinking of modeling the look and feel like bbPress as well.
Since it sounds like you are looking for suggestions, I have a couple of key suggestions that wouldn’t naturally be available with just the WP3.0 custom post types:
1) I would like to a *separate* RSS feed for forum posts. Every discussion forum in the world has this, but this isn’t standard functionality with custom post types. In fact, it appears custom post types were designed to be used more like custom *pages* in that they get a permalink and it can be specified that they are searchable, but they do not appear in any RSS feed format.
2) Having run various forums over the years, it seems that most website owners would like to be able to easily specify that their “news” (“blog”) type posts get placed into the forums. Historically, people are more willing to comment on a forum than on an actual “news” article. At least that has been my experience with hobbyist type sites. I know this isn’t a problem for Engadget or CNN, but I think for smaller websites it could help increase the number of comments.
But if the forums are custom post types, then I don’t believe that we can simply flag a “blog” post to appear there, right? This would be easier if the forums were simply blog posts (and their comments) within a standard category taxonomy. i.e. I flag the article in its normal category and also tick off what forum category it should appear in. Notice no duplication of data and comments on the forums will appear on the blog article as well.
So with the combination of these two requirements (RSS feed and ability to post to the “blog” and “forums” at the same time), would it be better to have forums that are just normal blog posts and use the built-in category taxonomy or create a custom “forum” taxonomy? With that method, you’d have to filter your main RSS feed to exclude the posts that are *only* in the forum (but show them in the “forum” RSS feed). With custom post types you’d have to build your own RSS feed for the forums (I assume) and that sounds harder than simply hiding some posts from the main RSS feed.
What do you think?
Hi Justin, firstly thanks for the article and all the other awesome stuff you do.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to create a relationship between two or more custom post types but haven’t really been able to come up with a good and practical way of creating a direct relationship either as a 1-n or n-n relationship.
I’ve got the following custom post types:
- Merchants
- Special Offers
- Brands
Merchants can have multiple special offers however a special offer can only have on merchant.
Brands can be associated with multiple merchants and a merchant can sell multiple brands. Brands may sometimes be associated with special offers and a special offer may apply to multiple brands.
So far the solutions I’ve come up with seem to require having duplicate entries for entities e.g. merchants as both a taxonomy or custom field and as a custom post type.
So far the solution I’ve come up with involves create a custom taxonomy containing merchant names, add that custom taxonomy to both the merchant custom post type and any other custom post type that needs to be associated with that merchant.
Is there a better way of doing this? E.g. the ability to load the titles of all posts within a single custom post type into a dropdown select box or list of checkboxes in the create interface for another custom post type?
I just want to make sure that there isn’t a cleaner, more direct or more obvious way of doing this that I’m not seeing before I commit to the custom taxonomy solution.
Lars, I’ve got the same problem – associating custom posts types…
I’ve got DESTINATIONS and TOURS, and have struggled to find an easy way to link the two (both ways), apart from creating custom taxonomies of the same (Destinations and Tours)… and then it starts getting messy – especially if a client has to add a new post AND taxonomy for a new tour…
Yes! is there any way to load a list of all posts within a custom posts type?
Has anybody got any ideas? please!
why does my custom taxonomies (categories and tags) shown up in custom post list?
how to get it works?
Is it possible to use a slug like this?
http://www.mallona.nl/webspots/91230/crash-near-schiphol-amsterdam/
How to add the ID at the slug level. I want this, so the slug-title does not matter anymore. Searching on ID is much faster to get more peformance out of wordpress.
wondering about your remarks above about the single.php and this text: If you’re using a smart theme like Hybrid, this template will be super_duper.php.
As I am using hybrid 0.8.1 and there is no single.php only a singular.php I am unsure on which template to base my recipe.php for my new custom post type called “recipe”
Is there a better way of doing this? E.g. the ability to load the titles of all posts within a single custom post type into a dropdown select box or list of checkboxes in the create interface for another custom post type?
Great post Justin. I somehow found your old post about custom posts on WP 2.8 and left a comment there http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/05/06/custom-taxonomies-in-wordpress-28#comment-200736
This comment asked how I could use custom posts in Wp 3.0 when released for a mortgage comparison site I am planning.
