Custom Post Type for displaying products in a database table

Question

I have a WordPress project that I'm using as a CMS. I also have a database with some products in it that I'd like to display on the site (gallery or portfolio maybe?) I have a custom post type for Products that I want to be editable in the wordpress admin (along with the rest of the content).

I know I have to do a custom post type (which I'm reading up on, probably will use Simple Fields plugin) but I'm not seeing a way to pull these values from a database. Products will have ProductName, URL, Category, and Type. I would want to list and add/edit/delete these in the word press admin side of course.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

EDIT: I've created the Custom Post Type for Products. Now each Product can have a Category, Subcategory, and Type, which I'm assuming will also need their own Custom Post Type if they are to be manageable right?

The layout for the products will be roughly: ProductName, Type, Category, SubCategory, Document Name, Document URL. Remember the Category, SubCategory, Type will need to be manageable and editable so I guess they will need to be custom post types as well.

Thinking about this some more, could I use the built-in categories for MY custom post type categories and have the subcategories as children of the main categories? That might be the easier way out on that end. But how would I map a custom post type of ProductType to my custom post type of Product?

Here is my product custom post type:

    /*  CUSTOM POST TYPE AREA FOR PRODUCTS   */
add_action( 'init', 'create_product_post_type' );

function create_product_post_type() 
{
    $labels = array(
        'name' => _x('Products', 'post type general name'),
        'singular_name' => _x('Product', 'post type singular name'),
        'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'products'),
        'add_new_item' => __('Add New Product'),
        'edit_item' => __('Edit Product'),
        'new_item' => __('New Product'),
        'view_item' => __('View Product'),
        'search_item' => __('Search Products'),
        'not_found' => __('No products found'),
        'not_found_in_trash' => __('No products found in Trash'),
        'parent_item_colon' => '',
        'menu_name' => 'Products'           
        );

    $args = array(
        'label' => __('Products'),
        'labels' => $labels,
        'public' => true,
        'can_export' => true,
        'show_ui' => true,
        '_builtin' => false,
        'capability_type' => 'post',
        'menu_icon' => get_bloginfo('template_url').'/functions/images/product.png',
        'hierarchial' => false,
            //'rewrite' => array( "slug" => "events" ),
        'supports' => array('title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt', 'comments' ),
        'show_in_nav_menus' => true

        );

        register_post_type( 'tf_events', $args);    
}

Answer 1

What you really need to do is create Custom Taxonomies for your products instead of second custom post type. You can create taxonomies that are hierarchical like categories, or non-hierachical like tags. Give them names, slugs, etc.

This way you won't interfere with the blog categories and tags, and get a more customized result.

Answer 2

It sounds like you need to have a relationship between two different post types. In that case something like Posts 2 Posts will be required to "link up" the different post types.

Once you have the ability to perform these links, simply create custom entry boxes for your Product and ProductType post types.

As Milo mentioned above, you can remove 'editor' from the custom post types.