Post Types
TOPICS
Default Post Types
Post
Page
Attachment
Custom Post Types
There are many different types of content in WordPress. These content types are normally described as Post Types, which may be a little confusing since it refers to all different types of content in WordPress. For example, a post is a specific Post Type, and so is a page.
Internally, all of the Post Types are stored in the same place — in the wp_posts database table — but are differentiated by a database column called post_type.
In addition to the default Post Types, you can also create Custom Post Types.
The Template files page briefly mentioned that different Post Types are displayed by different Template files. As the whole purpose of a Template file is to display content a certain way, the Post Types purpose is to categorize what type of content you are dealing with. Generally speaking, certain Post Types are tied to certain template files.
Default Post Types #Default Post Types
There are five default Post Types readily available to users or internally used by the WordPress installation:
Post (Post Type: ‘post’)
Page (Post Type: ‘page’)
Attachment (Post Type: ‘attachment’)
Revision (Post Type: ‘revision’)
Navigation menu (Post Type: ‘nav_menu_item’)
The Post Types above can be modified and removed by a plugin or theme, but it’s not recommended that you remove built-in functionality for a widely-distributed theme or plugin.
The most common post types you will interact with as a Theme Developer are Post, Page, Attachment, and Custom Post Types. It’s out of the scope of this handbook to flesh out the Revision and Navigation Menu Post Types. However, it is important to note that you will interact with and build the functionality of navigation menus and that will be detailed later in this handbook.
Post #Post
Posts are used in blogs. They are:
displayed in reverse sequential order by time, with the newest post first
have a date and time stamp
may have the default taxonomies of categories and tags applied
are used for creating feeds
The template files that display the Post post type are:
single.php and single-post.php
category.php and all its iterations
tag.php and all its iterations
taxonomy.php and all its iterations
archive.php and all its iterations
author.php and all its iterations
date.php and all its iterations
search.php
home.php
index.php
Additionally, theme developers can display Post post types in front-page.php if they so desire.
Read more about Post Template Files.
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Page #Page
Pages are a static Post Type, outside of the normal blog stream/feed. Their features are:
non-time dependent and without a time stamp
are not organized using the categories and/or tags taxonomies
can have page templates applied to them
can be organized in a hierarchical structure — i.e. pages can be parents/children of other pages
The template files that display the Page post type are:
page.php and all its iterations
$custom.php and all its iterations
front-page.php
search.php
index.php
Read more about Page Template Files.
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Attachment #Attachment
Attachments are commonly used to display images or media in content, and may also be used to link to relevant files. Their features are:
contain information (such as name or description) about files uploaded through the media upload system
for images, this includes metadata information stored in the wp_postmeta table (including size, thumbnails, location, etc)
The template files that display the Attachment post type are:
MIME_type.php
attachment.php
single-attachment.php
single.php
index.php
Read more about Attachment Template Files.
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Custom Post Types #Custom Post Types
Using Custom Post Types, you can create your own post type. It is not recommend that you place this functionality in your theme. This type of functionality should be placed/created in a plugin. This ensures the portability of your user’s content, and that if the theme is changed the content stored in the Custom Post Types won’t disappear.
You can learn more about creating custom post types in the WordPress Plugin Developer Handbook.
While you generally won’t develop Custom Post Types in your theme, you may want to code ways to display Custom Post Types that were created by a plugin. The following templates can display Custom post types:
single-{post-type}.php
archive-{post-type}.php
search.php
index.php
Additionally, Theme Developers can display Custom Post Types in any template file, often by using multiple loops.
Read more about Custom Post Type Templates.
