Custom taxonomies in Wordpress - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Create and Use Custom Taxonomies in WordPress

📖 Scenario: You are building a WordPress website for a book review blog. You want to organize books not only by categories but also by genres like 'Science Fiction', 'Romance', and 'Mystery'. WordPress does not have a built-in taxonomy for genres, so you will create a custom taxonomy called 'genre'.

🎯 Goal: Build a custom taxonomy called genre for the post post type. This taxonomy will let you tag posts with genres. You will register the taxonomy with proper labels and make it hierarchical like categories.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a custom taxonomy called genre

Attach the genre taxonomy to the post post type

Make the taxonomy hierarchical (like categories)

Add labels for the taxonomy including name, singular_name, and search_items

Register the taxonomy using the init action hook

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Custom taxonomies help organize content beyond default categories and tags, making websites easier to navigate and manage.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create and register custom taxonomies is essential for WordPress developers building custom themes and plugins.

1

Create the labels array for the custom taxonomy

Create an array called labels with these exact entries: 'name' => 'Genres', 'singular_name' => 'Genre', and 'search_items' => 'Search Genres'.

Wordpress

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use array() to create the labels array with the exact keys and values.

2

Create the arguments array for registering the taxonomy

Create an array called args with these exact entries: 'hierarchical' => true, 'labels' => $labels, and 'show_ui' => true.

Wordpress

 'Genres',
    'singular_name' => 'Genre',
    'search_items' => 'Search Genres'
);

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use array() to create the args array with the exact keys and values.

3

Register the custom taxonomy with register_taxonomy

Call register_taxonomy with these exact arguments: 'genre' as the taxonomy name, 'post' as the post type, and $args as the arguments array.

Wordpress

 'Genres',
    'singular_name' => 'Genre',
    'search_items' => 'Search Genres'
);

$args = array(
    'hierarchical' => true,
    'labels' => $labels,
    'show_ui' => true
);

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use register_taxonomy with the exact parameters to register the taxonomy.

4

Hook the taxonomy registration into WordPress initialization

Wrap the register_taxonomy call inside a function called create_genre_taxonomy. Then add this function to the init action hook using add_action.

Wordpress

 'Genres',
    'singular_name' => 'Genre',
    'search_items' => 'Search Genres'
);

$args = array(
    'hierarchical' => true,
    'labels' => $labels,
    'show_ui' => true
);

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define a function that registers the taxonomy and hook it to init using add_action.