What are Custom Taxonomies in WordPress

If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ve likely organized your posts using categories and tags. These built-in tools do a solid job for most blogs and websites — but what happens when your content starts to grow in size and complexity?

Let’s say you’re running a:

🍽️ Food blog with hundreds of recipes by cuisine, ingredient, and meal type
🎥 Movie review site with filters by director, actor, genre, and rating
🏗️ Project portfolio that needs sorting by client, project type, and timeline

Suddenly, “categories” and “tags” start feeling a bit… limited.

This is where custom taxonomies come in — powerful tools that let you organize your content exactly the way you need to. They go beyond the basics and help you tailor your site’s structure to match the real-world relationships in your content.

🔍 In short: A custom taxonomy is a way to group content in WordPress — your way. Think of it as adding your own categories, filters, or labels that make sense for your unique website.

In this guide, we’ll explore exactly what custom taxonomies are, why they matter, and how you can use them to make your WordPress site smarter, more organized, and easier to navigate.

🧩 What Is a Taxonomy in WordPress?

In WordPress, a taxonomy is simply a way to group related content together.

If that sounds a little abstract, don’t worry — you’re already using taxonomies every time you assign a category or a tag to a blog post.

🔍 Let’s Break It Down

Taxonomy: A system or method of organizing content (e.g., “Category” is a taxonomy)
Term: An individual item within a taxonomy (e.g., “News” is a term in the Category taxonomy)

So when you assign a post to the category News, you’re using a taxonomy (category) and selecting a term (News) within that taxonomy.

📦 Built-in Taxonomies in WordPress

By default, WordPress comes with two primary taxonomies:

Categories – Hierarchical (you can nest subcategories)
Tags – Non-hierarchical (a flat list of terms)

These are tied to posts, but they help users and search engines better understand the structure of your content.

💡 Quick Example: On a travel blog, you might use “Europe” as a category and “Italy”, “France”, or “Spain” as subcategories. Tags might include “backpacking”, “budget travel”, or “honeymoon”.

🌱 Why It Matters

Taxonomies improve:

🔎 Searchability and filtering
🧭 Navigation and site structure
🔗 Internal linking and SEO

But as your site grows, you may find that the default taxonomies just aren’t flexible enough. That’s when it’s time to level up… with custom taxonomies.

🛠️ What Makes a Taxonomy “Custom”?

While WordPress gives you categories and tags out of the box, it also gives you the freedom to create your own custom taxonomies. These are user-defined ways to group and filter content that go beyond the default setup.

A custom taxonomy is simply a taxonomy that you create to suit your site’s content structure. You define the name, whether it’s hierarchical, what content types it applies to, and how it behaves.

🎯 Why Would You Need One?

As websites grow in complexity — especially those that use custom post types — it becomes essential to build smarter ways to organize content.

Here are some real-world examples of custom taxonomies in action:

📽️ Movie Website: Taxonomies like “Genre”, “Director”, “Cast”
📚 Library Catalog: Taxonomies like “Subject”, “Author”, “Format”
🛍️ E-commerce Store: Taxonomies like “Brand”, “Material”, “Collection”
🧑‍🍳 Recipe Blog: Taxonomies like “Cuisine Type”, “Meal Course”, “Dietary Restrictions”

These labels help you build better filters, create archive pages, and even improve SEO by targeting niche categories of content.

💡 Think of it this way: Categories and tags are your kitchen knives. Custom taxonomies are your full knife set — designed to do the job better, faster, and with more precision.

🧱 Hierarchical vs Non-Hierarchical

When creating a custom taxonomy, you can choose whether it behaves like categories (nested/hierarchical) or tags (flat structure):

Hierarchical: Like “Product Type” → “Shirts” → “T-Shirts”
Non-hierarchical: Like “Skills” → “JavaScript”, “React”, “PHP”

This flexibility allows you to create the exact organizational system your content needs.

🔍 Custom Taxonomy vs Custom Post Type

If you’re new to building custom content structures in WordPress, it’s easy to confuse custom taxonomies with custom post types. Both are tools for creating more advanced content setups, but they do very different things.

📦 Custom Post Types = What You’re Publishing

A custom post type defines what kind of content you’re publishing.

Examples include:

📽️ movie — A post type for movie reviews
🏆 portfolio — A post type for showcasing projects
🍲 recipe — A post type for cooking instructions

Each custom post type can have its own fields, templates, and layout — and they live separately from regular blog posts or pages.

🏷️ Custom Taxonomies = How You Organize It

A custom taxonomy is a way to group and filter that content.

Examples might include:

genre — To classify movies
client — To label portfolio projects
meal_type — To organize recipes

🧠 Think of it like this:
Custom Post Type = The type of content
Custom Taxonomy = How that content is sorted and categorized

🎯 When to Use One or Both

Here’s a quick cheat sheet:

✅ Need a new kind of content? Use a custom post type.
✅ Need new ways to organize content? Use a custom taxonomy.
✅ Need both? Use both together. (Common in complex sites!)

Pairing custom post types with custom taxonomies gives you total control over your content architecture — essential for building anything beyond a basic blog.

⚙️ How to Create a Custom Taxonomy

There are multiple ways to create a custom taxonomy in WordPress, depending on your comfort level with code. You can use a plugin, write some simple PHP, or rely on modern theme builders and full-site editing tools.

🧩 Option 1: Use a Plugin (Beginner-Friendly)

For non-coders, the easiest way to create a custom taxonomy is with a plugin like Custom Post Type UI (CPT UI).

