I'm unfamiliar with custom posts, basic advice appreciated.

For a radio project, I need various custom posts and categories…

1 ‘Show’. For an individual show/series, with outline details of that show/series. One per show/series, each of which links to:
2 ‘Episodes’. A subcategory of ‘show’, to list permalinked excerpts of the episodes of a specific show/series, which links to:
3 ‘Episode’. To list detail about an individual episode of that show/series.
4 ‘Shows’. To list permalinked excerpts of all shows/series.
4 Schedule. To list permalinked excerpts of specific episodes.

It sounds complex but, if I’ve understood correctly that custom posts can behave as ordinary posts, it might be relatively straightforward.

Problem is, that I’ve never previously used custom posts, and searching has so-far bamboozled me… so before I rest and come back to it fresh, I’ll post this in the hope that some friendly soul can enlighten me.

I wondering if there’s an appropriate plugin which can do much of this, or whether I’m better to learn the basics so I understand enough to do it manually.

Doing it with ordinary posts seems clear enough… using appropriate categories/archives/templates, and which build into a linked-calendar/other archive which can show the schedule from previous days/months.

A possible complication is that for ‘schedule’, in addition to a page for a single day I’ll also need weekly and monthly views which link to all the daily schedules.

And instead of a single schedule, there’ll eventually be several – one for each channel of a radio network… although the shows and episodes will be cross-network and so the pages for ‘show’, ‘shows’, ‘episode’ and ‘episodes’ will only need to be produced once – and the permalink/excerpt thereof can be fed into each schedule as appropriate.

The only other factor is that I need to ‘bump them up a level’ so they’re not published into my ordinary posts. But somebody yesterday kindly explained how to do it so that ‘the permalink structure isn’t prepended with the front base’.

I think I understand this, and hopefully have explained it sufficiently clearly.

I’ll welcome any constructive suggestions. Please/thanks/etcetera.