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AMAN MEHRA
AUGUST 21, 2021
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How to Create Custom Taxonomy

in WordPress?
Do you have different types of content except for the pages and posts (default
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post types), and want to manage them in your own way? Then you can create a in WordPress?
custom post type and its custom taxonomies.
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The custom post types could be anything like Movies, Books, News, and custom
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taxonomies of them could be variations of it. Suppose you have a Movie
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custom post type and so custom taxonomies could be Genre, Languages, Speed?
Quality, etc.

In the last article, we learned about how to create a custom post type? You can
check this tutorial for a quick view of the registration of custom post types.

So in this tutorial, I will show you how to create a custom taxonomy for the post CATEGORIES
types in wordpress. We will learn two methods to register the custom taxonomy, Git
one with the plugin and the second programmatically without the plugin.
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1
What is WordPress Taxonomy?
2
How to Create Custom Taxonomies in WordPress PHP

2.1
Method 1: Create a Custom Taxonomy – with plugin Python
2.2
Method 2: Create a Custom Taxonomy Programmatically – without ReactJS
plugin
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Display Custom Taxonomy
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What is WordPress Taxonomy?

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A WordPress taxonomy is a way of grouping the posts to make a good structure
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for large amounts of posts. It groups together based on the relationships and
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you can add in a group as you want. Automatically Update.

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By default, WordPress has three taxonomies are called categories, tags, and
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post format. Categories as hierarchical and tags as non-hierarchical taxonomies
and post format is like a method to set the format of your post but it’s no use in How to Change Price of Specific
most. So, you can easily group your posts based on these three taxonomies. Product and Quantity in Cart?

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WordPress default taxonomies in a Post OR Page

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Tags: this is a non-hierarchical taxonomy

Post format: this is a method to create your post format

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So WordPress standard posts come with two taxonomies categories and tags.
But these two are not well fit for all types of content. JavaScript Convert to Boolean in
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Suppose you have a custom post type ‘courses‘, so categories and tags do not WooCommerce Single Page Visual
make sense for this post type. Hook Guide

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So in that case you have to register your custom taxonomy for your custom post Models Using Accessors
type.
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For example, you have a ‘courses‘ custom post type and you want to filter them
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based on the course type, faculty, and duration, or anything else that you want.
So you need to create them as taxonomies of ‘courses’ post type.

Taxonomies could be hierarchical or non-hierarchical. In the hierarchical

taxonomies, you can have main types and others will be sub-types under the
main types.

For example, you have ‘course type’ taxonomy then further it would have ‘Web
Development’, ‘Affiliate Marketing’, and ‘SEO’.

So let’s start the tutorial to learn how to create a custom taxonomy in

WordPress. I explained in one-by-one steps so you can easily understand each
step.

How to Create Custom Taxonomies in

WordPress

As I mentioned above you will learn two methods to create (register) custom
taxonomies in WordPress.

In the first method, we will create with the plugin and in the second method, we
will do programmatically using the functions.php file without any plugins.

Method 1: Create a Custom Taxonomy – with plugin

Using a plugin to register the custom taxonomy in WordPress is the simplest

way and if you are a beginner and don’t know much about coding then this
method will be easy for you.

So there are many plugins that you can use to create your custom taxonomies
for your custom post type. The following list is the best plugins to create custom
taxonomies.

Custom Post Type UI

Toolset Types

Pods

Custom Post Types and Custom Fields creator – WCK

Custom Post Type Maker

These plugins also help to create your custom post type. These have a very
user-friendly interface and you can easily create and edit them.

Note: If you have deactivated or delete the plugin then you cannot access your
custom post type or taxonomies but your data still exist stored in the WordPress
database.

Ok, let’s create the custom taxonomy with a plugin. We will use Custom Post
Type UI plugin in this tutorial. You can use what you want.

First of all, you need a Custom Post Type UI (CPT UI) plugin installed in your
WordPress setup. If you have already installed this plugin then you can continue
on to the next point and if you haven’t installed it then please install and activate
it using this guide on how to install a WordPress plugin?.

When you finished the installation, you will see a new menu item (CPT UI) in
your admin dashboard. So navigate to CPT UI > Add/Edit Taxonomies. It will
show you the screen like the below image.

