I’ve recently been evaluating WordPress shopping cart plugins to choose the best one for a project I’m working on. One of things I wanted to know is what database tables, custom post type, and custom taxonomies each plugin adds. The reason is that I favor plugins that don’t add extra tables because it’s easier, faster, and safer to use the well-tested functions already built into WordPress to customize the way I want the site to work.
Finding the extra database tables is easy enough with a command line or a few clicks in phpMyAdmin, but finding the post types and taxonomies built-into WordPress and added by other plugins or the theme was more challenging.
Sure, I could have coded something up, but there are several nice plugins for adding custom post types and taxonomies, which I assumed would also show everything existing. I was surprised to find that was not the case and ended up testing every such plugin I could find.
So, to save some time for anyone else on a similar quest, the only one that did the job well (and, of course, the last one I tested) was GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools. The interface is nice and clear and shows built-in post types, custom post types, built-in taxonomies, and custom taxonomies each in separate tables. It shows the full name, slug, a count of the items in that type, along with a few other parameters. In addition, the main page for the plugin shows an overview with counts of each type of post and taxonomy. Perfect.
For those who are interested, here are the other plugins I tried and the features they had for this purpose.
- Custom Press 1.0 — none
- Custom Content Types 1.0.2 — none
- Custom Post Type UI 0.7 — Lists other added post types at the bottom of the screen. Does not show the built-in types. Does not show other taxonomies.
- Simple Custom Post Types 3.1.2 — none
- Ultimate Post Type Manager 1.6.8 — none
- Ultimate Taxonomy Manager 1.1.10 — none
- WP Post Type UI 0.5.2 — none
- Custom Content Type Manager 0.9.3.2 — Shows built-in post and page types only.
- WP Easy Post Types 1.0.1 — none
- Content Types 1.6.5 — none
- Convert Post Types 1.1 — Shows taxonomy names but not slugs.
Hey Doug,
Thanks for the overview of the plugins. Very helpful!
Now, I am having trouble creating navigation with my new post types.
I have created a few custom post types (“products”) and custom taxonomies, and then post a few products and applied the taxonomies. I then added the taxonomies to my custom menu. However, when I click on one, it just takes me to a page that says “no results found.”
Do you have any advice or know of any resources to help? Thanks!
You might try re-saving your permalinks settings in WordPress to see if that fixes it.