Here is the question and the variations possible for a home loan in Australia.
“How would I best use custom posts and taxonomies on this site? [Why did you elect to go for non hierarchal taxonomies.]
Most people only focus on interest rates.
Loans however could be classified by, Funder, loan size, down payment, lender, lender type, distribution channel/s, loan type, client type/ employment stability, income and job type/ partners/ downpayment, mortgage insurance [variable on deposit amount] loan purpose, loan costs, Property security, loan size, Interest fixed or variable or combo/ revolving credit line, Repayment options, Loan style, Loan options, Interest rates, Introductory discount offers, Loan terms, Loan conditions, Early repayment options, application fees, establishment fees, ongoing fees and charges, deferred fees, early repayment penalties, default fees and interest rates, default processes, Loan documention type, Credit rating/history/ scores. etc.
E.g. Client type could be first home buyer, self employed, with less than two years income/tax statements, with minor credit defaults. In Australia he would be paying a higher interest rate than a professional, such as an employed lawyer on $150,000 with clear credit, and be precluded from applying with many lender types [and or loan types]. Incomes, dependents and financial commitments can also affect the loan offered.
Each one of these can have a multiple choices, and or be dependent on other areas.”
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot for this great explained article!
If got a question though: Do you know, how I can get the CPT queried by the searchform? Unfortunatelly I seem to fail with everything I try.
Best wishes,
Steffen
funny 404 bug :p
How do I get the custom post type of the post to show up in the loop? I’ve created a few custom types, and I’d like the type to appear in a dialogue balloon over the thumbnail, so that visitors know they’re getting for example, a Video or a Photo. Cheers!
My hat is off to you Justin. This is one heck of a detailed tutorial
One of the custom post types I can see myself making is an event listing/information post type. I made a plugin called Advanced Events Registration (http://shoultes.net/wordpress-events-registration-with-paypal-ipn/) for WordPress that allows blog owners to publish events (including registration forms) to their blog. I also offer a free version, but the pro version of the plugin is actually a full event management suite which also allows you to create a post at the time of event creation. At the moment the new post is created by including a “post template” and a little bit of ob_start() and ob_end_clean() magic.
I am going to see if I can integrate what you have posted here. This looks like it may be a very promising alternative to what I am currently doing with ob_start() and ob_end_clean().
Thanks!
Seth Shoultes
Wondering if anyone has attempted to import current blog
XMLorRSSfeed into a custom post type, is that possible yet?Amazing post! Thanks alot!
Any easy to understand guides on how to add options to the custom posts? For example, if a movie is drama, comedy, horror…. to have those options as check boxes WITHIN the custom post edit panel? I can’t seem to find a guide or plug-in for that.
I would like to know too…
I found this http://blog.genuineinteractive.com/post/adding-custom-field-gui-to-custom-post-types-wordpress-3.aspx
thank you for your post. this is great for me. specially for those who are new to custom post type. thanks again.
wow….. nice posting.. thanks for share.
Great post Justin. It’s always good to spice up your blog to separate yourself from the rest of the flock.
It is a good idea to plot the data so that you can explore its features.
An exploratory plot of your data enables you to identify discontinuities
and potential outliers, as well as the regions of interest.
Thanks…
For those of you asking about / lamenting the lack of custom post type “archives” support (an equivalent to the blog home for a custom post type), I’ve put together a plug-in that plugs that hole in 3.0.
http://www.cmurrayconsulting.com/software/wordpress-custom-post-type-archives/
I’d be very grateful if you could add a few lines to your tutorial showing how to create a new role and give it the custom post type capabilities. Try as I might I can’t get it to work. In fact, including the capability_type argument WITHOUT a role ‘breaks’ the admin page, simply showing tags.
A role is definitely needed to make the capability_type argument work.
That’s a bit outside the scope of this tutorial. If you look at that section in the tutorial though, you’ll find two links that are relevant to your request.
Nice Article,,, Thanks You
Hi Justin,
I am using the “Content Permissions” component of your “Members” plugin and cannot seem to figure out how to add that feature to a Custom Post Type. How would I do that?
