I have tried to stay away from Custom Post Types (not a post or a page, but another type of “post” in WordPress) in case I change themes or plugins and they’re no longer compatible or friendly or just don’t work the way I want them to. On researching Jetpack’s Publicize yesterday, I found a note that the folks at Jetpack aren’t planning on making Publicize compatible with custom post types. Well, that does it, I’m going to try even harder to not use custom post types if even the folks at WordPress aren’t planning on making the most basic plugin compatible with it.

Custom Post Type Code

So why would they do that? Remember, I can spell PHP, but I’m not a programmer, but as I see it, there are posts, pages, categories, tags, etc., but when you add custom post types into the mix, it’s a bit of an entirely new beast. Sure, it still might have a title, a body, and a category, but it’s no longer, say, apples and oranges, it’s not even really a fruit, it’s a vegetable. It’s another type of post type.

I’d like my content to be “future proof.”

Here’s another example. As much as I like the Portfolio function on Canvas, I don’t use it because I don’t want those entries to not be posts. Why not? What if I change themes? I’d have to convert those “Portfolio Custom Post Types” back into posts or into some other post type from the new theme. And now I learn that every new portfolio piece I posted wouldn’t go out with my Jetpack Publicize settings. Maybe I’d have to do it manually or something. Yeah, manually, that’s not going to happen.

Furthermore, I want my site to be sortable, rate-able, star-able, measurable, and all in the same pool of post types (e.g. just posts). That also makes it more future proof: it’ll work with other themes and be readable, feed-able, and compatible.

Does that limit what I can do with posts? I guess so. So if there were a compelling reason to use them (e.g. for ONLY, say, events or hotel reservations), then great. But anything that might be a post that I might want to have archived together with other content on the site, I’m going to try to keep it a post. So for example, as I mentioned, I really do like that Portfolio function in Canvas, so I tried to re-create it over at WordPress U. No, it doesn’t have the fancy AJAX function, but at least it shows a grid of posts with thumbnails and titles. I could probably make it AJAX if I tried a little harder, but I mostly wanted to see if I could convert what they were using as custom post types into a regular post. I did it. I’ll take it.

Working to recreate the Canvas Portfolio function without using a custom post type.

Working to recreate the Canvas Portfolio function without using a custom post type.