New to Custom Post Types -- Using UI?

Question

I am a Wordpress Developer new to creating custom post types, I am teaching myself how to create these with the help of my lead-worker. He is very skilled and codes it all by hand. But in many of the tutorials I am viewing, I see many people who insist on using a custom post type UI when creating them. Example of a popular one (https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/)

I can imagine sloppy php being outputted creating them this way. So I ask all of you, what are your thoughts on UI plugins for Custom Post Types?

I thank you all for your feedback :-)

Answer 1

Custom Post Types are great if you are leveraging them. They are terrible if they are just there. Building them by hand is fine, they look like any other post and, depending on how they're build in, are simple to manage, however, a plugin that manages them for you can be helpful, in that they'll work in some extra fields, taxonomies, etc. that may inspire a new direction for the site development.

Conclusion (of my opinion): Strategize the site and build toward your goal, don't build custom post types when you can use the simplicity of taxonomies to order and sort your content. If you need custom post types, consider why and taylor the custom post types to that goal. This will lead you to whether or not you are coding or using a UI plugin.