What is Custom Post Type (CPT) in WordPress
Custom Post Type (CPT) is a term used in WordPress. Posts are ways of storing different types of content, which can be later used in various ways.
Although they’re called posts, they can be utilized for anything that requires stored content, which is subject to change or removal. For example, some basic functionality in WordPress uses multiple post types.
Any WordPress blog starts with posts, but WordPress also automatically uses post types to manage menus, attachments, revisions, and pages.
Deeper Dive into Custom Post Types
Custom post types might be the answer if you want to add extra functionality to your WordPress site but want to use something other than standard posts.
Custom post types are specific post types that have been added using custom code or plugins.
For example, rather than designing an entirely new page for your website’s team members section that you would need to edit regularly, it might be easier to create a custom post type.
This way, you can have an interface for adding and removing team members as needed that automatically populate in a template designed specifically for this content.
Custom post types improve a website by adding new content and functions easily without the need for difficult coding each time.
A custom post type is only as good as the posts it contains. By creating a Team post type, you’ll get a new menu item that will help keep your team’s content separate from other parts of your website.
With this team management system, you can add and remove members easily from a familiar admin interface.
A custom post type is great, but on its own, it’s limited. You can add a title and some text, but not much else. So let’s explore some of the ways we can make our custom post type more flexible and customizable.
Taxonomies
Taxonomies systematize your content into categories for easy retrieval and organization. For example, the standard WordPress Post has two different types of taxonomies – categories and tags.
These are called terms.
By using existing taxonomies or creating new ones, you can start improving your post type by making it simpler to group content. If your company has multiple departments or skill sets, you could add those as taxonomies, too.
That way, when you assign team members to each category in the post type, you can use that information throughout your site and theme in interesting ways.
Custom fields
Custom fields are a great way to enhance any post type or custom post type. A custom field allows you to add virtually any additional information you would like, such as the title or description of a post or page.
This makes it easy for your theme to use this information at a later point.
For example, you can create a custom field for job titles or qualifications if you want to enhance your Team post type with additional information.
You can improve all post types and custom post types by using custom fields. If you want to add custom fields without learning code, various tools and plugins are available, like Advanced Custom Fields.
These make it easy to create what you need until you’re ready to display it on your website.
Themes and Plugins
Custom post types are an essential part of theme customization. Often, themes will add additional post types to help power the various custom parts of the theme.
Not only can the theme add custom post types, but they can also be added by plugins.
In the long run, using a plugin to create custom post types is often a better option. For example, if your Team post type was only added to the theme and you decided later on that you wanted to change themes, it would be removed completely.
The good thing about plugins is that even if you do switch themes, the functionality from the plugin will still be in place.