I'm building a WordPress site for a local newspaper. This newspaper currently has a "service directory" online which is a bunch of yellow-page style ads for different local businesses. Each of these ads is just a single image with a click-through, although there are two different sized ads (priced at different rates) that need to be displayed differently.
The data schema would look something like this (just formatting in JSON for readability -- I know it'll be stored as SQL):
service_link: {
image: 'plumberad01.png'
url: 'http://myplumber.com',
type: 'large',
active: true
}
I know I can create a new Page and manually add the images and their links, but management becomes a big hassle. What I want to do is create a custom page which just finds all the active service_links, and then formats them properly. I can easily write the PHP necessary to do that.
What I'm not sure of is how to get the service_links added to the database. All my searches just keep coming up with information about custom post types, which doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for as these aren't individual posts. They will only ever be viewed along with everything else.
My guess is I'd need to write a custom plugin (mainly so I can add the service_link management stuff to the menu in wp-admin), so I'm looking for a plugin doing something analogous or some kind of tutorial. I feel like this isn't an uncommon use-case (content that isn't a post), so I don't know why I'm having so much trouble finding information.