Set a primary category for your (custom) posts and query them in your template using native WordPress queries.
This plugin has been coded as part of a hiring interview. Now that the interview is out of the way, here’s the plugin in all its glory. It’s also hosted on GitHub.
Assumptions
- Custom post types use the native category taxonomy –
'taxonomies' => array('category')
Further improvements
- Dynamically show/hide
_builtinpost types (default to show). - Dynamically show/hide non-public (non-publicly queryable) post types (default to hide).
- Add better communication between the Primary Category metabox and the Category metabox (anchor links or JavaScript appending).
- Add more contextual help to both the metabox and the plugin’s settings.
- Add/extend functionality to allow for primary taxonomies by getting all taxonomies attached to a custom post and adding the same functionality as for categories.
- Migrate jQuery code to native JavaScript for zero-dependencies (even if jQuery is loaded by default in the post editing screen).
Context
Depending on the publisher’s implementation and use of Yoast SEO plugin (which already has this functionality), a query can be built using the plugin’s code without adding any metaboxes or custom plugin settings. For this plugin, though, I have created the solution 100% from scratch.
Compatibility and security
- The plugin does not use the new PHP 7 array notation, in order to be backwards compatible with older PHP versions (note the PHP requirement in the
readme.txtheader). - The plugin is translation-ready (WordPress plugin repository) by using the same name for the plugin folder, the main plugin file and the text domain.
- The plugin is licensed as GPLv3.
- The plugin is not accessible directly by browsing the plugin’s directory.
Photo by Sanwal Deen on Unsplash.
