Wordpress Private Custom Post Type (CPT) for Dynamic Content

Alston Chan — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 02:32:06 +0000

WordPress, a content management system, have a default Posts action that is geared towards blogging. This make WordPress default Posts action unsuitable for dynamic content as managing various items such as product items, blog posts, services, etc… in only one places will make your backend messy very quickly. To solve this, Custom Post Type will be utilized to keep everything tidy and easy to organize.

We would have to install some plugins to enable Custom Post Type, as WordPress doesn't have this feature natively. These are the plugins that will be used to accomplish it:

In this article, only the free version is required to make this work, so you don't have to worry about upgrading to the premium version to follow along.

Getting Started with ACS

Firstly, install two of these plugins at the Plugins section, and activate them once the installation is finished.
You should now see a new entry called Custom Fields at the sidebar if your installation is successful, like the figure below.

Now, hover over Custom Fields and select Add New, this will let you create a new Meta Field Group, which can group your content in a meaningful way and makes organizing easier. For example, you may have one group named Products, and have another named Achievements, so you can add your content to the respective collection instead of mixing up everything in the default Post collection.
You should see the interface like the figure below when you are on Add New section.

Think of a meaningful name for your Field Group name and enter it in the Add New Field Group input box. At the Settings section, the Location Rules, just leave it be like the figure above, we will change that afterward. Then, click open the Fields option, and you are able to add various type of input fields for the content.
At the Field Type, there are quite a few option for you to pick at the dropdown menu that fits your content requirements. For example, if you wish to have your employee to be presented, you may need your employee name as Text field, age as Number, email address as Email, personal website as Url, and so on.

Enter your Field Label, and it will automatically add a Field Name for you. You may have a default value if you require it, but in this specific example, no default value is needed, so just leave it empty.
When you are finished with General tab, move on to Validation tab, in here you will see two option, Required and Character Limit. You may set this field as a required field at the Name field as your employee must have had a name, but for fields like Personal Website, you might not want to make it a required field as not everyone have one. You may also specify the maximum character limit to prevent overly long character count to ruin your UI. If you need none of these, just leave it be.
For the Presentation tab, you may add more customization and info for yourself or anyone that need to add or update the content. You are able to add Instructions to remind the people editing the content, add a placeholder text to give tips of the field value to enter, Append or Prepend character that have to be repeated for this field. You may not always need to have something in this tab, like in our case, we leave it empty.
Now, navigate to the Settings section after you are done with the Fields section. Select the Presentation tab and you will see several settings. In most case, it is not needed to tweak anything in the area, and you may just leave it be. This section controls the interface when you are posting or editing the content, the default is already fine.

Once you are finish will all the Settings and Fields, save changes at the top bar. Navigate to the Field Group tab at the WordPress sidebar, and you should see the new Field Group you have just added.

Create custom post type with CPT UI

If you have installed Custom Post Type UI previously, you should have seen a new entry named CPT UI at the WordPress sidebar. Hover over it and select Add/Edit Post Types option. You should see an interface like the figure below. Post Type Slug : the word to use for the path, if your value is employee, when user navigate to "https://www.yourdomain.com/employee?q=post_id", user will be able to see the full page content. This doesn't matter much as we do not want to create a dedicated page for our employee and only wanted to display it all in a page.

For the Plural Label and Singular Label, enter your value respectively, for this example, Employees and Employee will be used.

For the Additionals Labels section, it is optional for you to add, and you may leave it empty as I would in this example.
Scroll down to the last section named Settings, there are some setting we have to tweak here to make it a Private Custom Post Type, so it doesn't generate its own dedicated page, to do this:
1. Set Publicly Queryable to FALSE.
2. Set Exclude from Search to TRUE.
3. Set Rewrite to FALSE.

These three steps if important to make it private.

Scroll to the end of the section, at the Supports area, check or uncheck the feature which you need and don't need, so your editor will only have these option for you to focus on.
Ensured all settings are properly set and click Add Post Type. You should then see a new post type showing up at the sidebar.

To make this works with the Advanced Custom Fields, you have to navigate back to Custom Field tabs at the WordPress sidebar and select the Fields Group that you have just created, in this example, we have created Employee. So hover over it and click Edit, go to Settings section and change the Post to the Field Group you created, Employee in my example.

Save changes and head to the Employees tab or any Post Type you have just created and Add New. You should see something similar to the figure below, which have an input section below.
Enter your content according to the input and Publish it! You have finished creating and posting a content on a Custom Post Type.

Render the content

To output the content to your page, you need Elementor Pro version and some sort of premium plugins to be able to add the content with ease. Another Approach is to add a Shortcode to the page to render it. For example:

[acf field="field_name" post_id="post_id"]

Replace the "field_name" with your field name you specify in the Custom Fields, for me, it would be name or personal_website. Check your Custom Field again if you are unsure, you can find your field_name under the Name column, like the figure below outline with a red circle.

So I should enter my Shortcode like the following in this example to display one of my employee name.

[acf field="name" post_id="194"]

To get your post_id, install a plugin named Show IDs by DraftPress, and it will display every post_id when you navigate to the post you have created. You should see your content being rendered if you type everything correctly.

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day :)

DEV Community: Alston Chan

Wordpress Private Custom Post Type (CPT) for Dynamic Content

Getting Started with ACS

Create custom post type with CPT UI

Render the content

Reference