Custom Post Types discussion

Several times i have been asked : Does MailPress support Custom Post Types ?
The answer is “may be Yes, may be No” … hard to forget my norman childhood …

may be Yes :

WordPress genuinely supports a custom post type which is ‘post’. So does MailPress.
How to extend my ‘post’ newsletter and add a custom post type (e.g. ‘my_post_type’) :

• Modify the newsletters xml definition files (mailpress\mp-content\advanced\newsletters\ daily.xml, monthly.xml & weekly.xml) adding in the processor section :

  	<processor>
  		<query_posts>
  			<post_type>post</post_type>
  			<post_type>my_post_type</post_type>
  		</query_posts>
  	</processor>
  

• Be carefull when upgrading MailPress, not to delete your specific settings in the xml files.

may be No :

That will work for daily, weekly and monthly newsletters.
For new_post newsletters, MailPress tries to send a newsletter whenever the hook ‘publish_post’ is fired (mailpress/mp-includes/class/MP_newsletter_scheduler_post_.class.php line #7 [MailPress 5.2]).

So the hook ‘publish_my_post_type‘ is not currently supported.

Will MailPress support the hook ‘publish_my_post_type‘ in the future ?
This is a lot of work. I personnally think that complete Custom Post Type integration requires to :

• Create new directories to host Custom Post Types newsletters definitions :

  mailpress
     !_ mp-content
           !_ advanced
                 !_ newsletters
                       !_ custom_post_types
                             !_ taxonomies

  custom_post_type folder would contain the equivalent of daily.xml, monthly.xml, new_post.xml & weekly.xml files.
  taxonomies would contain the equivalent of categories.xml file(s).

• Customize some code – that is today related to the post type ‘post’ (hook ‘publish_post’) and taxonomy ‘category’ – to make it “Custom Post Types” compatible :
  • mailpress\mp-includes\class\MP_newsletter_scheduler_post_.class.php
  • mailpress\mp-includes\class\options\newsletter\schedulers\post.php
  • mailpress\mp-includes\class\options\newsletter\schedulers\post_cat.php
  • mailpress\mp-includes\class\options\newsletter\processors\now.php

  And have to consider that taxonomies can be optionally hierarchical …

• Develop a new add-on :
  • new settings tab asking which custom post types should be supported and if they have related taxonomies, with which taxonomies … not that simple.
  • Custom Post Types newsletter registration
  • … and surely many other things …

More on Custom Post Types.