Have you ever been on the cusp of giving up on a project simply because of not being able to pull it in just that way that you want to? This is the story of my life in web. Recently I got the idea of adding a custom post type to my website and while I can code that part, it’s just easier if I can find a small plugin that does it and make sure to keep itself updated. Then I found the Pods plugin!
In this article
In this article we’ll cover the process of setting up a custom post type with custom taxonomies (tags and categories) in a simple but effective setup for sharing articles you find interesting. First, we’ll show you The final result, then we move on to The setup of Pods plugin itself. After that, we set up the Custom post type and look at the different options available. Then, we need to Create and connect taxonomies to our custom post type.
Once the actual setup of Pods plugin, i.e. the custom post type and the desired taxonomies, we’ll move on to creating a template for the front end. Finally, we add the template to the front-end by placing a ‘Pod’ on the desired page or post!
1. The final result
We’ll start by showing the result!
Enter Pods plugin!

I should also mention that I’m one of those really liking the new and more advanced full site block editor. It’s really incredible how much you can do with it! Anyway, I wanted to build this website as a newsletter site. I wanted the main flow of articles ‘Posts’ and the ability to publish headlines in a quick and simple manner. Articles that I found interesting and that I might wanted to write about later on. So, a custom post type would be perfect!
Adding new ‘news’ with Pods plugin
This is what my new post type ‘news’ looks like when I click ‘Add New news’:

In this view you have the fields for title, tags and categories, but also a new, custom field called ‘url’. This field is where I copy the link to the article (or, perhaps you’d prefer an affiliate link?).
On the front-end
On the below picture’s right side, you can see the result. A list of headlines that, when you click them, takes you to the original website. Kind of like the setup used by Drudge Report and similar news aggregator sites. The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t interfere with your normal posts. Neither does it show up in that feed. It has it’s own feed completely, thus keeping the rest of the website clean.

2. Setting up Pods plugin
Start with installing the plugin to your WordPress site. It’s freely available both from the plugin catalogue and from Pods own website. When you’ve installed or uploaded the plugin to your WordPress installation, you’ll find a new section in your admin panel. Here you’ll have the options to Edit you pods.

What is a ‘Pod’, you might ask?
Well, a pod is a piece of content. It can be a post- or a page type, a category, or a new set of tags. To these types of content you can then add several new fields. These fields can be normal text, checkboxes, urls, images, pdfs, phone number, e-mail, etc. – you get the point. This means that you have a lot more freedom and can add a lot more information to a post than with the normal post type.
E.g. I’ve created another post type for another website with book reviews, and yet another specifically for food recipes. If you want to see those as well, give me a shout out in the comments or contact me in your preferred way!
Now, head over to ‘Add new’ under Pods admin to set up your first pod!
3. How to set up a custom post type in Pods plugin
When faced with the below, we want to click on the bottom left ‘Create New >>’ button. We want to create a completely new post type that will show up in the admin panel the same way ‘Posts’ and ‘Pages’ are shown. If we click on the right button ’Extend Existing’, we will be able to create new fields for any of our current post types. That is very useful if you, for example want to add an adress field to a post type. That’s not what we want right now, though!

Create and name your new post type

Start with choosing the first option to create a new post type. As you see here, this is the place you’ll create the taxonomies as well later on.
Then, write the name of the new post type in singular and plural. This has no effect on the front end, only to make things easier for yourself in the admin panel.
Adding fields to your new post type
To add a new field to your new psot type, just hit ‘Add field’. If you’re adding a lot of extra fields, you might want to group them by adding several groups of fields.
Different field types
I won’t go into explaining all of these field types, they’re pretty self-explanatory. As you can see there any many different options for every conceivable way of structuring your new post type!
The fields shown in the image below: Label, Name, Description, and Field Type, are only visible to you so it doesn’t really matter what you put in here. Be aware that it’s good practice to keep the names and labels descriptive so you’ll have an easier time creating the templates later on.

