Create Custom Posttype with no permalink

I was going to say that all posts (and post types) MUST have a permalink, except … well, MENUS are CPTs. You could build off that functionality, in theory. Haven’t a clue how, but if it’s been done before, maybe you can start there.

Hi Ipstenu,

Thanks for your hasty reply, as you’ve said Menu’s are technically just custom post types, along with attachments, and a few others, and while I didn’t think there were Permalink’s associated with each of these types, after having a snoop around in the database they all have a guid set, however after trying to follow the links in the database for Menu items for example, it returns the default 404 template.

After looking into this a little further I suspect the 301 redirects may indeed be the best alternative after all, just with some added code to hide the Permalink display on the edit post page.

I’m going to continue to have a play around, and will post back any findings here for anyone that’s interested.

Any further advice is still appreciated.

– Jack

For anyone who may be interested in this problem, I’ve come up with a solution, it’s not ideal, but it gets the job done.

First I created my custom post type of the type “socialmedia”

Then in my themes functions.php I’ve added the following function:

/**
 * Removes the permalinks display on the socialmedia post type
 */
add_action('admin_init', 'remove_permalink');

function remove_permalink() {

	if($_GET['post']) {

		$post_type = get_post_type($_GET['post']);

		if($post_type == 'socialmedia' && $_GET['action'] == 'edit') {
			echo '<style>#edit-slug-box{display:none;}</style>';
		}
	}
}

This simply checks if you’re on the edit page of a post of type “socialmedia” and if so, sets the Permalink’s containing div to display none.

Next, I create a file “single-socialmedia.php” which will be used by all posts of the type “socialmedia” as explained in the template hierarchy, and this file simply calls the 404.php file in my theme using the following code:

<?php
/**
 * The Template for displaying all posts of the "socialmedia" type.
 *
 *	- Loads the 404.php template
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Project Bee Racing
 * @since Project Bee Racing 1.0
 */
?>

<?php get_template_part( '404' ) ?>

The end result is a post type that gives the illusion of having no permalink and is inaccessible on your site as an individual post. Perfect for creating item lists of an unknown quantity / value social as social media links.

– Jack