• Mood: Happy
• Currently Reading: Cinderella
• Listening To: Rock Around the Clock
• Weather: Hot and humid

With some extra coding, it is possible to achieve more complex actions, such as using the metadata to store an expiration date for a post.

Metadata is handled with key/value pairs. The key is the name of the metadata element. The value is the information that will appear in the metadata list on each individual post that the information is associated with.

Keys can be used more than once per post. For example, if you were reading two different books (perhaps a technical book at work and a fiction at home), you could create a “reading” key and use it twice on the same post, once for each book.

Here is an example of what this information might look like on your post:

Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes
Today's Mood: Jolly and Happy

Usage #

Based upon our example above, let’s add two custom fields, one called “Currently Reading” and the other “Today’s Mood”. Please follow the below steps to add this information to a post using Custom Fields.

1. Custom Fields options on the Post & Page edit screens are hidden by default if they have not been used before. Using the Block Editor, click the three dots button at the top of the right sidebar and visit Options to enable it. (If you are using the Classic editor, check the screen options).
2. After you have written your post, scroll down to the area titled Custom Fields.
3. To create a new Custom Field called “Currently Reading”, enter the text “Currently Reading” (without the quotes) in the text entry field titled Name.
4. The newly created Key (“Currently Reading”) should now be assigned a Value, which in our case is the name of the book currently being read, “Calvin and Hobbes”. Type “Calvin and Hobbes” in the Value field, again without the quotes.
5. Click Add Custom Field button to save this custom information for that post.

To add your “Today’s Mood”, repeat the process and add “Today’s Mood” to the key and a description of your mood in the value text boxes and click Add Custom Field to save this information with the post.

On your next post, you can add a new book and mood to your metadata. In the Custom Fields section, the Key will now feature a pull-down list with the previously entered Custom Fields. Choose “Currently Reading” and then enter the new book you are reading in the value. Click Add Custom Field and then repeat the process to add “Today’s Mood”.

You only need to create a new “KEY” once, after which you can assign a value to that key for every post, if you so desire. You can also assign more than one Value to a key, for a post. This will come in handy for people who read more than one book at a time.

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Displaying Custom Fields #

To display the Custom Fields for each post, you have to use a template tag that customizes your theme. For more details about it, please refer to:

• the_meta() – Template tag that automatically lists all Custom Fields of a post
• get_post_custom() and get_post_meta() – Retrieves one or all metadata of a post.
• get_post_custom_values() – Retrieves values for a custom post field.
• Template Tags – WordPress Theme Developers Handbook page on Template Tags

You may install Plugin that manages custom fields.

• Meta Box plugin – Plugin that allows you to create custom meta boxes and custom fields.
• Piklist – Plugin that allows you to create custom meta boxes and fields everywhere in WordPress.
• Advanced Custom Fields – Plugin that allows you to create complex fields and layouts using a user friendly interface.

The post Custom Fields first appeared on CODIBU.

Default Post Types #

The default post types that are always included within a WordPress installation unless otherwise removed are:

• Posts
• Pages
• Attachments
• Revisions
• Navigation Menus
• Custom CSS
• Changesets

Posts #

A post in WordPress is a post type that is typical for, and most used by blogs. Posts are normally displayed in a blog in reverse sequential order by time (newest posts first). Posts are also used for creating RSS feeds.

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Pages #

A page is similar to posts however they have some very important differences. Pages aren’t displayed in a reversed time-based order. They can also be placed into a hierarchical order where a page can be the parent or child of another page creating a page structure. Traditionally, pages also do not make use of categories and tags like posts do.

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Attachments #

Attachments are another post type that is special as these hold information about any media that is uploaded to your WordPress website. Not only is the main post information stored where other posts are, attachments also make use of the wp_postmeta table for storing extra information like metadata for images and videos that you’ve added.

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Revisions #

Revisions are a particularly special post type as they are used to create a history of other post types in case you make a mistake and want to rollback to a previous version. Whilst you technically can’t edit revisions directly unless you restore a revision, they are editable just like posts and are stored in the wp_posts table like any other post type.

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Menus #

Menus in WordPress are lists of links that can be used to navigate your website. This allows you to create custom lists of links to various locations on your website that is used by your visitors and are edited in the theme section of the dashboard away from traditional post types like posts or pages.

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Custom CSS #

Custom CSS is a theme specific post type used to store CSS saved from The Customizers Additional CSS screen. Each theme can have its own custom CSS post but only the active themes `custom_css` post is actually used.

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Changesets #

Changesets are similar to revisions but specifically for the Customizer. This is to keep the Customizer in a persistent state. WordPress will attempt to keep content changes made through the Customizer during the user session in a `customize_changeset` post and attempt to restore them should you exit your current session.

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Custom Post Types #

Whilst there are already lots of standard post types within WordPress, you may want to extend the amount of post types you have if you want to break things down into smaller categories. For example, if you want to have a section on Books, it would be better suited to creating a custom post type for them. This can be done using the register_post_type function.

It’s highly recommended that you define custom post types within a plugin or must-use plugin to ensure that if you switch themes, the post type isn’t lost. That way you can ensure your content is always accessible.

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Template Files #

By default WordPress makes use of the index.php, single.php and archive.php files in a theme to display posts of any type of the front-end of a website. However, if you’ve made a custom post type, you may find that you want to show this information in a different way to other types. You can do this by using post type specific custom templates within your theme.

If you create a post type called Books like in the example above, you can create a template file called single-books.php which will show the individual book posts that you publish. Again, to show all your books in a custom archive page (where they are all listed), you can create an archive-books.php template file and this will show all the book posts that you’ve published.

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Post Type Queries #

In the event that you want to get a list of your custom posts called Books, you can create a new WP_Query instance and fetch them all. This is handy if you want to create a custom loop somewhere on your website and show them in a different way to other posts.

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The Posts Query #

You might find that in some cases you want to include custom posts into your main query of blog posts. You can do this by using the pre_get_posts filter hook which lets you customize the query that gets your posts before it’s shown on the front-end of the website.

The post Post Types first appeared on CODIBU.

Taxonomies & Terms #

The relationship between taxonomies and terms is rather simple; think of taxonomies as the ‘parent’ and terms as the ‘children’. For example, a taxonomy called ‘Recipes’ for the ‘Food’ post type could have multiple terms such as ‘Vegetarian’ or ‘Fresh’, ‘Easy Cooking’.

Another example is where you might have a post type called Reviews and a new post called ‘Best Films of The Year’. You can help define this content by having a taxonomy called ‘Films’ and create new terms such ‘Top Picks’ or ‘Film Reviews’. All this does is help define your content into smaller chunks making it much easier to find and focus on.

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New Taxonomies & Terms #

As of WordPress version 2.3 you can create your own taxonomies for use on your website or blog with a small amount of code. You can also create an unlimited amount of terms if you wish which can be done within the dashboard user interface once the taxonomies have been created.

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Extending Taxonomies #

Depending on whether your theme and plugins allow it, you can also extend the functionality of taxonomies and their terms to improve the categorisation of the content. This means that you can create taxonomy specific templates in your themes and also add new filtering options to look for posts in the dashboard too.

The post Taxonomies first appeared on CODIBU.