Taxonomies on Pages with Custom Formatting

Question

guys,

I'm fairly new to this so thanks in advance for your help and patience.

So I've recently started using the WPAlchemy class on my site and it's really been an amazing time-saver. The main thing I'm using it for right now is for what I call my "product detail pages". Basically, I have a bunch of products I feature on my site and I like to offer the same types of information on each detail page, with the same formatting/layout. So what I've done is created a ProductDetail template and written it up to format all of my details that I collect in the ProductDetail metabox (stuff like weight, gender, product name, and other data). Where I was previously creating each detail page from scratch and having to format each page by hand each time, I was starting to have enough products that I got over the by-hand thing really fast. Hence the template, and then hence the metabox...So that part of my project is working like a charm--no issues with the product detail pages so far.

But now I'm working on a different part of this project and I find myself at a complete loss. See...What I want to do is create a "category page" for each category that displays a photo for each product in a given category, a short description, and three links: one to the corresponding "detail page", another to the corresponding post that reviews the product, and an affiliate link for the product. I originally figured that I could do this with WPAlchemy metaboxes but Dimas suggested I look into taxonomies instead. In my research, I find that this might be a much better way, as it would give me more freedom in accessing individual details...But I've run into two problems:

1. I can't seem to find sufficient information about using taxonomies with pages. I've found a bunch of information about using them with posts--which is great, but I'm new enough to this that there are differences I can't figure out by myself and there are also things that I wouldn't trust myself to change for fear of screwing the whole thing up. As all of my "product detail pages" are pages, and not posts, I'm not sure how to set up my taxonomies. I'm also starting to wonder if the whole metabox thing would be redundant if I use taxonomies. I'm thinking not, but it's just a question.

2. The other issue is that I've found plenty of information on how to use taxonomies to display, for example, a list of posts that correspond to a given taxonomy. But what if I simply want to display those three things for each product that corresponds to a given taxonomy? (The three things being a photo, a short description, and the three links.) I don't need the whole post (or in my case, the whole page). I just want a super-quick overview of each product, and I have enough products that displaying each page in its entirety would be highly cumbersome for any of my categories.

I hope this makes sense... Again, thanks in advance for your patience and help. I'm really struggling with this and it's getting to be quite frustrating, as it's halted production on this part of my site.

Answer 1

What I want to do is create a "category page" for each category

That would be category archive, not page. See category templates.

As all of my "product detail pages" are pages, and not posts, I'm not sure how to set up my taxonomies.

It would make sense to create custom post type for your products, rather than trying to repurpose pages.

The other issue is that I've found plenty of information on how to use taxonomies to display, for example, a list of posts that correspond to a given taxonomy. But what if I simply want to display those three things for each product that corresponds to a given taxonomy?

You can customize template to display whatever you want. Loop will go through posts in category, but you can use any (or none or whatever) template tags to display information.