Creating multiple pages from one custom post type entry

Question

I'm looking to create multiple pages from one custom post type. For example, I have a custom post type called "Students" that collects various pieces of information, such as name, email, phone, bio, and resume for each student.

In addition to creating a template for the Student post type, I need to auto-generate subpages with custom fields from the custom post type. The overall hierarchy would be like:

• Student (top level page, mysite.com/students-name)
  • Bio (i.e., mysite.com/students-name/bio)
  • Resume (i.e., mysite.com/students-name/resume)
  • Contact (i.e., mysite.com/students-name/contact)

After building these templates, adding a new student should autogenerate any of the above pages.

I've explored two options, neither of which seem great:

1. Use subsites - for the minimal amount of information being gathered, subsites seem like major overkill and would not scale well if given hundreds of students (8-9 DB tables per subsite would be thousands of tables)
2. Use hierarchical custom post types - this also seems to have scaling issues, as the subpages would need to be duplicated for each student. This makes scaling much harder.

Is there any insight on the best way to go about this?

Answer 1

Could you create taxonomies for the "Student" custom post type for "Bio," "Resume," and "Contact"?

// Register Custom Taxonomy
function create_bio_taxonomy() {

    $labels = array(
        'name'                       => _x( 'Bios', 'Taxonomy General Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'singular_name'              => _x( 'Bio', 'Taxonomy Singular Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'menu_name'                  => __( 'Bio', 'text_domain' ),
        'all_items'                  => __( 'All Bios', 'text_domain' ),
        'parent_item'                => __( 'Parent Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'parent_item_colon'          => __( 'Parent Item:', 'text_domain' ),
        'new_item_name'              => __( 'New Bio Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_new_item'               => __( 'Add New Bio', 'text_domain' ),
        'edit_item'                  => __( 'Edit Bio', 'text_domain' ),
        'update_item'                => __( 'Update Bio', 'text_domain' ),
        'view_item'                  => __( 'View Bio', 'text_domain' ),
        'separate_items_with_commas' => __( 'Separate bios with commas', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_or_remove_items'        => __( 'Add or remove bios', 'text_domain' ),
        'choose_from_most_used'      => __( 'Choose from the most used', 'text_domain' ),
        'popular_items'              => __( 'Popular Bios', 'text_domain' ),
        'search_items'               => __( 'Search Bios', 'text_domain' ),
        'not_found'                  => __( 'Not Found', 'text_domain' ),
        'no_terms'                   => __( 'No Bios', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list'                 => __( 'Bios list', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list_navigation'      => __( 'Bios list navigation', 'text_domain' ),
    );
    $args = array(
        'labels'                     => $labels,
        'hierarchical'               => false,
        'public'                     => true,
        'show_ui'                    => true,
        'show_admin_column'          => true,
        'show_in_nav_menus'          => true,
        'show_tagcloud'              => true,
    );
    register_taxonomy( 'bio', array( 'student' ), $args );

}
add_action( 'init', 'create_bio_taxonomy', 0 );