[wp-hackers] Direction for custom taxonomy/post types

[Otto]

I'd do it with custom post types and a single custom taxonomy.

First, I'd make an album post type. This would have the main fields be
used (title would be name of the album, content would be the
description, etc). All the extra data would be custom meta data. You
could use a custom meta plugin for that or just the custom fields.
Cover art would be the featured thumbnail. That sort of thing.

There would be a custom taxonomy for album too, and the name of the
album (with possibly additional data like the year or something to
handle cases where there's more than one album of the same name) would
be added as a term to that album post.

Then I'd make a song post type, which did much the same for songs. To
include the song in the album, you'd give it that same custom term in
the album taxonomy. Thus a taxonomy query on the song post type would
be able to give you all the songs in the album easily.


But what you're looking at is indeed a fair amount of custom code
though, and it'd have to be done by an experienced WordPress coder.
Note that plugins tend to be generic, geared towards the widest
possible audience. When you want to do something very specific and
custom to your needs, then you're going to probably be the one coding
it or paying somebody else to code it. It's generally unlikely to find
a plugin that is an "exact fit" to your needs when the need is so
custom. You could probably hack something together with plugins, but
it will be what it is: an imperfect fit that you made work. It won't
fit your needs precisely because you have very precise needs.

-Otto



On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Joshua Sibelman
<joshua.sibelman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Forgive the length and noobishness of the following, but I've been trying to wrap my head around how best to approach a custom WP implementation and am at an impasse.
>
> I'm working on a site for a musician who's had a long career. I'm wanting to store his albums, navigable by year, and the songs on those albums.
>
> The album needs to have a fair amount of data with it: title, cover art, description, photo gallery, in addition to its songs.
>
> The songs also need to have data with them: credits, lyrics, media file - and they must be browsable on their own, as in the future he may move to only doing song releases and not albums.
>
> My initial thinking was to do custom post types, but that's starting to seem overly complex and not really workable. I'm considering just doing a custom plugin with my own database tables instead.
>
> The resources I've been able to find on working with custom taxonomies are sparse at best - does it seem to make sense to do what I'm wanting as a plugin? Or does it seem suited to using custom post types and custom taxonomies? If the latter, are there good resources available for working with these? Most of what I've seen out there for WP is geared towards very basic implementations.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help or insight anyone can give me.
>
> Cheers,
> Josh
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