By:bhavesh
December 5th , 2015

How Custom Post Types in WordPress Make Life Easy for Backend Users

 Web Development

WordPress is labeled as the blogging platform since its inception so its content like pages also referred as the Posts. With the advent of time and technologies, WordPress has gained big status as an awesome CMS on the planet and contributing in more than 40% websites made in PHP on the web today.

This big applaud comes through its flexibility and simplicity. Therefore, WordPress users and WordPress developers can create any custom type of content possible with the modern web technologies.

By default, WordPress is offering following post types:

  • The post is for the blogs and with texts and images or sometimes video attached with it as multimedia content. It frequently or regularly updated

  • The page is referred as the static or dynamic web pages as the main content for the website. It is generally static, but sometimes dynamic based on content and business owns it. Static pages occasionally updated.

  • Attachment type post is mainly for downloading purposes and consisting of multimedia content as well as a number of file formats.

  • Revision types

  • Nav Menu or post for navigation menu content

Why Custom Post Types Needed

It is true that the aforementioned post types are enough for an average user base and general categories of business needs. Thus, very few remain, which need custom post types to meet their bespoken needs with ease, in the WordPress backend.

For instance, you want to make a video or movie review site, portfolio site, or a mini e-commerce like product site.

These are such cases where the default post types render useless and need small to intensive customization for content display and interaction expected.

If we dig deeper at a technical point of view, WordPress taxonomies and post types are confusing the common users. Taxonomies are categories and tags in WordPress, and that let you classify your content type in databases.

When you want to expand beyond common taxonomies like categories and tags, you have to go for custom post types and add new words or values in the database column of post_type and define the content types included in each new custom post type.

If you look at the following content and posts, you can hardly categorize them in the default post types or taxonomies.

  • Marketing incentives content such as blogging coupon or voucher

  • Glossaries

  • Special content such as multimedia contents with marketing coupons

  • Need of additional fields or content blocks arranged in a particular manner

  • Responsive modules or sub-pages with limited functionality such as Thank You page or E-mail subscriber page

How to Create Custom Post Types

If you have ever looked at the WordPress admin panel or dashboard, you may have noticed two main post types in sidebar navigation of the dashboard. Posts and Pages are distinct in the navigation and let users add new posts/pages or edit the existing posts/pages.

Thus, users are comfortable with these default post types during backend usage. Now, if we are going to add a new custom post type and want it to include in the backend dashboard, what to do with it.

There are two ways to do it. One is to add code directly in the WordPress source or install plug-ins to create and add custom posts as per our wishes/needs.

Direct Code Adding Method

If you want to see your custom post type in the dashboard panel in admin of the WordPress, you have to register that information with the CMS. Thus, you have to write following code for custom post type creation and include it within the function.php file located in the source code.

You can do it through in-built source code editor within WordPress, can use personal editor for FTP upload, or go to cPanel on hosting interface to edit and add code directly to the source.

$args = array( ‘label’ => ‘My Custom Post Type’, ‘show_ui’ => true, ‘hierarchical’ => false, ‘rewrite’ => array(‘slug’ => ‘post-slug’), ‘menu_icon’ => ‘dashicons-video-alt’, ‘supports’ => array(‘title’,’editor’,’excerpt’,’trackbacks’,’custom-fields’,’comments’,’revisions’,’thumbnail’,’author’,’page-attributes’) ); register_post_type(‘custom-post’, $args); } add_action(‘init’, ‘my_post_type’);

What you need to do is to fill up or replace the needed fields and create custom post types that will be immediately visible on the sidebar.

Plug-ins with Easy User Interface

For the common users and novice developers, adding intended plug-ins is the best way to add feature or functionality in WordPress.

You need to install such custom post type creating extensions or plug-ins through in-built WordPress plug-ins installer or download the source and upload it through hosting panels.

  1. WordPress official site is offering Custom Post Type UI plug-ins for common purposes

  2. For the slider type custom post creation process, the Soliloquy is the best option

  3. For storing the affiliate links, you have to use  ThirstyAffiliates

Besides these, many special purpose WordPress plug-ins are creating custom post types according to their niche specific needs and they are:

  • E-Commerce plugins

  • Directory plugins

  • Real estate listing plugins

  • Recipe plugins

With the proliferation of UI-based custom post type creating plug-ins in WordPress community, has made life easy for the WordPress backend users and many WordPress developers.

If you want to go beyond the standard WordPress plug-in capabilities and do some unique yet bespoken need addressing custom post type creation, Addon Solutions has seasoned expert WordPress web developers to address your custom needs in custom ways.

We think there are many other aspects that we can’t cover in the post, but their mention in the comment may helpful our other readers so come please and add some.