What Is WordPress Custom Taxonomy

Since the release of WordPress 3, we have been hearing a lot about the word, taxonomy or custom taxonomy. Though taxonomies was already present as far back as WordPress 2 +, much wasn’t mentioned about it because at that time, there was no provisions in WordPress to customize it. With the latest version however, users can create and customize their own taxonomies, thus the on going discussions.

What is a taxonomy

A taxonomy in it’s basic sense is just a way you can categorize your post. The category section in your old version of WordPress is a taxonomy. Prior to WordPress 3, all you can do is categorized a post under a specified name or maybe go a step further by creating sub-categories under the parent category.

The taxonomy we are talking about these days takes this feature a step further, making it a lot more powerful. You can customized the categories and each time you add something under that taxonomy, it will appear different from other taxonomies that you have created. It is like a spiced up post category. When before you can only differentiate the post category with text, now you can do so with graphics and many other pre-specified settings for that particular category, or taxonomy.

Creating A Custom Taxonomy

Though taxonomies are fully supported in WordPress 3, many themes and theme developer do not incorporate this feature in their Themes. This probably due the fact that different users have different preferences so there is not much feasibility in including pre-set taxonomies. Thus, to make use of this feature, users will have to create your own preferred taxonomies, which unfortunately is not something that the non tech savvy can handle.

If you are interested, a very in depth and detailed tutorial on this subject can be found at Net.Tut Plus’s post, Introducing WordPress 3 Custom Taxonomies

Pre-Set Taxonomies In WordPress Themes

Though the majority of WordPress Themes do not include pre-defined taxonomies, there are some which does. A fine example is the LightBright Theme which I downloaded, used and reviewed in my previous post. This Theme has 6 pre-defined taxonomy which when used, can create six unique looking post pages.

The six available taxonomies are for post about anything, video post, audio post, photo post , quote post (which not much of a use) and a note post which is also used as the default taxonomy when you do your regular postings. Since these are pre-defined by the designer using his own preferences, yours will look different in your dashboard.

Using Taxonomies In WordPress Themes.

In a nutshell, using the pre-defined taxonomies is no different from adding a new post. Using one of the Video taxonomy of the LightBright Theme as an example, the first option will show you all the videos you have posted under that taxonomy.

The second option which say, Add Video, is just like your Add New Post where you can write a regular post, and embed the video. The difference is there will be an extra column under the post editor for you to embed your video codes. The size of the the video frame has also been pre-defined so that it fits in perfectly with your Theme.

The third option which is defined as Taxonomies lets you add more taxonomies to the parent taxonomy. It is similar to adding sub-categories to your parent category.

A customized designed can be done for each of the different taxonomy as is seen in the LightBright Theme which uses a different post icon for each different taxonomy.

Are WordPress Taxnomies Any Use At All

For a normal blogger or even for A list Bloggers, I do not see much use for taxonomies. The furthest we will venture will be creating sub categories and even then, it does not add much value to our blog. So do not start fretting that you do not know how to go about creating WordPress taxonomies or you will be missing out on something if you do not have them.

The biggest users will be online newspapers or magazines where they have to categorize their news articles clearly so readers can easily find what they want. Others like Technology blogs where discussions can go several levels deep will also find taxonomies very useful. In short, taxonomies are for serious intellectual sites that has tons of contents that needs to be sorted out clearly and neatly.

For you and me, I would say, forget it. Unless you want to appear a little cool and one up from others that is.