Working with Custom Post Types

A new feature in WordPress (new as of version 3.0) is a feature called
custom post types. This feature allows you, the site owner, to create different content types for your WordPress site that give you more creative control over how different types of content are entered, published, and displayed on your WordPress Web site.
Personally, we wish WordPress had called this feature custom content types so that people didn’t incorrectly think that custom post types pertain to posts only. Custom post types aren’t really the posts that you know as blog posts. Custom post types are a different way of managing content on your blog, by defining what type of content it is, how it is displayed on your site, and how it operates — but they’re not necessarily posts.
By default, WordPress already has different post types built into the software, ready for you to use. These default post types include

✦ Blog posts
✦ Pages
✦ Navigation menus (see Book VI) ✦ Attachments
✦ Revisions

Custom post types give you the ability to create new and useful types of
content on your Web site, including a smart and easy way to publish those content types to your site.
You really have endless possibilities for how to use custom post types, but
here are a few ideas that can kick-start your imagination (they’re some of the
most popular and useful ideas that others have implemented on their sites):

✦ Photo gallery
✦ Podcast or video

✦ Book reviews

✦ Coupons and special offers ✦ Events calendar
In order to create and use custom post types on your site, you need to be
sure that your WordPress theme contains the correct code and functions. In
the following steps, we create a very basic custom post type called Generic
Content. Follow these steps to create the Generic Content basic custom post
type:
1. Click Editor in the Appearances drop-down list to open the Theme
Editor page.
2. Click the Theme Functions template link to open the functions.php
file in the text editor on the left side of the page.
3. Add the custom post types code to the bottom of the Theme Functions
template file.
Scroll down to the bottom of the functions.php file and include the
following code to add a Generic Content custom post type to your site:
add_action( ‘init’, ‘create_my_post_types’ );

function create_my_post_types() {
register_post_type( ‘generic_content’,
array(
‘label’ => __( ‘Generic Content’ ),
‘singular_label’ => __( ‘Generic Content’ ),
‘description’ => __( ‘This is a description of the Generic Content type’
),
‘public’ => true,
);
}
4. Click the Update File button to save the changes made to the func-
tions.php file.

The function register_post_type can accept several different arguments and parameters, which are detailed in Table 6-2. You can use a variety and combination of different arguments and parameters to create a specific
post type. You can find more information on custom post types and using the register_post_types function in the official WordPress Codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_
post_type.
After you complete the preceding steps to add the Generic Content custom post type to your site, a new post type labeled Generic appears in the left navigation menu of the Dashboard.

 

You can add and publish new content by using the new custom post type,
just like when you write and publish blog posts (see Book IV, Chapter 1).
The published content isn’t added to the chronological listing of blog posts,
but rather, it’s treated like separate content from your blog (just like static
pages).
View the permalink for it, and you see that it adopts the post type name
Generic Content and uses it as part of the permalink structure, creating a
permalink that looks like http://yourdomain.com/generic-content/
new-article.

✦ Custom Post Types UI: Written by the folks at WebDevStudios (http://
webdevstudios.com), this plugin gives you a clean interface within
your WordPress Dashboard that can help you easily and quickly build
custom post types on your Web site. It eliminates the need to add the
code (discussed earlier in this section) to your functions.php file
by giving you options and settings so that you can configure and build
the custom post type that you want.
✦ Verve Meta Boxes: Available from Magento Developers in the
WordPress Plugin Directory (http://wordpress.org/extend/
plugins/verve-meta-boxes), this plugin provides an interface
in your Dashboard that you can use to create meta boxes, or special
custom fields (see Book IV, Chapter 5) for the custom post types that
you build. As an example, Figure 6-7 shows some custom meta boxes
built by using custom post types. This Web site features theater produc-
tions and the custom post types for those shows.
The Purchase Link boxes were created by using custom meta
boxes and give the Web site owner a quick and easy field to fill out so
that he or she can include information on where to purchase show tick-
ets in every show post published.