Thanks!
Loren
This feature will be added to the plugin very soon.
i created two post-type (ex. movies and gallery) ,but i need a monthly archive for gallery and monthly archive dont work in gallery, please help me to create a monthly archive for post-type.please!
That’s another tutorial in and of itself.
In the page attributes box I see no dropdown for specifying a custom page template for my custom post type. Am I doing something wrong? I have hierarchical set to true.
You should not be able to set a “page” template for something that’s not a page.
But if you have set your custom post type to be hierarchical, shouldn’t you be able to specify custom templates on a per-post basis just as you are able to for pages?
In the documenation for register_post_type the description of the “supports” attribute seems to imply that adding support for page-attributes will allow you to specify a custom template.
Also, a template dropdown box appears in the “quick edit” screen for my custom posts, but selecting a template and saving does not apply the template or save this setting.
No. Custom post types (even hierarchical ones) are not pages. They are custom types of content. While WordPress does offer some basic publishing features, you (you, me, and other devs) are responsible for extending them.
Page templates are for pages. If you want to use custom templates though, you can definitely use them. My Hybrid theme will allow you to do this. Actually, Hybrid users have had this capability for six months now.
It’s a community Wiki. Not all information is 100% accurate. If you have a moment, please update it.
This is a bug with WordPress. I’ll submit a Trac ticket to get this removed.
Justin, thanks for clearing that up.
Hey Justin,
Thanks for the guide. I am having on issue. When I create a custom post type and use it in a category, it does not show up under “yoursite.com/categoryname/”
How would I go about doing this?
Thanks, Jordan.
Justin,
How would a conditional statement work with a custom post type in this scenario:
I have a Staff page with individual Staff Members.
On the individual Staff Members’ page, I’d like to display a list of their qualifications (via taxonomies) in the sidebar.
So, in my sidebar.php, I’d like a conditional statement that says “if this is an individual staff members’ page, then display a block listing their qualifications”.
My roadblock is deciding whether I should be using [code]is_single('staff_member')[/code] or something else. Upon creating the custom post type, the body class returns ‘single-staff’.
Any thoughts? Let me know if I’ve been too vague or left out important info here.
Much appreciated!!
Well, that took some thinking through, but I figured out why I couldn’t get this sidebar block to show up.
First, I needed to scroll down in the WP Codex a bit more to find is_singular and how it mentions [blockquote]True when viewing a post of the Custom Post Types book. Introduced with Version 3.0.[/blockquote]
Then it was just a matter of making sure my other conditional statements above it that use is_single weren’t conflicting.
Doubt anyone cares, but there it is.
I am using this for product display. My products have sub categories like Main Category -> Sub Category. Do I need to install custom post type for every sub category?
Just wanted to say thanks for a clear and easy-to-follow explanation of how to use custom posts. It’s rare for a beginner like me to be able to follow someone else’s instructions without misunderstanding.
Hi Justin,
Have you figured out how to use sticky posts with custom posts? Would love to know.
hi i have also face same problem . how we can add sticky post featured in our custom post type. please help me . i am making a project , in which sticky post featured is essential in custom post type ” review “. please help me
For those who are having 404 error with custom post type, simply flushing the rewrite table upon activation sometimes doesn’t work. You have to first register the post type then flush the rewrite table in the activation hook.
+1 Gary!
this was making me go bonkers!!
I had the rewrite in the activation but it wasn’t working so I moved it to after the register_post_type and that worked but I seem to recall that the flush_rewrite_rules is pretty intensive and having it run every time the register function ran seemed silly.
having the register_post_type function run before doing the flush_rewrite_rules in my activation function did the job.
thanks! maybe now I can get some real work done! haha
Im having trouble here – Showing multiple posts from our custom post type
Using query, I can show up to 10 posts on page. But what about the pagination?
ie, I have custom post type called “Services”, I have 20+ services.
So specific service url is site.com/services/service-name01
Ten services will show on site.com/services (I’ve put that code in services.php and used it as page theme by creating a page called services)
Now I want to show rest of services on site.com/services/page/2 Any way?
@Rem, you can use this to solve the pagination issue:
I hope it helps you.
