What are Advanced Content Types?

Background

In order to understand Advanced Content Types, it helps to understand a little bit about how WordPress works. WordPress comprises PHP andMySQL. MySQL is the database that stores all of your website’s information, and PHP is the code allows for interaction between the web browser and the database. PHP grabs information from the database and spits it out in the browser, and it takes data that you have entered into your browser and stores in the database.

The MySQL database is made up of tables that are related to each other. This image from the Codex shows the default tables that come with WordPress:

wp_tables

Whenever you create a Custom Post Type, this is added to the wp_posts table in your database. You can see the book Custom Post Type has been added to the wp_posts table in the below image.

Enter Advanced Content Types

Rather than being stored in wp_posts, Advanced Content Types are stored in their own database table. This means that they are not WordPress objects but are independent of WordPress. If you were to create Books as an Advanced Content Type rather than as a Custom Post Type, it would appear in its own table:

wp_pods_books

When to Use Advanced Content Types

Unless you are a developer that specifically requires the functionality that comes with storing your data in another table in your database, we strongly advise that you stick to Custom Post Types. Before deciding to use an Advanced Content Type, please be sure to review our resources on their use, to ensure that you are aware of their unique needs, limitations and features. If you’re a developer and you’re curious about the functionality that you’ll get from Advanced Content Types, check out our comparison table.

Here are three examples of occasions when Advanced Content Types might be used:

  1. You need your data to be separate from your WordPress database tables. This might be necessary, for example, if you are using another piece of software with which you wish to share the database. Advanced Content Types means that you can interface between WordPress and that software.
  2. You are querying many fields at once from the same table (typically, at least most than 15). This could be used for reporting and statistics.
  3. You have data that gets reset periodically.

a screenshot of the create a new content type box - advanced content type is selected in the dropdown. The content type has the plural label students and the singular label student

You’ll notice that Advanced Content Types act in a similar way to Drupal CCK. If you don’t know what Drupal CCK is then you probably don’t need to use Advanced Content Types!

Other Helpful Documentation on Learning About Pods

Planning Your Custom Content Types

If you’re regularly building different types of websites, you may reach a point when the default WordPress Content Types are no longer sufficient for your projects. That’s when you need to get started using Custom Content Types on your website. Pods gives you the functionality to build Content Types, but you need to put thought and …

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Planning Your Solution with Pods

What do you mean by Solution as opposed to my Data Structure? Before you dig too deeply into what kind of structure you might need, you need to think about what Content you’re going to be managing on your Web Application and how that content is going to be used by your Users and your …

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What are Custom Fields?

Custom Fields are metaboxes that are used to input metadata that is related to your post. When you add a new post in WordPress, you’ll see these draggable boxes which are used for to store information about your post. Examples are author and excerpt. Another is custom fields. If you can’t see custom fields, click …

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What are Custom Post Types?

Learn about Custom Post Types in WordPress and how Pods makes them easier to work with.

What are Custom Taxonomies?

Taxonomies are used to Group and Filter content across multiple content types.

What are Extended Post Types?

Extending another Object with Pods gives you access to add fields to WordPress Objects (Users, Media, Posts & Pages) or Post Types or Taxonomies created by other plugins.

What is a Custom Settings Page?

What is Pods?

ContentsWordPress Content Types and FieldsHow Pods Helps YouHow it Works WordPress Content Types and Fields WordPress is all about creating content. It comes bundled with Posts and Pages, which you can organise using the Categories and Tags taxonomies. It’s also got post meta fields which you can use to append data to your content – …

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