When working with WordPress, you might encounter the terms custom post type and custom
taxonomies. If you are new to WordPress, you may have asked when do you need to use a
custom post type and custom taxonomies? We will define first what are post types and
taxonomies.


What are Post Types and Taxonomies?

Post Type is a term used to refer to different types of WordPress content. Practically, it should be called as content type.There are five default post types in WordPress. One of the post types is post while others are attachments, pages, revisions and navigation menus. All of the default post types are stored in the posts database table and differentiated by a column named post_type.

Post types are the way to differentiate content types in WordPress. For instance, pages and navigation menus are both post types however, they are made to serve different purpose.

Taxonomy is used to group post and custom post types together. The default WordPress taxonomy are categories and tags. WordPress allows you to create custom taxonomy to sort and group your content.


How to Know When Do You Need a Custom Post Type or Taxonomy?

WordPress posts can be sorted with categories and tags but sometimes you may need a custom post type or taxonomy to properly sort and organize your website content.

1 Some of your content may not fit as a post like for instance, article

2 It may not need to be a part of chronological series of entries like FAQ.

3 Categories and Tags does not help to group or sort a particular content like Recipe Review

4 Additional fields are needed to provide more information with the content

5 It does not fit to be a part of the primary page like other important resources

A good example is a blog where you regularly publish recipe reviews and make it searcheable by breakfast, dinner, lunch or snacks. This is where you need to add a custom post type for recipe reviews and you will add custom taxonomy for sorting between lunch or dinner

It will be convenient for the users to browse through only recipe reviews where as going through all posts One of the most popular plugin that Jezweb use in one of our tutorials is custom post type UI. For more information on how to use Custom Post Type UI, you may refer to this link