Well, boys and goyls I’m at it again, extending the functionality of the site. This times, it’s something that I’ve been trying to figure out for months and have finally managed to wrap my head around. Posts are no more, or more accurately they’re still around, but I won’t be using them. Instead, I will be using ‘custom post types’ for the different content I add to the site. Stories, blogs, reference docs (glossaries), and (gasp) biographies will now be posted as separate types of posts instead of under the same type. This is mainly for my benefit as it helps me keep them better organized on the back-end of the website. Instead of scrolling through a list of all posts, I can click on a menu that says “Stories” and have all my stories together instead of filtering out the content I want.
The main issue, was actually getting these custom post types to display on the main and archive pages. I could create them just fine, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to get them to actually show up on the relevant pages. The solution was surprisingly easy, I was just going at it the wrong way.
The biggest thing you might take away from this blog, is the addition of Biographies as a post type. This enables me to more easily create character bios and share them on the website. Instead of a big image with text, I have a posting with a character image with editable text. Which, believe me, makes it a lot easier. Best of all, this means, I can create more detailed character bios with spoiler tags for readers who want to read the full back story of a character.
Unfortunately, all these changes broke one small little feature of the site and that is the “featured post”. Basically, it was the post that displayed at the top of the main page and was larger than any of the posts below it. I am hoping to fix this feature, but I suck at php so it may take a while. I’ve attempted to ask for help a support forum, but I’m unsure how long it will take to get a response.
As usual everyone have a delightfully demented day,
Daniel A. Wolfe
