WordPress Architecture

The administrative & publishing back end of WordPress is essentially a series of forms that collect information which is stored in the database.

Administration – general site settings

  • Active Theme
  • Active Plugins
  • Site Name / Tagline / Logo
  • Users / Permission levels
  • Comment Activation
  • Permalink Scheme

Universal Elements – special content types seen in universal sections on front end

  • Navigation
  • Widgets / Template Regions

Page / Post Fields

In WordPress core there are two distinct types of content (pages and posts) and some content can be assembled into groups via two taxonomy systems (categories and tags). Any WordPress theme should have a template for the taxonomy term defined groups of posts which shows those posts in an array of excerpts that are automatically linked to the full post content.
Depending on the theme and/or query settings any/all of these fields can show on front end:

  • Title
  • Content
  • Comments
  • Post Date
  • Post Author / Bio
  • Excerpt (post only)
  • Category (post only)
  • Tag (post only)

Post Queries

Most themes will contain pre-configured query templates for taxonomy term groupings. Query results can contain any/all of the post fields and can be sorted by post date or title. Queries are dynamic and so will automatically update whenever new posts are added to a taxonomy term and/or when a post is disassociated from that term.