Reply To: "Events" object – taxonomy or post?

• iamrobertandrews

• April 26, 2019 at 2:40 am

Hmmm…

anything that can be a single object is a post. It’s not how I’m going to relate them that’s important but what they represent. A taxonomy is uses when multiple descriptors can be applied to an object.

In my case, the primary case is that some existing Posts should relate to an Event. Eg. Conference reports from “CES 2018”, from “Cannes Lions 2019”. I guess multiple posts from a single given event could constitute the “multiple descriptos applied to an object”.

But there will also be some cases where the thing that relates to an Event will not be Posts at all but, rather, some indication that I had a *function* at the event – eg. speaker/host/panelist. That’s something I’d like to express on the Event page but also collate eg. “all events I hosted”. Regardless, these don’t seem to be expressions that arise out of a relation to any Post content.

So that seems like a bit of both Taxonomy use-case and Post use-case.

I would probably also create a “user” post type of some kind, maybe call it “speaker” that may or may not be related to actual site users

I know where you’re coming from.
My forethought on this one is deliberate, even if it may complicate things.
I actually already have a Taxonomy called “People” with a couple of thousand terms, which would be suitable. But, for the forseeable future, the only person I would want to relate to Event roles like host/panelist is… me… and I’m a User. In the future, I can theorise extending the same to other members/Users of the site. Those people would also have Post content and I would be one of the Users alongside them, so it seems natural to think about linking to a User.

Stepping back to think aloud…
Let me see…
If “Events” were a Taxonomy, perhaps I could just not sweat the missing bidirectionality caused by the absence of a two-way Term-to-Term relationship. Thinking about the contexts in which information would be displayed, where things can be saved without needing to see it on both sides, and what’s really required…

Event object / single term page:
– Seve/relate the majority of fields here…
– inc User event role (would not naturally/conceivably be set on the User profile anyway)
– inc Organisation (could arguably want to set related events on the Organisation page as well as Event edit, but is it really essential?)
– inc Topics (set the Topic on the Event edit, not the Event on the Topic edit).

Post object / single post page:
– Tag the post with the relevant Event, from Post Edit. I shouldn’t fret that I couldn’t do it the other way around.

After all, in the case of native WordPress relationships, I shouldn’t justifiably expect to use a Term page to set and unset Posts, should I?

So maybe I should just use Events as taxonomy, then relax about setting some related fields in the right contextual place and not expect to see the related pieces in their mutual backend locations?

So, sometimes I would be displaying terms, sometimes Posts, depending on the context of the theme file.

Hmm…