Displaying Posts on a Page

Hi Kim,

If you’ve enabled the archive for the custom post types, you can simply navigate to https://www.yoursite.com/posttype/ and it’ll be automatically displayed using the archive.php template.

If you want to make a custom post type-specific template, just create a archive-posttype.php file and WordPress will draw on that.

Let me know if that works out for you.

Thanks for trying to help me so quickly! I apologize if I seem “dense” compared to many on this forum.

When you say this, are you speaking of setting the “has archive” option in “advanced options” for the settings to “true?” If so, I get “page not found” when navigating to the posttype.

I’m guessing that when I create a page to list these posts, on the “add new page” screen, I need to select a template that allows for these posts to show up. The only templates showing in my drop down menu are “default,” “blog,” “home” or “one column, no sidebar.”

One thing I think is happening here is that I don’t have access to my server. I am not even sure what my host is. My website creator/graphic designer set me up, and while I have access to add things to WordPress, I am noticing that some things require one to add a .php file to the server. I started discovering this as I was learning to integrate social media with my site and for pinterest, I was asked to verify my website by posting a file to the server. I couldn’t do that, not knowing where to post it. I was reading about creating page templates, and noticing that one creates the template in a text editor, and then loads that into the host, I’m guessing as an .html file (since there’s not an option to save as .php), and then it will show up as a .php in my templates list for further editing.

Perhaps I’m just “dangerous” enough to try things, but without access to my host, I can’t really do as much as I’d like. I have an e-mail in to my developer to get access, but haven’t heard from him in a week. A bit frustrating!

Thanks so much for trying, and I’m open to any suggestions….assuming I’ve made sense. Speak “slowly,” as I’m not up on the lingo! LOL!

Thanks!

Also…I just realized that under the “manage post types” there is a “get code” action item which says to copy the code into the functions.php file. I hadn’t done that. I just did it, pasting it to the very bottom of the functions.php file, but I’m not seeing anything different happening in terms of other templates showing up or anything.

Is there something with this code that I am not doing right?

Thanks!

Hi Kim,

By having enabled archives, I was indeed referring to having the “has archive” setting set to true in the Custom Post page.

I would have you do the following:

1) Trash the pages that you’ve made with the same names or URLs as your custom post types. They’ll override the default archive URL and just show you a blank page, and you don’t want that! There is a way to custom-code the loop into a template and set it up with pages, but that’s an extra step and is kind of unnecessary because of WordPress’s native functionality.

2) Double-check that the custom post types in question have “has archive” set to true.

3) Go into Settings > Permalinks and hit “Save” at the bottom. This will flush and rewrite the permalink structure to make sure they’re directed to the right place.

4) Navigate to yoursite.com/posttype. Be sure to use the SINGULAR form of the post type (i.e. post, not posts). This should naturally draw on the archive template and show you a list of only that custom post type.

Other points:
1) You don’t need access to your server, but it can be helpful to have that in order to make certain changes. Developers are notoriously unwilling to give access to non-devs because they frequently don’t understand processes and make mistakes that devs then have to clean up.

I would ask your dev for access and then ask him to lay out best practices for you, i.e. always backing up (always!), never making changes to the production site, not editing functions.php (or any PHP file, really) via the WordPress editor, etc.

2) As for the “get code” for each custom post type, that’s an alternative method for adding it. You can either create/manage them via the custom post type interface/plugin, or you can take that automatically generated code and put it onto your functions file. If you’re not that comfortable with editing code, I would recommend that you remove your additions to the function.php file and just stick with the plugin.

Hope this works out for you!

Thank you AGAIN! It took a while for me to finally sit down and try your suggestions, but now that I have, they worked! Thanks so much.

I do have a couple more questions. First, when I Navigate to mysite.com/posttype, the title on the page is “Blog Archives.” I want to be able to change this. How do I do it?

Second, I want to create a page that’s in my navigation menu at the top of my website pages, and has the new posts that I’ve created. I have a menu option called “Articles” that is drawing from the posts, and does so by having “blog” selected as the template in the page attributes section of the page. There is no title displayed on this page. It simply draws from the posts. I want to create a page with my new post types, but there’s no new template to select such that I can create a page that draws from my new post type I’ve just created, which I’m assuming would draw from mysite.com/posttype.

I guess the main question is, how do I make a new page that I can put in my navigation bar, draw from the new post types, and have a new title (or none at all like my Articles page)?

Thanks!
Kim

Thanks so much for these instructions, but I’m still unable to get my new ‘Recipes’ page to appear the way I want it.

Is there any way to get detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set this up, without using the functions.php file? I’m a bit nervous when it comes to editing these files!
thanks!
Bree

Hi Bree,

An alternative way of grouping and showing your Custom Posts might be to use ‘Categories’. If you’ve already created your Custom Post Type using this plugin then you’ll need to go back to ‘Manage Post Types’ in the plugin menu and Click ‘Advanced Options’ and then ‘Categories’ next to the ‘Built-in Taxonomies’.

You can now create and assign any number categories to your Custom Post recipes and call them via a category link [www.yoursite.com/category/aRecipeCategory] or add the individual categories to you menu[s].

Note: Initially I had a problem getting this to work and found I had to add the following code to functions.php.

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'query_post_type');
function query_post_type($query) {
$post_types = get_post_types();
if ( is_category() || is_tag()) {

$post_type = get_query_var('article');

if ( $post_type )
$post_type = $post_type;
else
$post_type = $post_types;

$query->set('post_type', $post_type);

return $query;
}
}

Shout if you have a problem understanding the above.

Hello Jim28100! Thank you for responding, but I’m not looking for the alternative way.

Back in December, I had my site completely redesigned by a developer (from html to WordPress). The developer installed this Custom Post Type UI plugin and has 2 custom post types set up to appear on the home page exactly as I had wanted.

I tried to create the new ‘recipes’ custom post type based on the 2 existing ones, but it does not appear the same way as the 2 that already exist. Since developer has already completed the job, he has no time to help me with this anymore, so I’m on my own!

Here is one developer did, which is what I want for ‘recipes’ and any other future custom post types:
https://bit.ly/Xxemtv

Here is what my ‘recipes’ page currently looks like (just like a product, which I don’t want..you’ll see when you click on it):
https://bit.ly/YEg4YX

I want to link to the ‘recipes’ page, which should show the running list of recipes (like the above ‘articles’, so people can click on any of them they want to try!

I’m fairly computer savvy, but NOT php code savvy…wish there was a step-by-step instruction guide on how to set this up!
thanks!!!

Hello all! I am hoping someone can help. Please read my SOS above!
thank you so much for any help I can receive…I really need to use this plugin, but cannot find a step-by-step instruction guide!