These are essentially extra fields that help you describe the content they’re attached to further. For instance, if your website reviews video games, you may want to add extra fields that display the development team and publishers behind it.

Obviously, these extra fields can be used for just about anything, thus it really depends on the type of website you run.

Today, I will demonstrate how you can add a custom field to your taxonomies in WordPress using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.

Is A Custom Field Necessary For Taxonomies?

Many blogs can do great things using the default taxonomies in WordPress. Adding custom fields is really only necessary as your website grows.

Think about it for a second, it gets much harder to find what you are looking for when a website has a thousand posts.

To fix this, you need to improve your website’s search functionality, and adding custom fields can be a great way to do it.

To expand on the example from before, a video game review site may want to sort their games by a variety of factors including genre, development team, game director, platform, single-player, multiplayer, competitive, in-game purchases, and more.

The more ways a visitor has to refine their search, the better. And custom fields allow you to give visitors that power.

How to Add A Custom Field to Taxonomies in WordPress

The Advanced Custom Fields plugin is a wildly popular plugin with over 2 million active installs. It specializes in adding custom fields to any type of content in WordPress. Although, this tutorial will just focus on taxonomies.

The plugin has two main ways to use it. The first, and what we will cover in this tutorial, is using the editor to add custom fields to anything in WordPress. Whereas the second option is to manually add these custom fields using code.

The second option is a bit much for beginners, thus, we will focus on the first method.

Step 1: Install Advanced Custom Fields

Let’s start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Advanced Custom Fields in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Advanced Custom Fields plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Choose A Rule

Using the plugin is pretty simple, but can be confusing if it is your first time. The first thing you need to do before creating a custom field is actually picking when this custom field will appear.

The plugin calls this a rule, and it’s pretty simple as you just need to choose from a drop-down list.

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Custom Fields and select the Add New option.

The first thing you need to do is enter a title. Simply call it whatever field you are adding.

When you first load into this page, you’ll be in the area to create a custom field, but this isn’t very useful since it is for a post. Instead, we need to select either the Post Taxonomy or Taxonomy option in the rules.

The Post Taxonomy refers to taxonomies specific to posts. Whereas the Taxonomy option refers to taxonomies within forms.

To do this, scroll down to the Settings section and use the first drop-down to select a Taxonomy option. In this case, I will choose Post Taxonomy.

The next drop-down has two options. They include “Is equal to” and “Is not equal to,” which determine when the rule is used. Generally, you will just use the “Is equal to” option, but you may find uses for the other.

In this case, I am leaving it as the default option.

The last drop-down allows you to select your own taxonomies. In this case, I chose Post Taxonomy. This allows me to choose from my own categories and tags. Simply choose the one you want to add a custom field to.

If you want to do this for multiple taxonomies, you can click on the “and” button. It will add another rule line where you can make the same choices but choose a different taxonomy. Alternatively, you can also use the “Add rule group” button.

Step 3: Create A Custom Field

Now that you have a rule setup for taxonomies, it’s time to actually add a custom field to them. This is very easy to do as you just need to select the field type and enter the appropriate information.

For this example, let’s create a “developers” field.

Scroll back up from the Rules section and locate the Field Type option. Use the drop-down to select the option you want to use. For this example, I will choose text.

Note: The option you choose will change the other settings you have access to. The options shown in this tutorial will be for Text.

Next, you’ll need to enter a Field Label. This is what will appear when you are editing a post. In this case, I will call it Developers. This will automatically fill in the Field Name option as well.

Next, you can fill out the default value. In this case, it’s perfectly fine to leave it blank, or you can write something like “Enter the name of the development team…” or something to that effect.

Again, if you chose a different option, you won’t actually get this choice. Instead, you will see an option that fits that field type.

And that’s it. Click on the “Save changes” button and your new custom field will be available for the taxonomies you have selected. Simply repeat these steps to add as many as necessary.

Step 4: Locating the Custom Field

You may be wondering where exactly your custom field is located. Well, you need to locate the content that meets the rule you created earlier.

In the case of this example, I said whenever a post taxonomy is equal to Boats, the developer field will appear.

What this means is I just need to open a post that uses the “Boats” category. And the custom field will be present at the bottom like so:

Where you find this option depends entirely on the rule you create. Thus, if you do not find it where you expect it, take another look at the rule you created.

Add A Custom field To Your Taxonomies Today

When visitors have a hard time finding what they want, they typically go to another website to find what they are looking for. And if it happens too often, they will often avoid your website entirely.

Websites need to avoid this from happening. This is why every successful website utilizes taxonomies to make sure its content is easy to find. However, once a website has thousands of posts, it may not be enough.

That’s why many websites rely on custom taxonomies to improve default searches. And you can take this to the next level by adding custom fields to them. As you can see, it’s not very difficult to do with the right plugin.

What custom field did you add to your taxonomies? Has adding a custom field helped users find what they were looking for?