3.5. Advanced Settings in Pods plugin
In addition to adding new fields to your custom post type, you can adjust some very handy settings if you’d like. You’ll find them in the ’Advanced Options’ tab and the ones highlighted in the image below are the ones I find the most interesting. If you’re more interested, you can read up on them in the docs on Pods’ official website.
Publicly Queryable | This setting decides whether or not the custom post type can be queryable from the outside, rss-feeds, etc. |
Enable Archive Page | Just like the ’Blog’ page of most blogs, it acts as a feed and collection for your blog posts. If you turn it on Pods will use the domain name ’mywebsite.com/[archive page]/[new custom post type posts]’. |
Hierarchical | Posts = Non-hierarchical Pages = Hierarchical |
Custom Rewrite Slug | Here, you can change the slug in the forementioned archive page to e.g. ’mywebsite.com/[your custom slug]/[single post] |

4. Set up- and connect taxonomies
Go through the process in #3 again, but this time choose ’Custom Taxonomy’ instead of custom post type. You don’t have to connect taxonomies for your custom post type to work, but if you want to be able to categorise your custom posts into different categories you’ll need to connect it to a taxonomy. That is easily done by checking the box next to the taxonomy you want to use and then click ‘Save’!
However, you don’t have to create a custom taxonomy for your new post type, you can connect it to the categories and tags that are already connected you the normal Post type.
Below is a screenshot from the ‘Connections’ tab in a custom post type named ‘book’. Here I’ve hooked it up to its own ‘books-cat’ category and to the normal, pre-existing Tags for WordPress’ normal posts. This way, I can have a complete set of categories only for this post type while using the same tags as on my other posts. If I check the archive of a certain tag I will see both books and normal posts that are tagged with this tag, while keeping it separate in other places.

5. Create a template for the front end with Pods plugin

So, now we have our custom post type, our new taxonomy to categorise our new posts and have connected them in the backend. Now, it’s time to present them on the front end. Enter Pods Templates!
Hit ‘- Pod Templates’ in the Pods Admin menu! Now, you’re faced with a new type of screen in which you’re editing the front end part of the new post type. First, choose a proper title for the template, since this title is what you will be identifying the template with when you’re placing the template on the page of your choice later on. Then, you have a couple of self-explanatory restrictions (check Pods website for more info, if you’re interested), and then the actual ‘Template’.
Creating the template
To create a template you need some understanding of html (or you can ask ChatGPT to write the few lines of html that you need). In the below example is a very simple example of what code is used to display the news on this website’s front page in a query loop. It’s basically just calling the post title inside a paragraph that is itself inside a link that goes to the ‘url’ of the very same post. This way, when the visitor clicks the link they’re redirected to the original article, just like on e.g. Drudge Report.
On the right hand side you have ‘Pod Reference’ which is the place where you choose what custom post type the current template should use as reference. You need to choose the right reference to be able to see the custom fields of the intended post type. E.g. if I choose ‘books’ as reference, I’ll have the option to use ‘isbn’, ‘author’, and ‘books-title’ instead of the intended ‘url’ and ‘news-cat’ taxonomy.
Once you’re done with the template, click ‘Save’ or ‘Update’ just as you would a normal post and you’re done!

6. Adding the Pods plugin template to a page or post
Now for the last part in which we’re actually going to show off our work to the public! I will do this in the new Gutenberg editor (yes, I kind of like it) but the process is pretty much the same in the classic editor as well.
Head to the page or post on which you want to display the template you just made.
Method 1: Using query loops to display a feed

First off, make sure you’ve selected the Query Loop in the left hand panel. On the right hand side you’ll see the normal options for query loops. You’ll also be able to select which ‘Post Type’ to display in the feed.
Select the feed of your choice and it will now load your new custom post type


Method 2: Adding the template to a single page or post
In this case I want to display some of the fields of a pod on a website, like book details on a book review post. First off, you need to create a new template or change one of your current ones and hook it up to the pod. Then, if you type /pods in an empty paragraph on the new template, you’ll have several options. Choose the ‘Pods Single Item’ for this example.
Under ‘Pod Name’, choose the pod you want to use and then the template that is hooked up to that pod under ‘Template’.
That’s pretty much it!
Example code of a simple book review’s sidebar:
If you want to edit the look of it you can do that in the template directly. If you don’t want to use the template function of Pods there’s another option here. You can just type the html in the ‘Custom Template’ space.
On the front end the current book review-pod looks something like below. The information on the right side is custom fields of the custom post type ‘book reviews’ and is displayed to the front end using ‘Method 2’. The html-code itself is very simple, yet effective:
<div>Original title: <a href="{@books_link}">{@books_title}</a></div> <div>Written by: {@books_author}</div> <div>Publisher: {@books_publisher}</div> <div>Publish date: {@books_publishing_date}</div> <div>Language: {@books_language}</div> <div>Pages: {@books_pages}</div> <div>ISBN-10: {@books_isbn_10}</div> <div><em>{@books_quote}</em></div>
The front end result:

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