How to display custom taxonomy values in WordPress

[Harry47]

I’m working on an e-commerce website where I need to show company names for each product. I created a custom taxonomy called ‘company’ to store this information, but I’m having trouble displaying it on the frontend.

Right now I can successfully show regular WordPress tags using this code:

<div class="vendor-info">Company: <?php echo $item->get_tags(); ?></div>

This works perfectly for tags, but when I try to get my custom taxonomy instead, nothing shows up. I attempted using this approach:

<?php echo $custom_tax->title ?>

But it doesn’t work at all. Each product should display something like ‘Company: Apple’ or ‘Company: Samsung’ depending on which taxonomy term is assigned to that specific product. What’s the correct way to retrieve and display custom taxonomy terms in WordPress?

[sofiag]

Use wp_get_post_terms() for custom taxonomies. $custom_tax->title won’t work because you haven’t retrieved the taxonomy data first. Here’s what worked for me:

$company_terms = wp_get_post_terms(get_the_ID(), 'company');
if (!empty($company_terms)) {
    echo 'Company: ' . $company_terms[0]->name;
}

I find this more reliable than get_the_terms(), especially with custom post types. Double-check your taxonomy slug matches exactly what you registered it as. I once spent hours debugging because my taxonomy was registered as ‘companies’ but I was querying ‘company’.

[OwenNebula55]

Had this exact problem building a product catalog last year. You’re trying to access taxonomy data without fetching it from the database first. Both answers above work, but I prefer get_the_term_list() when you need formatted output - it handles empty checks and linking automatically. Try echo get_the_term_list(get_the_ID(), 'company', 'Company: ', ', ', ''); for clean output without manual array handling. The fourth parameter separates multiple terms, fifth shows what comes after the list. Also check that your taxonomy has public and show_ui set to true in registration - frontend retrieval gets wonky otherwise.

[SoaringEagle]

try get_the_terms() instead. something like $terms = get_the_terms($post->ID, 'company'); echo $terms[0]->name; should work for your custom taxonomy. just check if terms exist first or you’ll get errors.