In the above image, you will see the first field under the Basic settings is
Taxonomy Slug. This slug will be used in the URL and by using this URL path
you can see all the posts under this taxonomy.

So, as according to this tutorial how to create a custom post type in WordPress,
we will take the taxonomy slug is ‘course_types’.

The next fields are Plural and Singular labels of taxonomy. These fields will be
the name of the taxonomy and we will take ‘Course Types’ and ‘Course Type’
respectively.

After it, you can auto-populate your taxonomy labels from singular and plural
labels under the Additional label section. You can also add all the fields by
yourself.

So, the next option about Attach to Post Type, means which post type that you
want to attach with this taxonomy. You will see all existing post types listed as
checkboxes. So you need to just check these post types option that you want to
be attached.

Now, the next step is Additional labels. You can fill all the fields with the
perspective label name. Or you can fill these fields automatically, as I said
earlier. You just have to click on the Auto-populate link then these fields will
auto-populate using the plural and singular label.

These labels fields will use in WordPress when you are adding/editing or
managing the content of that particular taxonomy.

Next, you can see the Settings section about the taxonomy. You can set up
these settings as per your requirements. Each option explain next to it what it
will do. So read the brief description about the field and set it up as you want.

In the above image, you can see that I set up True to make this taxonomy a
hierarchical taxonomy and it will work like standard posts categories (parent-
child relationship).

You can make this taxonomy as non-hierarchical taxonomy work like posts tags
by setting that field as False.

So, we made this hierarchical taxonomy, which means this taxonomy will have a
main course type and the other will have a sub-type under each course type.

There are more settings about the shown in admin UI, shown in nav menu,
delete with the user, has archive page, Hierarchical for the parent-child
relationship, show in the admin menu, menu position, menu icon, and what will
support the post type be, and etc. Read the description about each field and set
it up as you want.

OK, when you finished with all settings then now you can click on the Add
Taxonomy button to create a custom taxonomy.

Now you can see the new custom taxonomy under your post type. As the tutorial
case, we made a custom taxonomy for the ‘courses’ custom post type, which
you can see in the below image.

Hope you have successfully created your custom taxonomy. Now you can group
your Courses using this taxonomy of ‘Course Types’.

Now, we will see how to create a custom taxonomy manually in WordPress

using the code in the functions.php file. I would recommend using the child
theme’s functions.php file for any customization. For details, see a tutorial on
how to create a child theme in WordPress?

Method 2: Create a Custom Taxonomy Programmatically

– without plugin

In this method, we will create a custom taxonomy without using any plugins. We
will use the functions.php file to do all coding to register the custom taxonomy
and will register_taxonomy() functions for this purpose.

As I said at the starting of the tutorial is that you will not access your custom
taxonomy or custom post type that you have created with the plugins. But if you
register your taxonomy using this method then you will not lose access to your
taxonomy until you delete that code.

To create the custom taxonomy without plugins, follow the below steps.

Nagigate to your functions.php file and open it.

Make a function with the array of all the lables and settings options

Then use the register_taxonomy() with passing the all labels and
settings options as an arguments

Finally, make a ‘init‘ add_action() hook to register the txonomy on the

initilization

Save the file. That’s it!!!

So these are the steps to create the custom taxonomy for your custom post
type. Let’s look in-depth to explaining each point and register our taxonomy with
example code.

Hierarchical Taxonomy

In the first step, you need to open your functions.php file, so navigate this path
wp-content/themes/your_active_theme/functions.php and open it.

Add the following code in this file at the end of the file. And replace the
taxonomy name and labels as per your requirements.

1 // Register Custom Taxonomy

2 function custom_taxonomy() {
3 ​
4 $labels = array(
5 'name' => _x( 'Course Type
6 'singular_name' => _x( 'Course Type
7 'menu_name' => __( 'Course Type
8 'all_items' => __( 'All Course
9 'parent_item' => __( 'Parent Cour
10 'parent_item_colon' => __( 'Parent Cour
11 'new_item_name' => __( 'New Course
12 'add_new_item' => __( 'Add New Cou
13 'edit_item' => __( 'Edit Course
14 'update_item' => __( 'Update Cour
15 'view_item' => __( 'View Course
16 'separate_items_with_commas' => __( 'Separate co
17 'add_or_remove_items' => __( 'Add or remo
18 'choose_from_most_used' => __( 'Choose from
19 'popular_items' => __( 'Popular Cou
20 'search_items' => __( 'Search Cour
21 'not_found' => __( 'Not Found',
22 'no_terms' => __( 'No course t
23 'items_list' => __( 'Course Type
24 'items_list_navigation' => __( 'Course Type
25 );
26 $args = array(
27 'labels' => $labels,
28 'hierarchical' => true,
29 'public' => true,
30 'show_ui' => true,
31 'show_admin_column' => true,
32 'show_in_nav_menus' => true,
33 'show_tagcloud' => false,
34 );
35 register_taxonomy( 'course_types', array( 'courses'
36 ​
37 }
38 add_action( 'init', 'custom_taxonomy', 0 );

