Permalinks and custom page template question

A … custom page template? Do you mean a custom post-type?

Possible, not familiar with the wordpress terms yet. Simply put, I wish to have separate Blog page (meaning, static frontpage) called News, that I have cracked. Now I would like to have the “read more” or “detailed view” News -> Article.

AH! Okay, a static front page doesn’t add /news/ to your links.

Change your permalinks to /news/<whatever> and that’ll force news into your URL ?? It will NOT mess with any pages, JUST your posts.

Yes, Ive got /news/%post_id%/%postname%/ and separate Home and News page. The News page, uses custom page template [theme_dir]/news.php etc. However, the permalink will force the index.php file as the template.. It ignores the News page template, also it doesn’t mark the News in the links <ul> as active..even though its news/ and news/ID/TITLE.

From my point of view, there should be two options now. Either to have a custom single post template. Or I cannot use permalinks and generate the links myself.. so it would not ignore my news/ and then in the news.php use $_GET information to display the post.

No, that’s not how it works, but I see why you’re confused ??

Using a TEMPLATE does absolutely nothing to separate your posts. At all. Ever. It’s just a design change for a PAGE (not posts, and not ‘archives’).

If you want to have one set of posts use /ID/TITLE and another to use /news/ID/TITLE then what you want is to make news into a Custom Post Type, which is separate from your normal posts.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Post_Types#Custom_Types

I see. I’ve got a direction now, thanks. Still not 100% clear yet, but I will let you know what happens ??

Ok stuck again.

So I first off created single-news_view.php.

Then registered the post type:

add_action( 'init', 'create_post_type' );
function create_post_type() {
	register_post_type( 'news_view',
		array(
			'labels' => array(
				'name' => __( 'News' ),
				'singular_name' => __( 'News' )
			),
			'public' => true,
			'has_archive' => true,
			'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'news')
		)
	);
}

I was hoping that, that’s all it takes and it will automatically use that single-news_view.php, but it doesn’t. What am I missing?

Read https://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/04/29/custom-post-types-in-wordpress for nitty gritty on CPTs

Bear in mine, the template hierarchy for CPTS is this:

single-[custom_post_name].php
archive-[custom_post_name].php

so you’d want single-news.php for the individual posts and archive-news.php for the example.com/news/ page itself.

I see, this makes sense, but isn’t working. I was wondering how I can make my own “posts system”, so this is good. However, I cannot make my own templates work.

I have got archive-news.php and single-news.php. But it still keeps using the index.php.

I changed my permalink to /%post_id%/%postname%/ as /news/%post_id%/%postname%/ would result as example.com/news/news/ID/TITLE. I guess that part at least was correct.

Hmm.. but yeah, the templates are not working. I tried adding Template in the Page attributes in News page edit view, but that doesn’t have any effect on the /news/ itself.

If I could get archive-news.php and single-news.php working, like I want them to work. Then basically all my worries are over and I could use this on so many “custom catalogs”.

Is it wrong to have a page called News at all? Or should I include my news in the menu with 'show_in_menu' => true in the register_post_type() array?

So I deleted News as a page, because this seems to be the correct way.

Still cannot make my own templates to work.

Also removed it from the Main menu and added 'show_in_menu' => true to the register_post_type(). Does not appear in menu however ??

Sorry, I was sucked off into meetings and problems at work.

Yes, delete the news page. That will conflict with 'has_archive' => true,

Templates – single-news.php is the template for any post made in the news CPT. If that name isn’t working, try just news.php for it but I pulled the names from https://codex.www.ads-software.com/images/1/18/Template_Hierarchy.png so those should have been right.

So as far as I understand, everything should be working now.

From a blank wordpress:

1. Install and very basic theme setup
2. Create the single and archive templates
3. Register the custom post type
4. Put some sample data to your new post type
..done, correct?

Though, it does generate a list in archives-view and displays the contents in single-view. But it does that using index.php and not their representative templates.

Done all that, but its not working. Also, the link doesn’t appear in the menu (and also, technically should be active, but next to the custom page not appearing, that’s a very small priority.)

To be honest, I’m completely stuck. Had my hopes up, as I need to create sort of “catalog features” for some other pages and custom post types seems perfect for the job.

So how to debug this? Is there some basic step I’m missing out, since I’m not familiar with wordpress at all and basically am rushing to meat the deadline of the project. Maybe some functions.php setup function/variable? ..or maybe some setting in the admin panel -to allow custom posts type templates?

0:30 in Estonia, so I’ll report back in ~10 hours. Thanks for taking time to help me, appreciated. Good night ??

Ok figured it out. The problem was in my post-type registration:

add_action( 'init', 'create_post_type' );
function create_post_type() {
	register_post_type( 'news_view',
		array(
			'labels' => array(
				'name' => __( 'News' ),
				'singular_name' => __( 'News' )
			),
			'public' => true,
			'has_archive' => true,
			'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'news'),
			'supports' => array('title', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt'),
			'show_in_menu' => true
		)
	);
}

The register_post_type( 'news_view', part to be precise. As my templates where single-news.php etc.. Then the template must be single-news_view.php or my register must be news.

So it is fixed now, thanks for your help, learning about post-types is a MUST in wordpress ??