Something went wrong with my comment. Probably because I used .
Let’s try without it:
A question to Otto, about PODs vs. Custom Post Types.
If we include the post types in the functions theme, then this will be inherited to the network sites. This means that if I want to have a site where everybody can create their own Super Dupers listings, then all I have to do is make available themes that have that custom post type.
How does this work with POD? Can I make every user in the network use that post type?
Justin do you think you could write up a post on how to properly implement your custom post types to display the data with the title? So a Podcast would have length and speaker listed as categories and those options, when checked, would be displayed within the top view of the Podcasts in wordpress.
I know its fairly simple but it may be helpful and compliments your above code.
Maybe its because I’m new to Wordpress but that 404 trick was news to me and has just fixed my custom post type stuff after scratching my head all day. Thank you.
Wonder if you could shed your expert light on this one…I’ve created a hierarchical custom post type called Events, with the intention that any given event (eg Acme Conference 2010) will have several child posts (eg Agenda, Location, Bookings etc).
However, I can’t work out how to output a list of all the child posts of Acme Conference 2010. The WordPress Codex suggests that they’ve ‘added custom hierarchical post type support to get_pages() ‘, but has anyone had any success in listing out child posts from a hierarchical custom post type?
Any update on the tutorial on Custom Post types with Taxonomies?
Maybe I should just go back to the More Fields plugin, but it’s so buggy in 3.0!
I want to be able to get the posts from my Custom Post type, and then filter those posts by a custom Taxonomy.
I’ve seen the debate on Otto’s site and the fact is, my client needs a custom UI to data enter. the_title() and the_content() and custom fields are not going to cut it.
I’ve been using the “more fields” plugin but it’s sooo buggy. Also, I want these custom posts to be always separate from the blog posts. The site has a blog and these posts are not blog posts.
I can’t believe WordPress can’t handle both queries – one to the custom posts and then by the taxonomy.
I’ve tried this:
All the posts from the type “Custom” are pulled, regardless of their being in Custom_Taxonomy XYZ or not.
What I *really* want is to be able to dynamically set the value of the Custom Taxonomy.
I do this with posts by matching the category name to the post title:
Any chance something similar can be done with Custom Post Type + Custom Taxonomy?
Jason, ive had the same problem, and was surprised that Wordpress couldn’t handle it natively.
I came across the Query Multiple Taxonomies plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/query-multiple-taxonomies/).
so you could have http://www.sitename/custom_post_type/?some_taxonomy=some_value...
BUT if you had another custom post type with linked to the same taxonomy THEY would show up as well. I managed to get around this by, on the custom post type template (eg: product.php), to only display posts of a certain custom post type:
// display your content
….
AND MORE importantly, i found that custom post types created by More Fields (or More Types) for some reason can’t handle the custom query. To get around this i used Custom Post Type UI (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/) to create the custom post types.
Hope this helps somehow. ( Unfortunately i cant paste the code as its for a client. )
Arg, the code didnt show up… trying without php tags
I can’t believe that I only just came across this post. This is exactly the kind of thing that would have just cut my custom post type learning curve in half! Thanks anyway for creating a great resource…
Hi,
I was just wondering if it possible for text area fileds in custom post types to be converted to wysiwyg text editors?
“One thing I would warn against is trying to separate your blog posts in this way. You have categories, tags, and custom taxonomies at your disposal if you’re just looking for a way to label them.”
Justin – Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? Are referring to styling your posts different as something to stay away from with custom post types, and using your existing category, tag taxonomies instead to do so?
hi Justin, this is quite useful thanks!
one question which i could not find elsewhere: if custom post types are making wordpress more like a cms and different tamplates can be aplied to different posts, is it possible to have more than one ‘editor’ box which is then rendered in particular divs in the actual theme? (i.e. more like a template skeleton, with editing boxes as a way to edit the content only in particualr sections)
Hi Justin,
Great Tutorial
, Just one small issue, I was getting stuck using the is_post_type() function with an error like this: “Call to undefined function is_post_type() in …” on the release version of WP3, and after some searching found that it has been renamed to “post_type_exists()” – Just a heads up to others who might be suffering the same fate 
.
