Make a custom post type for WordPress as a plugin

In default, WordPress have 5 post type & they are known as Posts, Pages, Attachment, Revision & Navigation menu. Additional to this post types, we can make our own post types & they are known as Custom Post Types in WordPress.

I always like to make my Custom Post Type as a plugin to keep it independent with themes. Else when we switch to another theme, we want to code again for our Coustom Post Type content.

step1: Make a folder for our Custom Post Type in our plugin directory

Open WordPress plugin directory, make a new folder inside it & name it as Book Reviews.

Step2: Make essential files for our plugin

Inside Book Reviews plugin folder, make a new php file & name it as book_reviews.php.

Step3: Make it as a php file

To make it as a php file, just insert an opening PHP tag, <?php at top.

Step4: Give a name to our plugin

Now we want to give essential header text for our plugin like name, author name, version, plugin URL etc. So write down your credential like below.

/*
Plugin Name: Book Reviews
Description: Declares a plugin that will create a custom post type displaying book reviews.
Version: 1.0
Author: Your Name
Author URI: http://yourdomain.com/
License: GPLv2
*/

Step5: Initialize function for our Custom Post Type

Now we want to add an action when the WP Admin initialize to call the function that generate our Book Reviews. So copy & paste below code in to our php file.

add_action( 'init', 'cpt_book_review', 0 );

Step6: Make our function & register it as a custom post type

Now we want to make & register our function cpt_book_review() with labels and argument related with our Book Reviews Custom Post Type.

// Register Custom Post Type
function cpt_book_review() {

	$labels = array(
		'name'                => _x( 'Book Reviews', 'Post Type General Name', 'text_domain' ),
		'singular_name'       => _x( 'Book Review', 'Post Type Singular Name', 'text_domain' ),
		'menu_name'           => __( 'Book Reviews', 'text_domain' ),
		'parent_item_colon'   => __( 'Parent Book Review:', 'text_domain' ),
		'all_items'           => __( 'All Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'view_item'           => __( 'View Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'add_new_item'        => __( 'Add New Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'add_new'             => __( 'Add New', 'text_domain' ),
		'edit_item'           => __( 'Edit Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'update_item'         => __( 'Update Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'search_items'        => __( 'Search Book Review', 'text_domain' ),
		'not_found'           => __( 'Not found', 'text_domain' ),
		'not_found_in_trash'  => __( 'Not found in Trash', 'text_domain' ),
	);
	$rewrite = array(
		'slug'                => 'book-review',
		'with_front'          => true,
		'pages'               => true,
		'feeds'               => true,
	);
	$args = array(
		'label'               => __( 'book-review', 'text_domain' ),
		'description'         => __( 'Book Reviews information', 'text_domain' ),
		'labels'              => $labels,
		'supports'            => array( 'title', 'editor', 'excerpt', 'thumbnail', 'comments', 'custom-fields', 'page-attributes', ),
		'taxonomies'          => array( 'category', 'post_tag' ),
		'hierarchical'        => false,
		'public'              => true,
		'show_ui'             => true,
		'show_in_menu'        => true,
		'show_in_nav_menus'   => true,
		'show_in_admin_bar'   => true,
		'menu_position'       => 5,
		'can_export'          => true,
		'has_archive'         => true,
		'exclude_from_search' => false,
		'publicly_queryable'  => true,
		'rewrite'             => $rewrite,
		'capability_type'     => 'page',
	);
	register_post_type( 'cpt_book_review', $args );
}

If you like to know more about arguments & labels used on this array, please visit this link.

Step7: Save & Activate our plugin

Just save our php file & then activate our Book Reviews plugin from admin back end of WordPress.

Step8: Add new book reviews

Same like posts, now we can add book reviews, categorize & tag them.

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Your Questions / Comments

If you found this article interesting, found errors, or just want to discuss about it, please get in touch.

Sarathlal N