Title: [Plugin: Custom Post Type UI] Architectural question
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# [Plugin: Custom Post Type UI] Architectural question

 *  Resolved [ulken](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ulken/)
 * (@ulken)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/)
 * Good afternoon.
 * Been enjoying the simplicity and robustness of this plugin (great to bundle taxonomy
   and types together). Coupled with a sound custom fields plugin, a lot can be 
   achieved.
 * I do however have some concerns:
    1. First of all, the lack of support for toggling the `with_front` property is 
       crucial to me. Both the CPTs and CTs are more or less useless in my case (since
       I do use a hardcoded base in my permastructure for the blog page)
    2. Therefore, I’ve been setting out to fork this plugin to enable such functionality(
       inspired by some previous work for older versions), since the author have chosen
       not to accept the patch, if I’m not mistaking?
    3. What bothers me is the following quote from the author of the Custom Content
       Type Manager (CCTM) plugin regarding CPTUI:
    4. > The Custom-Post Type UI plugin offers some of the same features, but I felt
       > that its architecture was flawed: it stores data as taxonomical terms, which
       > is conceptually awkward at a development level, and more importantly, it limits
       > each custom field to 200 characters of data, making it impossible to store
       > certain types of custom content (e.g. long text fields).
    5. [Source](http://code.google.com/p/wordpress-custom-content-type-manager/wiki/SeeAlso#Custom_Post_Type_UI)
 * My question is simply: Are these claims correct/still valid (the last one especially)?
 * Thank you for any insight,
 * Ulken
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/)

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Brad Williams](https://wordpress.org/support/users/williamsba1/)
 * (@williamsba1)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118704)
 * Did you submit a patch to include the with_front parameter? If you did I never
   saw it. I’m always open to ideas/suggestions and patches are always welcome.
 * Regarding #3, that comment must be talking about a different plugin. CPTUI stores
   all registered CPTs and Taxonomies in a single options array in wp_options. There
   is also no custom field support in the plugin at all. I think they are confusing
   CPTUI with a different plugin.
 *  Thread Starter [ulken](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ulken/)
 * (@ulken)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118710)
 * Thank you very much for your reply and for clarifying, Brad!
 * I’ve not tackled the patch yet, since I wanted to straighten out these concerns
   before undertaking the task. The patch I referred too is not mine, but a guy 
   named Stephen Nomura, who submitted it a year ago (v 0.7 at the time, I believe).
   You did in fact encourage him to do so, which is why I found it a shame it was
   never included. It also dealt with assigning menu icons to CPTs.
    1. The support thread: [Added Support for Admin Icons and Rewrite Front](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-added-support-for-admin-icons-and-rewrite-front?replies=8)
    2. His blog post on the subject: [Enhanced Version of Custom Post Type UI Plugin](http://stephennomura.com/blog/enhanced-version-of-custom-post-types-ui)
    3. The patch found in the support thread: [Patch](http://stephennomura.com/pub/misc/cpt_rewritefront_menuicons_patch_08292011.diff)
 * You might be right about the mixup, but he is in fact referring to this plugin.
   Have you changed the architecture in any way? Just to be certain: No such limitations
   exist, do they?
 * I emailed him about it, asking him to explain what he meant, and here’s what 
   he replied:
 * > The problem with CPTUI is its architecture: it treats all custom post data 
   > as taxonomies, which is incorrect: they’re not the same thing. The database
   > will not store large amounts of data for any taxonomy term because it’s mapped
   > to a VARCHAR(255) column.
 * I’m not technically skilled enough to judge whether he’s right or not. Any chance
   you’d be able to deem him right or wrong?
 * Thanks again for a great plugin! I’ll get going on the patch right away!
 *  Plugin Author [Brad Williams](https://wordpress.org/support/users/williamsba1/)
 * (@williamsba1)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118711)
 * I’ll check out the patch and try to include in the next version.
 * He’s wrong about how the data is stored. The registration code is stored in wp_options.
   Everything else, like CPT entries, are all core WordPress features and stored
   in wp_posts. The taxonomy terms are stored in the default WP tables for taxonomies.
 *  Thread Starter [ulken](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ulken/)
 * (@ulken)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118713)
 * Awesome!
 * I know I’m being impatient and greedy now, but when is it due? 🙂 Might not be
   necessary for me to fork it if scheduled in the near future.
 * Thank you for your support!
 *  Plugin Author [Brad Williams](https://wordpress.org/support/users/williamsba1/)
 * (@williamsba1)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118715)
 * Before the end of the month
 *  Thread Starter [ulken](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ulken/)
 * (@ulken)
 * [13 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118784)
 * Cool.
 * Well, unfortunately I couldn’t afford to wait for the update, so I decided to
   take on the task myself, and have now created an updated version. I used Stephen
   Nomuras patch to version 0.7 as a base, but I have reworked it here and there.
   It is now more consistent to existing code, I have included the functionality
   in some places where he had missed it, I have reordered the UI a little, plus
   I’ve enhanced it even more. I have integrated an Upload button (using the Media
   Uploader) for example.
 * I did make some changes to the code as a whole as well. I changed the code for
   conditional inclusion of plugin JS/CSS and also the indentation of the code (
   automatically). Therefore, the patch file is rather long, but feel free to integrate
   whatever you like. I created a Trac ticket and submitted the patch file along
   with my working copy of the plugin file: [Ticket](http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1589)
 * I couldn’t find CPTUI in the “Component”-drop-down, why it’s listed under “not-
   listed”.
 * Let me know if there’s anything more you’d like from me.
 * Hope it’s somewhat useful,
 * Ulken
 *  [sillinguist](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sillinguist/)
 * (@sillinguist)
 * [13 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118866)
 * [@brad](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad/) Thanks for answering this 
   question about how the data is stored. I ran into that comment about your plugin
   also and was wondering…
 * Ulken mentions that he reordered the UI a bit. I was recently watching [a presentation by
    Helen Hou-Sandi
    on maintaining a beautiful Admin UI. One of the UI requests made of plugin authors is that there is only one [“primary” = Blue button per page](http://dotorgstyleguide.wordpress.com/outline/interactions/buttons-and-links/) I think
   this sort of thing helps with web accessibility issues too. But I was noticing
   that in CPT UI on the add new page there are two blue buttons… This is because
   the same page is used to add new CPTs and New Taxonomies. – in a way this makes
   it simpler, because there is only one page, but I wonder if there shouldn’t be
   two pages. One for CPTs and one for Taxonomies.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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 * ![](https://ps.w.org/custom-post-type-ui/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=2744389)
 * [Custom Post Type UI](https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/#faq)
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## Tags

 * [architecture](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/architecture/)
 * [cctm](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cctm/)
 * [CPTUI](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cptui/)

 * 7 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [sillinguist](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sillinguist/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-post-type-ui-architectural-question/#post-3118866)
 * Status: resolved