Standardized Custom Post Type Naming

This article from Konstantin about the “Lock in Effect” in WordPress themes got me thinking a lil’ bit.

Theres many things he outlines but one we can solve simply is CPT naming, most themes feature at least one CPT most commonly a portfolio. Now its up to the author to name this CPT which can be anything from “portfolio” (like myself) to a prefixed name like “ct_portfolio”, etc…

This can be troublesome for buyers as they purchase one theme, add their content, then maybe down the road purchase another but this new theme uses a prefixed name for the portfolio so that user now has to either re-input all their content or do a SQL UPDATE command.

So I’m proposing something simple at least for the authors on TF, lets standardize our CPT naming.

Proposed examples:

• portfolio
• testimonials
• products
• slider
• etc…

Thoughts?

I read the same article this morning and was thinking along the same lines. Going hand in hand with this, I think plugin authors should then namespace their custom post types so as to avoid collisions.

So I think it’s a good idea; but on the other hand, it doesn’t do much good for meta fields, since those would be more problematic (impossible?) to standardize.

In general: standards are good It’d be great if WordPress would actually adopt an official stance on the matter, and offer a best practice standard, actually.

I think its this and the slug used that needs to be standardised. People use the permalink /portfolio on a page with a theme where that slug is reserved for portfolio posts etc. and therefore generates a 404 error. I’m too lazy to change the slugs myself but i’d encourage others to change this.

sevenspark said
So I think it’s a good idea; but on the other hand, it doesn’t do much good for meta fields, since those would be more problematic (impossible?) to standardize.

Agreed, this is just one piece to the puzzle, custom taxonomies and metaboxes are a whole nother story. Although you could propose a small standardized set for different uses, like for products (price, size, shipping, etc…).

I also agree, I think another thing that should be standardized is shortcodes / standard widgets though I think for some of that would be impossible

Some form of standardization is definitely a step in the right direction. The true trick is to get everyone to embrace the idea without thinking they are compromising their product in some way.

Count us in!

Really the way to get this to work is getting Envato behind it, setting a standard and making it apart of the review process.

Calling all staffers…

contempoinc said
Really the way to get this to work is getting Envato behind it, setting a standard and making it apart of the review process. Calling all staffers…