Question

The following snippet adds WordPress categories programmatically. My question is how do you add tags programmatically?

//Define the category
$my_cat = array('cat_name' => 'My Category', 'category_description' => 'A Cool Category', 'category_nicename' => 'category-slug', 'category_parent' => '');

// Create the category
$my_cat_id = wp_insert_category($my_cat);

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In this question, I’m talking about adding the tags into database programmatically.

Say, I got 1000 tags to add to a fresh installation. And I don’t want to go through the regular admin panel to add tags one by one manually. I’m looking for a programmatic solution. The snippet I posted takes care of the add of cats… thanks to the specific wp function wp_insert_category…. there is no function called wp_insert_tag though…

However, looking at the codex, I see the wp_insert_term function which may very well be the one to do the job – it seems.

Answer 1

Use wp_insert_term() to add categories, tags and other taxonomies, because wp_insert_category() fires a PHP error “Undefined function”.

<?php wp_insert_term( $term, $taxonomy, $args = array() ); ?> 

$term is the term to add or update.

Change the value of $taxonomy into post_tag if it’s a tag and category if it’s a category.

In $args array, you can specify values of inserted term (tag, category etc.)

Example:

wp_insert_term(
  'Apple', // the term 
  'product', // the taxonomy
  array(
    'description'=> 'A yummy apple.',
    'slug' => 'apple',
    'parent'=> $parent_term['term_id']  // get numeric term id
  )
);