Custom Taxonomy in plugin and template

2 comments

1. First of all – plugins are for generating content, themes are for displaying it. So really, a plugin shouldn’t do this. But there are grey areas – for example in an ‘events’ related plugin, it would be desirable to display dates, venue etc – things that a WordPress theme wouldn’t normally display.

   I would suggest

   • making the plugin templates over-rideable with templates of the same name in the theme/child theme.
   • Being able to ‘turn off’ plugin forcing of the template.

   To alter the template being used you can use the template_include filter. This is an example for taxonomy templates, but a similar process is possible for custom post types.

   add_filter('template_include', 'wpse50201_set_template');
   function wpse50201_set_template( $template ){
   
       //Add option for plugin to turn this off? If so just return $template
   
       //Check if the taxonomy is being viewed 
       //Suggested: check also if the current template is 'suitable'
   
       if( is_tax('event-venue') && !wpse50201_is_template($template))
           $template = plugin_dir_url(__FILE__ ).'templates/taxonomy-event-venue.php';
   
       return $template;
   }
   

   Note it assumes that the plugin templates are in a template sub-folder relative to current director.

   Logic

   This simply checks that the ‘event-venue’ taxonomy is being viewed. If not it will use the original template.

   The wpse50201_is_template function will check if the template WordPress has picked from the theme/child-theme is called taxonomy-event-venue.php or taxonomy-event-venue-{term-slug}.php. If it is – the original template will be used.

   This allows users of your plugin to copy them into their theme and edit them, and the plugin will prioritize the theme/child-theme templates. Only if it can’t find them does it fall back to the plug-in templates.

   function wpse50201_is_template( $template_path ){
   
       //Get template name
       $template = basename($template_path);
   
       //Check if template is taxonomy-event-venue.php
       //Check if template is taxonomy-event-venue-{term-slug}.php
       if( 1 == preg_match('/^taxonomy-event-venue((-(S*))?).php/',$template) )
            return true;
   
       return false;
   }
   

   I’ve used this method in a plugin – you can see a working example of the above here.

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2. This is how I’m calling a taxonomy template from a subdirectory within my theme folder. Keep in mind that taxonomy.php will need to stay in your root theme directory.

   function call_taxonomy_template_from_directory(){
       global $post;
       $taxonomy_slug = get_query_var('taxonomy');
       load_template(get_template_directory() . "/templates-taxonomy/taxonomy-$taxonomy_slug.php");
   }
   add_filter('taxonomy_template', 'call_taxonomy_template_from_directory');
   

   For example, my taxonomy is called ‘news-category’. The template is located at wp-content/themes/mytheme/templates-taxonomy/taxonomy-news-category.php

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