Comments on: Organizing Your WordPress Data: Understanding Custom Taxonomies vs Custom Fields

By: Larry Swanson

Larry Swanson — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 17:56:00 +0000

Super-helpful. Thanks, David.

By: K.K.Smith

K.K.Smith — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:21:00 +0000

Probably the best “think-through” on this that I have come across.

By: BV

BV — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 19:04:00 +0000

Thx for the explanation. If you want to see al the genres an actor
played, how to achieve this? So if you want to see all the type of
genres (not the movies) Tom Hanks played?

By: Tweet Parade (no.16 Apr 2014) - Best Articles of Last Week | gonzoblog

Tweet Parade (no.16 Apr 2014) - Best Articles of Last Week | gonzoblog — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 13:03:13 +0000

[…] Organizing Your WordPress Data: Understanding Custom Taxonomies vs Custom Fields – You can attach to your content-types — which for better worse still go by the name “posts” in much of WordPress — two importantly distinct kinds of data […]

By: Mark Simchock

Mark Simchock — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 20:32:03 +0000

I think the best rule of thumb might be this:

Does the attribute span across the CPT and have a finite universe of values, or it is it “unique” to individual rows?

For example, gender would be a taxonomy, but first name would be a custom meta field.

And for those who don’t like taxonomy (multiple) check boxes, it is possible to wire up a custom meta box that displays a taxonomy as a radio / select.