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

[Joshua Sibelman]

Thanks for the detailed response.

The reason I was thinking a custom plugin was because that seems to be a good way to hook into WP actions, while offering the ability to define custom Admin panels for my client to be able to manage all this content. Where the idea of the plugin deters me is that I'd love to be able to use things that come pre-built with the existing WP post functionality like images, date sorting, etc.

I wasn't thinking in terms of a plugin to be released to the wild, but one specifically for this client and this job.

In a nutshell, I'm seeing the plugin route as a way to operate outside the constraints of WordPress' plugin and taxonomy system.

Does that make sense?



On Oct 18, 2010, at 11:49 AM, Otto wrote:

> 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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