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WordPress

Joe Dolan
PLUS
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points
Posted by Joe Dolan
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points

"News" page in Wordpress showing Posts instead of custom template

I have created a News page (example: domain.com/news) and assigned a custom template. Unfortunately, viewing the page just shows Posts (specifically, it is using the index.php page). Changing the URL structure (example: domain.com/news1) will show the proper template, but going back to "news" shows the posts again. I also checked to make sure that the Settings > Reading settings did not have the News page as the site's Posts page (it was not).

Is a News page in Wordpress designated as a Posts page that cannot be changed to a specific page template?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

3 Answers

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

I'm not an expert with this (yet) but I wonder if it could be an issue with the loop you're using for your custom template.

I don't think there's anything in the Wordpress Template Hierarchy about a specific keyword for a post template but I believe you need a specific loop to make sure your template shows up by default.

A couple more things

Are you generating meta information for Wordpress to identify your custom template?

 * Template Name: Full Width Page
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty_Fourteen
 * @since Twenty Fourteen 1.0
 */

And using the naming convention?

$page-news.php Something like this might work as you're looking to pull up specific content. 

<?php if ( wp-Query->have_posts() ) : ?>
    <?php while ( wp-Query->have_posts() ) : wp-Query->the_post(); ?>
        ... Display post content
    <?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
Joe Dolan
PLUS
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points
Joe Dolan
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points

Hey Jonathan,

Thanks for the comment. Meta information is include at the top of the template file (which is named page-news.php). I am able to see the template in the Template select menu in the Attributes section of any page. Also, selecting this template on any page of my site (except for news -- domain.com/news) works perfectly. I even changed the News page URL to use news1 (domain.com/news1) and loaded this custom template as I would have expected. The only issue is when the page's URL is set to /news.

--Joe

Joe Dolan
PLUS
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points
Joe Dolan
Joe Dolan
Courses Plus Student 3,275 Points

I believe I have found what is causing the "news" slug not to work as I had expected. I have a Custom Post type that was named News. The default slug for this was then named "news" which created a conflict with the News page and this Custom Post Type.

--Joe