There are essentially two ways to do this: The first is to supply the `taxonomies` keyword in the `register_post_type` arguments array, like so: register_post_type('my_type', array( ... 'taxonomies' => array('category', 'post_tag'), ... )); The other is to register your post type and set up its taxonomies at a later point: register_taxonomy_for_object_type( 'category', 'my_type' ); register_taxonomy_for_object_type( 'post_tag', 'my_type' );