WordPress Taxonomies are a way of grouping similar content together on your website. They allow you to organize and classify your content in a meaningful way, making it easier for your visitors to find what they are looking for. There are two main types of taxonomies in WordPress: categories and tags.
Categories:
Categories are a way of grouping similar posts together. They can be used to create sections on your website, such as “News” or “Events”. You can create new categories by going to the Posts > Categories section in the WordPress admin. Once you have created your categories, you can assign them to your posts by selecting them from the Categories meta box when you are editing a post.
Tags:
Tags are another way of grouping similar posts together. They are generally used for more specific topics within a post. For example, if you were writing a post about a new product, you might use tags such as “product launch” and “new technology”. Like categories, you can create tags by going to the Posts > Tags section in the WordPress admin. You can also assign tags to your posts by selecting them from the Tags meta box when you are editing a post.
Custom Taxonomies:
Custom Taxonomies are a way of creating new taxonomies for your custom post types. They allow you to create new sections on your website, such as “Department” or “Location” for your team members. Custom Taxonomies can be created using the register_taxonomy() function in your theme’s functions.php file. Here is an example of how to create a custom taxonomy called “Department” for your custom post type “Team Member”:
function create_team_member_taxonomies() {
register_taxonomy(
'department',
'team_member',
array(
'label' => 'Departments',
'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'department' ),
'hierarchical' => true,
)
);
}
add_action( 'init', 'create_team_member_taxonomies' );
Displaying Taxonomies:
Once you have created your taxonomies, you can display them on your website using the standard WordPress loop. You can also create custom templates for your taxonomies, which will give you more control over how the taxonomies are displayed. Here is an example of how to display a list of team members by department on your website:
<?php
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'team_member',
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => 'department',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => 'marketing'
)
)
);
$team_members = new WP_Query( $args );
if( $team_members->have_posts() ) {
while( $team_members->have_posts() ) {
$team_members->the_post();
the_title();
the_content();
}
wp_reset_postdata();
}
?>
In summary, WordPress Taxonomies are a powerful feature that allows you to organize and classify your content in a meaningful way. They include categories and tags, which allow you to create sections and specific topics within your content. Custom Taxonomies allow you to create new taxonomies for your custom post types, which can be useful for organizing
