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A Complete Guide To WordPress Content Management
A Complete Guide To WordPress Content Management
Management
As your website’s content grows in quantity and scope, it can be a
challenge figuring out the best way to organize and present it. In this
article, we will go through all of WordPress’ content management
options. If you’re new(er) to WordPress, you might learn about some
neat features you didn’t know were built into WordPress. If you’re
experienced, it can still help to refer back to this post whenever you
find yourself considering the various options for that next content
migration or new website.
Curation is Content Management 2.0
Since WordPress is a CMS and this post’s goal is ultimately to help you learn the
content management tools so you can use them to better curate your content, it’s
important to agree that there’s a difference between content management and
content curation…
• Content management is a techie task that’s made easy by using WordPress’
built-in tools and its extensions. Really, that’s what this post details.
• Content curation is more of an art, performed by an editor more so than a geek
(not to say they’re mutually exclusive). Curation is how you leverage the techie
tools available to you to present content in the best way possible. Curation is
Content Management 2.0.
The importance of curation should not be overlooked. When I think of the word
curation, I also think of terms like user experience, best practices, and bringing
the cream to the top.
Curation taps the vast, agile, engaged human power of the web. It finds signal in
the noise.
– Mashable.com, 2011
By the end of this post, you’ll know all the content management tools available to
you via WordPress core so you can pick the right WordPress theme, plugins,
and/or hire a professional to accomplish your content curation goals via
WordPress.
Post Types
A post is a post is a post, right? Not quite. Technically, pretty much everything in
the WordPress database is a post. Then posts are categorized as types of posts.
For example, a WordPress Page is really a WordPress post assigned the post
type of “page”. Additional built-in post types include menus, media attachments,
and, yes, posts. So posts assigned the type of post are “blog posts” as we
know them.
Additionally, custom post types (CPTs) can be created. So there’s essentially
an unlimited number of types of posts. Sometimes a slider plugin will create
its own post type. A directory or classifieds plugin will most likely create its own
post type. Some themes include their own custom post types.
Pages
WordPress Pages (posts of the “page” post type) are best for static content, like
About Us, Contact, and Pricing pages. “Static” doesn’t mean it can never change.
Instead, static content is content that is “less time-dependent than Posts” (per the
Codex).
Pages are organized in a hierarchical fashion. That is, they can have child pages.
Pages can also be used to present a “best of” collection of posts (i.e. blog posts),
which go nicely when used with another benefit of Pages over Posts: Page
Templates.
You can think of pages, child pages, and collections of posts as manual or
automatic Tables of Contents. It’s all up to you.
My favorite plugin for quickly displaying many pages/posts within a single page
is Page-list. However, I recently found Super Post, which seems like a full-
featured alternative.
Posts
WordPress Posts (posts of the “post” post type) are what WordPress was
originally created for — blogging.
A site’s posts make up its blog. What you’re reading right now is a WordPress
post, not a page. It’s written as of the date published and may decrease in value
over time, since it’s typically time-dependent. Said better, it’s time-relevant or
time-sensitive. For example, WordPress may add an additional default post type
a year from now and then this post would be slightly inaccurate/outdated for not
mentioning it. Well, since this post is published in early 2013, its content is
(supposed to be) understood that it was accurate as of that time period and
possibly less accurate as time goes on.
If you’re like me and wish your content never went out of style and magically
stayed updated, you’ll just have to keep wishing. However, maybe if you think of
things this way, you won’t feel so bad for posting and not updating:
Think of posts as newspaper articles. Do you go back in time and think, “Last
February’s newspaper doesn’t tell me about this March’s weather forecast. Grrr.”
No, because you, the reader, are made aware of the item’s expected usefulness,
typically just a single day. Likely, your posts have value lasting more than 24
hours, but time-dependence is one of the reasons I advocate for displaying each
post’s date (and sometimes even dates updated) within the theme and/or in
the permalink. If I find a post that Google thinks is relevant but it’s dated 2010, it
might not be what I’m really looking for.
Another way to think about posts is as your publicly-accessible
journal. Share your thoughts, wishes, activities, and news — yes, for both
personal and commercial blogs. Just understand that most of your posts won’t be
long-lived. For example, your post about next week’s fundraiser is mostly
pointless after the event ends. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have posted
the announcement on your blog, and it doesn’t mean you should delete or
unpublish it after the event. You can also post photos and accomplishments in a
post the week after. And a few months later, your site visitors can see your
announcement post, the “day of” post, the summary post (with photos, please),
and even a post looking forward to the next fundraising event.
All in all, posts are typically time-dependent chunks of content that typically relate
to other posts (like the 4 possible posts above), which can be categorized and
formatted, as we’ll discuss in the Taxonomies section below.
Custom Post Types
A custom post type is just that — custom. A CPT can be page-like or post-like
in its usage. Or it can be used solely for bundling content in a theme or plugin
scenario, not actually displayed individually on the front-end.
Custom post types solve the problem of completely separate types of content —
stuff that shouldn’t be a single page and shouldn’t be included in the site’s blog
posts. Examples include product listings, real estate listings, movie/music
database, testimonials/quotes, or portfolio items.
My favorite CPT creator/manager is Types. Types is a free plugin from the
WordPress Plugin Repository, but onTheGo Systems’ Toolset premium upgrade
can help display and control the CPT content. The paid version is only
recommended if you think you need it. Types by itself is a great plugin and it also
handles custom fields and custom taxonomies.
Another plugin to consider for curating content (even if not using custom post
types) is Posts 2 Posts, which enables “Efficient many-to-many connections
between posts, pages, custom post types, users.”
Custom Fields
Custom fields are neither post types nor taxonomies. Instead, they contain data
about a post, which is why they’re called “post meta” or “metadata” (i.e. data
about data). A custom field for a Computer post could be serial number, price, or
warranty length.
WordPress by default provides a way to add custom fields and insert values for
existing fields, unlike custom post types and custom taxonomies.
Author Archives
WordPress creates an author page for every WordPress user (regardless of roles
and capabilities) at example.com/author/username. For example, user John
Smith with username mrjohn will have all his posts accessible
at example.com/author/mrjohn, even if he’s not an author. If there is no
username of mrjohn, WordPress will display a 404 error instead of a message
like “No Posts for John Smith.”
Author pages can be a neat way to highlight an individual’s contributions to the
blog and, depending on your theme, can display a bio and links to their own
social media profiles. Check out my ManageWP Author Page as an example.
Sticky Posts may sound gross to those unfamiliar with the term.
Sticky Posts (sometimes called Featured Posts) override the reverse
chronological order of the blog page and stay at the top of the blog.
For example, if there are 5 posts dated January 7, February 3, March 10, March
20, and April 17, they would be displayed in the order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. But if we
made February’s post sticky (post #2), the blog posts page would display them in
this order: 2, 5, 4, 3, 1.
Making a post sticky (see screenshot) is a great way to bridge the gap between
long-lived Pages and time-dependent Posts. However, it can be easy to forget to
“unstick” sticky posts. That’s why I like the Scheduled Post Unstick plugin.
Note: Custom post types don’t support “stickiness”, although some plugins may
enable this feature.
Post Formats
Post Formats is a theme feature. It’s a way to display content of similar types, but
notice it’s not mentioned in the Template Hierarchy Chart above. There are quite
a few built-in post formats (explanations of each at the included link):
• aside – a post typically styled to not display the post title, like Facebook status
updates
• audio – an audio file
• chat – a chat transcript
• gallery – images
• image – a single image
• link – a link to another site
• quote – a quotation
• status – a short status update, like a Twitter Tweet
• video – a single video