Install the CPT UI plugin from the WordPress repository.
Go to CPT UI → Add/Edit Taxonomies.
Enter a slug (e.g., genre) and label (e.g., “Genres”).
Attach it to a post type (e.g., post, movie).
Save and start adding terms!

This is a great no-code solution that also integrates well with popular theme builders.

🧑‍💻 Option 2: Register via Code (Developer Method)

If you’re comfortable editing your theme’s functions.php file or building a custom plugin, you can register a taxonomy manually with register_taxonomy().

// In functions.php or a custom plugin
function register_movie_genre_taxonomy() {
  register_taxonomy(
    'genre',
    'movie',
    array(
      'label' => 'Genres',
      'hierarchical' => true,
      'show_ui' => true,
      'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'genre'),
      'show_in_rest' => true, // Enables Gutenberg support
    )
  );
}
add_action('init', 'register_movie_genre_taxonomy');

This example creates a hierarchical taxonomy called “Genres” for a custom post type called “Movie.” You can modify the slug, post type, or behavior as needed.

🧱 Option 3: Full-Site Editing / Theme Builders

Modern theme tools like Block Themes and builders like Elementor Pro or Bricks Builder may offer UI-based ways to create and display custom taxonomies — especially if you’re using a headless or highly customized front-end.

💡 Pro Tip: Always test custom taxonomies on a staging site before deploying them to a live site. Changes can affect your site structure, URLs, and SEO.

🧠 How to Use Custom Taxonomies Effectively

Creating a custom taxonomy is just the beginning — the real power lies in how you use it to enhance user experience, streamline content management, and boost SEO.

📂 1. Organize Content Intelligently

Attach your taxonomy to the appropriate post type(s) and start grouping content in ways that make sense for your audience.

Example: If you run a movie site, use a “Genre” taxonomy to filter by action, drama, comedy, etc.

🔍 2. Add Taxonomy Filters in the Admin Area

You can add dropdown filters in the WordPress admin to quickly find content by taxonomy term.

// Add filter dropdown in admin for 'genre'
function filter_movies_by_genre($post_type) {
  if ('movie' === $post_type) {
    wp_dropdown_categories(array(
      'show_option_all' => 'All Genres',
      'taxonomy'        => 'genre',
      'name'            => 'genre',
      'orderby'         => 'name',
      'selected'        => isset($_GET['genre']) ? $_GET['genre'] : '',
      'hierarchical'    => true,
      'depth'           => 3,
      'show_count'      => true,
      'hide_empty'      => false,
    ));
  }
}
add_action('restrict_manage_posts', 'filter_movies_by_genre');

🧭 3. Use in Navigation and Menus

Did you know you can add taxonomy archives to your navigation menus? This is a great way to help visitors explore your site by topic or type.

Go to: Appearance → Menus → View All → Taxonomies

🧱 4. Display Taxonomy Terms on the Frontend

Use template tags or block widgets to display associated taxonomy terms.

// Display terms for a movie post
the_terms( get_the_ID(), 'genre', 'Genres: ', ', ', '.' );

You can also use plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Elementor to visually insert taxonomy data into templates.

📈 5. Create Archive Pages

WordPress automatically creates archive pages for your custom taxonomies at URLs like:

yoursite.com/genre/action/

You can customize these pages with template files like taxonomy-genre.php or by using Full Site Editing and template parts.

💡 SEO Tip: Custom taxonomy archives can become powerful landing pages — optimize them with custom headings, descriptions, and internal links.

🧭 When Should You Use Custom Taxonomies?

Just because you can create a custom taxonomy doesn’t always mean you should. The key is understanding when it’s actually useful — and when simpler options like categories, tags, or custom fields might do the job better.

✅ Use a Custom Taxonomy When:

🔁 You want to group a specific post type in a new way (e.g., recipes by “Meal Type”).
🔎 You need custom filtering on the front end (e.g., show all movies by “Director”).
🗂️ You plan to build archive pages around these terms (e.g., all “Action” movies).
👥 You want content to be searchable or navigable based on this taxonomy.
🔧 You’re working with a custom post type and want fine-grained control over organization.

🚫 Avoid Custom Taxonomies When:

🧱 You’re only displaying one or two custom fields (use ACF or post meta instead).
🧩 You don’t need users to filter, sort, or navigate using that label.
⚠️ You don’t want extra URL slugs or archive pages cluttering your site.
🎨 Your theme doesn’t support displaying them (and you’re not comfortable customizing it).

🔄 Taxonomy or Custom Field?

This is one of the most common questions. Here’s a quick rule of thumb:

💡 Use a custom taxonomy if the value will be reused across multiple posts (e.g., “Genres”).
Use a custom field if the value is unique to each post (e.g., “Running Time”).

In short: Custom taxonomies are for classification, not for one-off content values.

🏁 Conclusion & Final Thoughts

Custom taxonomies might sound like a technical detail, but they’re one of the most powerful tools in the WordPress ecosystem. When used wisely, they can completely transform how you structure, organize, and present your content — turning a basic website into a smart, searchable, scalable platform.

Whether you’re building a movie review site, an online course library, or a business directory, custom taxonomies help you:

🔎 Make content easier to find
📚 Keep everything well-organized
🌐 Improve SEO with cleaner URLs and archive pages
🛠️ Offer advanced filtering and navigation to your visitors

The best part? You don’t need to be a developer to start using them. With the right plugins or tools, anyone can create and manage taxonomies without writing a single line of code.

✨ Pro Tip: Always plan your content structure before launching your taxonomy. A well-thought-out taxonomy today can save you countless hours down the road.

Now go ahead — build smarter, cleaner, more intuitive WordPress sites with custom taxonomies! 🧠💪