Yep, I’m suffering the same fate…
And still do so, because I want to check at my single.php which one of my 3 Custom Post Types is showing.
post_type_exists('custom1')is always true since the “custom1″-Post Type exists.Any ideas?
Viewing my Cheat Sheet, the solution is quite obvious…
In the loop:
That’s it.
thanks Ben, I was doing something more verbous, so that helped!
That’s hot. Thanks Ben!
Thank you very much for putting all theses information together ! Just a question, can we have template and custom field for taxonomy ? Lets say I have a custom post type ‘MOVIE’ and I want to create a custom taxonomy ‘ACTOR’, can I put custom field to actor, like name, photo, year of birth,….
Or should I create two custom post type and somehow linked them ?
Thank you for helping
I’m really looking forward to the tutorial on combining custom posts and taxonomies, like it appears you did in your movie and book review demos. I just can’t seem to find a good source that explains this.
I’ve got some permalink issues….visiting the permalink page to refresh the rules will either make page.php work correctly but cause single.php to fail.
If I set things back to default, and then click from WordPress admin to view a post, then a page, then a custom post type, they will all work.
Now if I change permalink settings back to year/month/postname (using the % of course) — everything works again.
Until I add a post to one of my custom post types. Then it all breaks again.
Any ideas on what could be going wrong? It’s so odd that I can get either single.php OR page.php to while my custom post type is working (single-custompost.php ) but not both.
Thanks!
SOLVED. I was using a custom taxonomy named ‘year’. That’s a reserved term it seems so it was messing things up.
Changed the custom taxonomy to a different name and all is well. (except the hours spent figuring that out!).
How do you avoid the rewrite slug page giving a 404??
ie:
'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'upcoming-events', 'with_front' => true),this URL works: blog.com/upcoming-events/post-xyz
this URL returns a 404: blog.com/upcoming-events/
I’ve searched everywhere but can’t find any documentation on this
Is it possible to use plugins like All in One SEO or WP -> Twitter with custom post types?
THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE LITTLE PART ABOUT THE 404s! Spent hours checking through code trying to find out why it just wouldn’t work! simple when you know how… thanks!
Could anyone tell me how I could retrieve a post-type’s label (plural name) by using the post-type’s name/slug?
Thanks!
thanks Justin AGAIN! We built so many features based on first your custom taxonomies tutorials and now custom post type.
first test of custom post type with our (incomplete) stock market dictionary: http://marketheist.com/definition
Dude awesome post, a huge help0 and so much new possibilities now with the custom post types and custom taxonomies.
Thanks a lot.
ps: i want the book you’ll write!
I really like custom post types, as it makes it way easier for clients to understand what’s happening (opposed to using custom fields!). I had a lot of trouble getting the “tags.php” page to work after getting custom post types up and running but found a fix. http://andrewroycarter.com/wordpress-2/wordpress-custom-post-types-tags-not-working/ It’s more of a workaround, so I’m really interested to see if there’s a better solution…
Awesome Post. I finally got “super dupers” working as videos for my site!
Thanks for the amazing work
Thanks for the post, I’ll have to try this out on my themes!
Thanks Again,
James
Great post, I will be using this for a small project. thanks.
But does anyone has an idea about repeating events
Hi, I’ve been using your tutorial to create a “job” post type but I got a strange error when I added this line to functions.php:
The error was “fatal error call to undefined function “add_action”
Even more wierdly is that, when I took that line out, the error dissapeared, but of course no function was registered.
Got an idea? Thanks a lot!
Hi Justin,
Thank you very much for the information, it gives me additional knowledge of using the custom post type. I’m glad to be able to search this post. Very detailed
Thanks for the info Justin. But I have one question.
When adding new meta boxes with custom fields for a custom_post_type they show up in the regular Post pages as custom fields already selected.
Is there anyway to prevent that from happening?
Thanks!
A small detail I noticed is that even though you can set a custom icon for your Custom Post Type to display in the sidebar menu, the default “thumbtack” icon displays when you navigate to the post edit page or the post listing page.
Like I said, a small detail, but I’m a sucker for consistency. Anyone know of a way to address this?