It’s been awhile since we last visited Custom Post Type UI on the WebDevStudios blog. We released version 1.1.0 on June 12th 2015. Not long after that, Custom Post Type UI surpassed 1 million downloads.
Since then, I’ve been slowly but steadily working on the next major version. Today, I am happy to announce the release of version 1.2.0. A mix of 21 new features, bug fixes, and updates have gone into this version. We will go over some highlights today.
Notable new features
Individual post type and taxonomy output for the “Get Code” area
In version 1.1.x and earlier, the “Get Code” feature allowed you to move your registered types and taxonomies to external locations. This output provided a paste-ready block of code for use in custom plugins or your theme’s functions.php. The only drawback was that it was always all or nothing. In version 1.2.0, there is now output for individual post types and taxonomies as well.
Support for adding post types and taxonomies to the WordPress REST API
In WordPress 4.4, the core developers added the REST API infrastructure. In Custom Post Type UI 1.2.0, we added the ability to add REST API support to your post types and taxonomies. If you are unfamiliar with the WP REST API, or need a refresher, check out Ryan‘s WP REST API Overview once done here.
Template hierarchy references in the Registered Post Types and Taxonomies area
When you are reviewing your registered post types and taxonomies, you will now see a new column. Here you will see common template file names you can use to better target your post types and taxonomies. With those, you can further customize the frontend of your website. These are not special names from Custom Post Type UI. They come right from WordPress’ template stack.
Accessibility and usability improvements around the plugin
Last year one of our design leads, Greg, talked about The Basics of Developing Accessible Websites, and I knew I wanted to increase the accessibility of Custom Post Type UI. With that, I worked and revised the labels used on various forms used in Custom Post Type UI. I also updated the headings to match accessibility changes made in WordPress core. I plan to continue reviewing and improving accessibility in future versions as well. It is a job that is truly never done.
“Debug info” tab with debugging information on the support forums
While I try to keep Custom Post Type UI as user-friendly and simple as possible, it is just not always the case. Sometimes, you just need some help figuring out how to do something. When that time comes, you hop over to the Custom Post Type UI support forum and post your questions. If you have ever had to do that, you have no doubt seen me show up. Depending on the situation, I may need more information to help debug the issue. This is where the new “debug info” tab will come into play. It will provide me with the needed extra information. This information will include:
- Site URL
- WordPress version
- permalink structure
- active theme
- active plugins
- registered post types from both Custom Post Type UI and elsewhere
- Custom Post Type UI posts types and taxonomies settings
- many other details.
If you are hesitant to share this information to the public, please let me know. I will provide a way to send the data in private.
Other quick notes
We have bumped the minimum version to WordPress 4.2. We also migrated the textdomain to match the slug we have on WordPress.org. If you would like to help translate Custom Post Type UI, let us know and we will point you in the right direction.
All in all, I am quite happy with how Custom Post Type UI version 1.2.0 turned out. I hope a lot of the new features help our users and address issues they were having.
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