Don’t forget to save your functions.php file. After saving you will see the new
taxonomy added to your post type.

The above code will register your custom taxonomy as a Hierarchical

Taxonomy. It means, it will have a parent-child relationship and work like
WordPress posts categories.

Non-Hierarchical Taxonomy

If you want to create a Non-hierarchical taxonomy then you have to make small
changes in the above code. Then it will work like WordPress posts tags.

So, you need to set the value of hierarchical as false in the $args array variable
to register your taxonomy as a non-hierarchical taxonomy.

You can replace the below code in your above function.

1 $args = array(
2 'labels' => $labels,
3 'hierarchical' => false,
4 'public' => true,
5 'show_ui' => true,
6 'show_admin_column' => true,
7 'show_in_nav_menus' => true,
8 'show_tagcloud' => false,
9 );
10 register_taxonomy( 'course_types', array( 'courses' ), $

After replacing the above code, save your file and check it. Now it will work like
standard tags taxonomy and you can make a tag cloud using the
wp_tag_could() function to show all the taxonomy values.

Display Custom Taxonomy

You have successfully created your custom taxonomy. Now you can show them
with your custom post type while listing a post loop.

You need to create a custom template and assign that template to a WordPress
page. You can also create a custom shortcode function and hook that using the
add_shortcode() function.

To create a custom template, create a new file inside your active theme folder
and the following comment line code at starting of the file.

This code will tell WordPress that is a template file.

1 /*Template Name: My Custom Page Template*/

After this line, you can add your custom code to show the list of custom posts
and taxonomies. See the sample code for getting the post data with taxonomy.

1 $args = array(
2 'post_type' => 'courses'
3 );
4 ​
5 $post_query = new WP_Query($args);
6 ​
7 if($post_query->have_posts() ) {
8 while($post_query->have_posts() ) {
9 $post_query->the_post();
10 ?>
11 <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
12 <p><?php the_content(); ?></p>
13 <p><?php the_terms( get_the_ID(), 'course_typ
14 <?php
15 }
16 }

In the above code, we used the_terms() function to display the terms of custom
taxonomy.

Parameter reference of the_terms() function:

get_theID() : Post ID

course_type : Taxonomy name

Course Type : String to use before the terms.

‘| ‘ : String to use between the terms.

‘ ‘ : String to use after the terms.

Hope you understand all the code and learn how to create custom taxonomy in
WordPress and you have created it successfully. If you still have any query
please let me know in the comment section.

ADD_ACTION() CREATE CUSTOM TAXONOMIES IN WORDPRESS CREATE CUSTOM TAXONOMY

CREATE HIERARCHICAL TAXONOMY CREATE NON-HIERARCHICAL TAXONOMY
CUSTOM TAXONOMIES HIERARCHICAL TAXONOMY NON-HIERARCHICAL TAXONOMY
REGISTER CUSTOM TAXONOMY REGISTER TAXONOMIEW REGISTER TAXONOMY
REGISTER_TAXONOMY() WORDPRESS CREATE CUSTOM TAXONOMY
WORDPRESS CREATE TAXONOMY PROGRAMMATICALLY WORDPRESS CUSTOM TAXONOMIES
WORDPRESS CUSTOM TAXONOMY PLUGIN WORDPRESS DEFAULT TAXONOMIES
WORDPRESS REGISTER TAXONOMY PROGRAMMATICALLY WORDPRESS TAXONOMY
WORDPRESS TAXONOMY TEMPLATE

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: AMAN MEHRA

Hey! I'm Aman Mehra and I'm a full-stack developer and have 5+
years of experience. I love coding and help to people with this blog.

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