WordPress Custom Taxonomy Basics

WordPress gives you the means to add new custom taxonomies. In this hands-on lab, you will explore configuring and registering a new taxonomy for the team biography plugin you built in the Custom Post Type Basics lab. Plus, you learn some basic PHP string building and handling.

You are going to be amazed at how easy it is to configure and register your own custom post types. When your project needs a portfolio, event, FAQ, glossary, team bios, or whatever special content classification, you will know the ins and outs of how to add these to your project.

What Will You Learn?

This lab will teach you the basics of taxonomies, PHP, and more. You’ll learn:

• What the heck is a custom taxonomy
• Why would you want to create a new one
• When to create a new one
• Improving the user experience by configuring labels for the interface
• PHP Basics of working with strings including:
  • The concatenating operator .= and how it processes smooshing strings together
  • Inserting variables and functions into a string with the concatenating dot
  • Working with formatted strings using sprintf my preferred approach
• Binding a taxonomy to more than one post type
• Flushing the rewrite rules when activating, deactivating, and uninstalling the plugin
• Working with git

Want to cheat and look at the code you will be building? Click here to access it.

Get it on GitHub

	<?php
	/**
	* Custom Taxonomy functionality
	*
	* @package KnowTheCode\TeamBios\Custom
	* @since 1.0.0
	* @author hellofromTonya
	* @link https://knowthecode.io
	* @license GNU General Public License 2.0+
	*/
	namespace KnowTheCode\TeamBios\Custom;
	add_action( 'init', __NAMESPACE__ . '\register_custom_taxonomy' );
	/**
	* Register the taxonomy.
	*
	* @since 1.0.0
	*
	* @return void
	*/
	function register_custom_taxonomy() {
	$menu_label = __( 'Departments', 'teambios' );
	$labels = array(
	'name' => _x( 'Departments', 'taxonomy general name', 'teambios' ),
	'singular_name' => _x( 'Department', 'taxonomy singular name', 'teambios' ),
	'search_items' => __( 'Search Departments', 'teambios' ),
	'popular_items' => __( 'Popular Departments', 'teambios' ),
	'all_items' => __( 'All Departments', 'teambios' ),
	'parent_item' => null,
	'parent_item_colon' => null,
	'edit_item' => __( 'Edit Department', 'teambios' ),
	'view_item' => __( 'View Department', 'teambios' ),
	'update_item' => __( 'Update Department', 'teambios' ),
	'add_new_item' => __( 'Add New Department', 'teambios' ),
	'new_item_name' => __( 'New Department Name', 'teambios' ),
	'separate_items_with_commas' => __( 'Separate departments with commas', 'teambios' ),
	'add_or_remove_items' => __( 'Add or remove departments', 'teambios' ),
	'choose_from_most_used' => __( 'Choose from the most used departments', 'teambios' ),
	'not_found' => __( 'No departments found.', 'teambios' ),
	'menu_name' => $menu_label,
	);
	$args = array(
	'label' => $menu_label,
	'labels' => $labels,
	'hierarchical' => true,
	'show_admin_column' => true,
	);
	register_taxonomy( 'department', array( 'team-bios', 'post' ), $args );
	}
	add_filter( 'genesis_post_meta', __NAMESPACE__ . '\filter_genesis_footer_post_meta' );
	/**
	* Filter the Genesis Footer Entry Post Meta
	* to add the post terms for our custom taxonomy to it.
	*
	* @since 1.0.0
	*
	* @param string $post_meta
	*
	* @return string
	*/
	function filter_genesis_footer_post_meta( $post_meta ) {
	$post_meta .= sprintf(
	' [post_terms taxonomy="department" before="%s"]',
	__( 'Department: ', 'teambios' )
	);
	return $post_meta;
	}

view raw

taxonomy.php

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Prerequisites

In order to do this lab, you will need:

1. Your local sandbox site spun up and ready to go. See this Help Center article to get your sandbox ready.
2. The team bio plugin you built in the Custom Post Type Basics lab

You will want to do these labs first:

10 Episodes
01:17:16 Runtime

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Out-of-the-box, WordPress gives you built-in taxonomies which are used to group like or similar content together. You use categories and tags to add contextual information about the content and give readers additional mechanisms to explore and discover. In this hands-on lab, you will interact with and change the built-in taxonomies. This is an introduction to taxonomies, which will prepare you for building your own custom taxonomies.

Learn more

10 Episodes
01:20:49 Runtime

Custom Post Type Basics

WordPress gives you the means to add new post types. In this hands-on lab, you will explore configuring and registering a new custom post type. You are actively building a team biography plugin, where team members are displayed on a business-centric website.

Learn more

What to Do Next?

28 Episodes
05:11:56 Runtime

Add a FAQ Feature to the Collapsible Content Plugin – Part 2

In this hands-on lab, you and I will walk through the entire process of adding a new feature to an existing WordPress plugin. You'll start with the Collapsible Content plugin and then add a FAQ feature to it. This feature will require you to plan, think, and execute building a custom post type, custom taxonomy, advanced SQL queries, custom archive, and shortcode.

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Check out the WordPress Fundamentals Library for more hands-on labs, insights, Docx, and more.

Check out the series page for more labs: WordPress Built-in and Custom Taxonomies and Terms Series