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Filtering posts by taxonomy in the admin dashboard

Managing content on WordPress can become overwhelming as the number of posts grows, whether they are regular blog posts or part of a specific custom post type. Even with taxonomies to categorize posts, searching through large volumes of content remains challenging, especially when you need to find specific information within a particular post.

Therefore, filtering posts is essential to easily find a certain group of content. Since posts are often categorized by taxonomies, we can filter posts based on these terms right in the backend, making the search process faster and more efficient.

However, WordPress does not support this feature by default, so to enable filtering posts by a specific taxonomy, we’ll need to have a few additional steps.

In this guide, we’ll cover two ways to set up taxonomy filtering for posts in the WordPress admin dashboard:

Filter posts by taxonomy using MB Custom Post Types & Taxonomies

Filter posts by taxonomy using Admin Taxonomy Filter

Let’s explore how to enable post filtering in this guide!

To start, assuming that you already have posts in a custom post type and taxonomies created with the MB Custom Post Type & Taxonomy extension from Meta Box.

Method 1: Using MB Custom Post Types & Taxonomies​

If you're already using Meta Box, there's no need for an additional plugin to filter posts by taxonomy. This feature is built directly into the MB Custom Post Types & Taxonomies extension.

To enable this, go to any taxonomy which is created with Meta Box. In the Advanced tab, simply enable the option Show admin column.

Enable the option Show admin column in the Advanced tab.

Now, the taxonomy column will appear on its post type listing screen, allowing you to quickly identify posts by term, without needing to open each post individually.

The taxonomy column will be displayed in the CPT admin screen

Then, just click on any term, and you’ll see a list of posts categorized under that term.

Filter posts by taxonomy

If you don’t use Meta Box, you can achieve the same result with Method 2 using the Admin Taxonomy Filter plugin.

Method 2: Using Admin Taxonomy Filter​

Step 1: Installing a plugin​

To filter ports by a taxonomy, we need to use the Admin Taxonomy Filter plugin. This one is also developed by the Meta Box team, so it works seamlessly with both custom post types and custom taxonomies on your website. You can download this plugin on wordpress.org.

Install the Admin Taxonomy Filter plugin

Once you’ve installed this plugin, you can filter posts in a custom post type in the admin area by custom taxonomies.

Step 2: Setting up the taxonomy​

Go to Settings > Taxonomy Filter, and look for the custom post type and choose the taxonomy you want to filter by. This step ensures that the plugin knows which taxonomy should be used for filtering posts within that custom post type.

Look for the custom post type and choose the taxonomy you want to filter by.

When you’ve selected the taxonomy, let’s move to filter posts by this taxonomy!

Step 3: Filtering posts by taxonomy​

From now on, when you go to a post list in a custom post type, you’ll see a new box to choose a term of the selected taxonomy to filter posts by.

A new box to choose a term of the selected taxonomy to filter posts by.

Just selecting a term from the dropdown list and clicking the Filter button. Then, the list of posts categorized under the selected term will then be displayed.

Filter posts by the taxonomy.

So, the Admin Taxonomy Filter plugin did everything for you.

In another aspect, if you're looking to filter posts by taxonomy on the frontend, check out our detailed guide here.