Michael Fields

You say you removed it and then re-uploaded it…

1. Does the directory that you re-uploaded contain exactly the same files and structure as the directory that you removed?
2. Does the directory that you re-uploaded exists at this address: /wp-content/uploads/ ?
3. What was you reasoning for doing this in the first place?
4. Do you have a link to your site and you uploads directory?

– There would be significant content that would go in each of the sub characteristics. A page-full in most cases.

This should be no issue as each taxonomy term has both a title and content box with which you can add content. it is rather easy to enable TinyMCE with a little tweaking of the Category Description Editor Plugin. I think that it would be rather easy to drop in the media interface links as well.

Navigation at the user-level can get a little complex in absense of subpage/category/drop down navigation etc.

I do not see why you couldn’t code the navigation to work how you need it to. I know that WordPress doesn’t support this out of the box, but it shouldn’t be too complicated.

For beginners we have 2 products, and slowly they would get to say 50 products. Each of the sub characteristics for every product might be different because of the product or needs.

I do not understand how the characteristic could change depending on the product it is associated to. I mean if the characteristic is “Location” and “Location” = “123 Test Street, City, State, Zip” and there are 2 products with this characteristic, that means that both products are associated to this “Location” and there should be absolutely no reason to change it. If a different Location is needed. add a new taxonomy term, if the address has changed, change the taxonomy term and all of it’s associated posts will be updated.

Would it make sense to go with just pages? But that would mean the edit page view in admin would be cluttered with say 50×5=250 pages when the site gets mature.

In my opinion the answer would be “no” and you highlight one of the reasons already. Using posts with categories allow the user to filter by category association in the Administration panels – which I use quite frequently and is a blessing.

Also, there is no built in mechanism for “Previous Page” & “Next Page” on the front-end…

Pages can be pretty easy to work with in all other cases, but they are just as easy as posts in my experience. I Used to do all of my custom work with pages until I noticed how cumbersome they can be on larger projects. These days, most of the sites I create have hundreds of posts but usually less than 10 pages…

PS – do you undertake freelance projects?

Only with clients that I can meet in person. Online, I do only consulting, but me thinks that it is against forum rules to discuss these things here 🙂

Hey Devin,
You might want to give my get_page_root() function a try.

function get_page_root( $post ) {
	if( is_object( $post ) ) {
		if( is_array( $post->ancestors ) ) {
			$ancestors = array_reverse( $post->ancestors );
			if( !empty( $ancestors ) )
				return intval( $ancestors[0] );
			else
				return intval( $post->ID );
		}
	}
	return 0;
}

It accepts a WordPress post object as it’s only parameter and will always return an integer:

1. If the page has no parent, it will return the ID property of the $post object that was passed.
2. If the page is a descendant of any other page, it will return the ID property of it’s oldest ancestor.
3. In every other case, it should return zero.

With this function, the following code should do what you need:

function deregister_postTabs_addJS() {
	global $post;
	$id = intval( $post->ID );
	if( get_page_root( $post ) !== $id )
		wp_deregister_script( 'postTabs' );
}
add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'deregister_postTabs_addJS', 200 );

Complete support for Custom Post Types would make me smile sooooo much that my head would explode thus spreading joy through out the world 🙂

mohak.gambhir,

I would refrain from making the characteristics subcategories due to the fact that.

1. Your category interface in the admin section will become cluttered really fast making editing of categories somewhat confusing.

2. If you were to use hierarchical categories, navigation within sub categories can become confusing. I have found that it is best to put only one post in one category, although WordPress supports a many to many relationship between posts and categories, I have experienced small, annoying issues with this in the past therefore I just don’t do it anymore.

IMO, Making the characteristics different pages is a really bad idea. Pages do not fit into the category hierarchy at all and pages are not naturally associated with posts in any way. For best results, please try the solution that I outlined above, I believe that it will solve most if not all of you problems and make it easier for your client to both add new products and develop and understanding for how his website works.

Now each product will have characteristics like location, pricing details, options available, why product A, contents, etc

Saving the Characteristics as Taxonomies allows for easy editing and updating by the client as the taxonomy interfaces display on the page where the client will create or edit a product post.

The characterstics can be visited on different pages by clicking on a sub-menu created individually for each of the products.

This submenu is created automatically for each post that has a characteristic taxonomy applied to it. When a user clicks one of the links that it produces, they will be brought to a page (not a WordPress “page”, but a dynamic page) where you can add a description for the term (location, option, etc). Also, below this description, there will be a list of products that have this term associated.

The client would like to add products on his own later on [is willing to go thru the learning curve]

I believe that my solution outlines the best way for you to execute your scenario with the tolls that WordPress offers by default. In my experience, it is best to try to setup your site by Working with WordPress as much as possible.

Hope this helps to clarify,
-Mike

@t33dub – Totally agree with you. I downloaded this plugin about a month ago and started playing around with it. Everything that I had heard about pods sounded awesome and I was stoked to take a look. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my perceived expectations. I’m not trying to bash Pods at all, the authors have succeeded in creating a pretty nice interface for the dynamic creation of database tables, but if I really wanted to create another table for my WordPress installation, I would just do it from scratch.

t33dub, if you are looking for similar functionality, I would suggest looking into Flutter. While it does not offer the flexibility of pods, I believe that it is much easier to use and I have heard great reviews about it from colleagues. If Flutter is not up to the job, the only other solution that I have for you is to wait it out until WordPress 3.0 is released. 3.0 should enable us to use custom post types with ease.

Have you tried the save_post action?