The post How to Add a Custom Field to Taxonomies in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

To compensate for this, you can use the Media Library Assistant plugin to add taxonomies to your images. Taxonomies include things like categories and tags. These will help you search and sort your WordPress images.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use Media Library Assistant to add taxonomies to images on your WordPress website.

Why Do Taxonomies Help Image Organization

Naturally, WordPress lacks any type of sorting feature for the images you upload to the media library. This is a very big issue for most web developers who have websites that use images as the main source of content.

Tags and categories are the most popular WordPress taxonomies. The plugin allows users to use them on images while adding a search function for images that contain these taxonomies. You can also search for the image name as well.

This will save your staff precious time when they need to find an image. Saving time and reducing the workload on your staff is essential to running a website efficiently.

How to Create Taxonomies for Images

Step 1: Install Media Library Assistant

The Media Library Assistant plugin is very easy to use and will take no time to master. For example, you may have a lot of images about animals, it would be a great idea to create a tag or category for each animal.

This will make it easy for anyone trying to find a specific animal image. Of course, if you remember the name of the specific image, you can search for that name. Thus, you want to ensure that you name each image uniquely and avoid strings of numbers.

Let’s start by going to Plugins and click on the “Add New” option.

Search for Media Library Assistant in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Media Library Assistant plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Create Categories and Tags for Images

On the left-hand admin panel click on Media and select the Att. Category option. This is where you can begin making categories for images.

It’s time to start adding categories and tags. You will, of course, need to create tags and categories to use. It is not necessary to use both and they can be used almost interchangeably. The process is the same for both.

Note: This category section is identical to the regular categories for posts. Thus, if you already know how to add categories to those, you will have no trouble here.

Fill in the Name text box with the name of the tag or category you wish to make. You can also create a slug and a description. Click on the Add New Att. Category or Add New Att. Tag button.

Add as many categories or tags that you feel necessary. You can add them at any time, so don’t worry about forgetting one.

The process is exactly the same for adding tags. The only difference is that you must click on the Alt. Tag option to begin.

Repeat these steps to add as many categories and tags as necessary.

Step 3: Add Categories and Tags to Images

You now need to spend the time adding categories or tags to your images. This can be very time consuming if you have a lot of images and want all of them organized, but I recommend only adding them to your most recent one or most used ones first.

Click on Media and select the Assistant option.

Here you will see all of your images in a list view. Click on the Quick Edit option underneath the image you wish to edit.

Add the tag or category to either the Att. Tag or Att. Category text box. You can add multiple tags. For example, you could add an Animal tag and a Dog tag because both are correct.

Click on the Update button when you are done.

Repeat these steps to add as many taxonomies to images as necessary. Expect to spend a lot of time if you have a large media library.

Step 4: Search for Images

Now it is finally time to test the search function of the plugin. Keep in mind that if you didn’t add any taxonomies, the searches will not work.

Click Media and select the Library option.

The first thing that should stand out is the search box the plugin adds. Here you can search for the name of an image. This is an extremely powerful tool for websites that have thousands of images uploaded. Of course, this does mean going through each image to assign them a taxonomy.

Click on the Terms Search button.

Here, you can type in the category or tags you have created. Make sure to spell the category or tag correctly, the plugin does not do partial matches very well.

Click on the search button and your results will appear.

Note: I did experience an issue when testing the plugin. If you search using the search bar and pull up no results, the Term Search will also pull up no results regardless of if it should. You need to reenter your media library to fix the issue.

Congratulations, you have successfully learned how to search and sort your WordPress images by adding taxonomies to them. This is a great tool for websites that focus heavily on adding images to their website. Make sure to actively add all of your new images to categories or tags.

Name Your Images Meaningfully

Often times web developers don’t take the time to name their images properly. Instead, they will opt-out for something like”Tree-4.png” because it’s quicker.

However, some websites might get even lazier. Doing so will not only make it harder to identify images, but it may also hurt your SEO.

Search engine bots will utilize the names you give images in their search, thus if the name is “IMG_568687” it doesn’t help them locate anything. It’s simply undescriptive.

Not only will properly naming images help you find them in the media library, but it may also improve your search rankings on Google.

Optimize WordPress to Save Time

WordPress is a terrific platform to build a website and that is exactly why it is the most popular platform to do so. However, WordPress is not perfect, it has shortcomings and this is one of the biggest.

Luckily, all of these shortcomings can be fixed by using the right combination of plugins. Since large websites can potentially upload hundreds of images in a single day and there is no way to organize them or search for one by default, it can cause headaches.

And sometimes you might just re-upload an image because you can’t find it, which is a huge waste of space.

Have you added categories, tags, or both to your images? Do you feel like your images will be better organized now?

The post How to Add Taxonomies to Images in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

This is a big inconvenience for sites that want to switch between categories and custom taxonomies but fear not. Just like most problems with WordPress, a plugin can solve it easily. Today, I will demonstrate how to switch categories to custom taxonomies in WordPress using the Taxonomy Switcher plugin.

Why Would You Want to Switch Taxonomies

The two default taxonomies, Categories and Tags, are used to help you sort and organize your website’s content. Organized content makes it much easier for visitors to find the content they are looking for. They also help you increase your website’s SEO performance and rank higher.

While you may be using your Categories and Tags effectively now, as your website grows, this can change. For example, when starting out you may find that you created a Category that has way too many sub-categories. You may want to change the Category or sub-category to another custom taxonomy that better describes what it is.

Remember the point of a taxonomy is to help sort your content and if a certain type of content does not fit in with the rest, then a custom taxonomy is probably required.

How to Switch Categories to Custom Taxonomies in WordPress

Today, I will demonstrate how to switch categories to custom taxonomies in WordPress using the Taxonomy Switcher plugin. This plugin makes it extremely easy to switch all of the content from one taxonomy to another. It is compatible with any custom taxonomy you create. This is extremely useful for websites with a lot of content to switch who don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it.

Installing Taxonomy Switcher

Let’s start off by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Taxonomy Switcher in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Taxonomy Switcher plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

On the left-hand admin panel click on Tools and select the Taxonomy Switcher option. This will pull up the main settings page.

Using Taxonomy Switcher

Now that the plugin is installed and activated, it is time to use it. The plugin is very user-friendly. You select the taxonomy you want to switch and then select the taxonomy you want to switch too. Then select the content that will be switched. It’s very easy and convenient for larger websites.

The first thing you need to do is select the Taxonomy to switch from. You can pick any existing Taxonomy on your website, like Categories or Tags. Keep in mind that if you are selecting Categories, you cannot actually pick which category directly. You will need to select the content ID, which I will explain in the next step.

Next, you need to select the Taxonomy to switch to. Again, as long as the taxonomy exists on your website, you can select it.

Now you need to select what content will switch. For example, if you have a lot of categories but you only want to switch a few of them, you can do that. Now, if you do want to transfer everything, simply leave the ID box blank.

If you want to transfer specific pieces of content from one to another, you will need the content ID number. This number is easy to locate, but it is quite tedious to locate a lot of them.

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Posts and select Categories, or any other taxonomy. If you selected Categories, select any category. On the URL of the page, you can see “tag_ID=” and the number that is after the equal sign is the ID.

Find all of the IDs that you want to use. For example, if you want to transfer three Categories to Tags, locate all three of the IDs for those categories. Place the IDs that you want to transfer in the text box. You can also decide how to hand child and parent taxonomies in the box below.

Once everything is filled in, click on the “Switch Taxonomies” button.

Congratulations, you have successfully switched a category to a custom taxonomy. Keep in mind it does not just have to be a category, it can be any taxonomy.

Effectively Sort Your Content

One of the biggest problems new visitors will encounter is how to find the content that they are interested in. The default taxonomies can be used very effectively, but making new custom taxonomies is a completely valid strategy. However, this leaves you in a situation where you need to transfer content from one taxonomy to another. The Taxonomy Switcher plugin will fix this problem entirely and make it very simple.

Why do you want to switch between taxonomies? How easy do you find the Taxonomy Switcher plugin to use?

The post How to Switch Categories to Custom Taxonomies in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Standard Taxonomies

Every new installation of WordPress has the standard taxonomies of categories and tags. There used to be a third, called link categories, but this function has been largely replaced by the custom menu feature. Why are categories and tags important? They are vital to visitor experience and can literally make or break your site.

• Categories are the specific channels that organize the overall topic of your blog. For example, a blog about current television shows will have categories that contain show names and broadcast networks. A category can also be set as a “parent,” meaning sub-categories can be created underneath it. Sub-categories for television shows could include actor names and past seasons.
• Tags are words that add specific meaning to a blog post. Unlike Instagram and Tumblr, you should use tags sparingly and always in relation to the content, category and sub-category you have written about. The best way to use tags is by making them the same as your targeted keywords for the post.

In the next section, I will explain how to use custom WordPress taxonomies.

Custom Taxonomies

Once you understand how to use categories and tags, it is easy to become obsessed with the feature. This is a good thing because your site can never be too accessible for visitors. The ability to create custom taxonomies was introduced in WordPress version 2.3 a few years ago. Why was this feature added? While WordPress began as a blogging platform, it has since evolved into a robust content management system that is used for portfolios, business websites and more. Blogging has become a less important aspect, but the need to organize different types of content remains a top priority.

Custom taxonomies are often used with custom post types. A custom post type is just like a post or a page, but it is added manually either by you or through the use of a plugin. If you want to build a portfolio site, or one that features many photos of products or reviews of services, you will need to use custom post types. The categories and tags you create specifically for those post types are custom taxonomies. It should be noted that custom taxonomies are not limited to custom post types. They can also be used with standard pages and posts.

While you can use the official codex instructions to manually create custom taxonomies, it is easier to simply use free taxonomy plugins that can be installed through the WordPress dashboard.

The WordPress taxonomy feature is one of the reasons why the platform is so flexible and powerful, allowing you to build any type of site you need. Have you created custom taxonomies in WordPress? Share your experiences in the comments.

The post What Are Custom Taxonomies In WordPress? appeared first on GreenGeeks.