WordPress Ignoring My Custom Post Type Templates?

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WordPress is 404ing all of my Custom Post Type posts. Have I missed a step here?

I’m using the following to set up my CPT:

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function custom_post_types() {  
  register_post_type(
    'creativework',
    array(
      'labels' => array(
        'name' => _x('Works', 'post type general name'),
        'singular_name' => _x('Work', 'post type singular name'),
        'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'Work'),
        'add_new_item' => __('Add New Work'),
        'edit_item' => __('Edit Work'),
        'new_item' => __('New Work'),
        'all_items' => __('All Works'),
        'view_item' => __('View Work'),
        'search_items' => __('Search Works'),
        'not_found' =>  __('No Works found'),
        'not_found_in_trash' => __('No Works found in Trash'), 
        'parent_item_colon' => '',
        'menu_name' => __('Works')
      ),
      'public' => true,
      'menu_position' => 5,
      //'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'work'),
      'supports' => array('title', 'editor', 'thumbnail'),
      'has_archive' => 'true'
    )
  );
}

add_action( 'init', 'custom_post_types' );

I originally had an underscore in the type (creative_work), rewriting the slug to just be “work”, but I had no idea which permutation WordPress would use to find the template—I tried file names like single-creative_work.php, single-creativework.php, single-work.php, all under themes/roots/ (I was using Roots as a baseline theme), with the contents: 

<?php get_template_part('templates/content', 'work'); ?>

But themes/roots/templates/content-work.php was never displayed. Instead it seemed that themes/roots/page.php was being served up? When I manually edited page.php to get_template_part('templates/content', 'work') as a test, it seemingly used the template I wanted but then it had the post ID or something wrong where it was displaying the homepage for ANYTHING under website.com/creativework/.

In an attempt to eliminate all possible conflicts, I deactivated Roots in favor of Twentythirteen, and disabled all plugins except one, the one I wrote to set up the CPT (code at the top). Now, whenever I hit website.com/creativework/ or website.com/creativework/post-title (following the permalink from “View Work” in the post editor, or in Search results), I get a 404 instead of the homepage, despite both single-creativework.php and archive-creativework.php existing under themes/twentythirteen.

EDIT: website.com/?creativework=post-title, however, works.

I am hopelessly confused by all this. What is the correct, foolproof way to set up a custom post type template, step-by-step? Ideally I want to know how to do this in Roots, but for now I will settle on just how to get it working at all.

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3 comments

  1. Got it. I had tried to use flush_rewrite_rules() on plugin activation/deactivation, as so:

    function creativeworks_activate() {
  // register taxonomies/post types here
  flush_rewrite_rules();
}

function creativeworks_deactivate() {
  flush_rewrite_rules();
}

register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'creativeworks_activate' );
register_deactivation_hook( __FILE__, 'creativeworks_deactivate' );

    …but that didn’t seem to do anything. However, when I changed the site-wide permalink options arbitrarily and saved them, then the rewrite rules were flushed successfully, and my custom post type templates started working again.

    Thonks to Milo for pointing me in the right direction.

  2. You have an error in the arguments of register_post_type that can be causing problems in the frontend. This argument:

     'has_archive' => 'true'

    Should be:

     'has_archive' => true

    The correct filename for the single template of your custom post type (creative_work) is single-creative_work.php and should be in your theme folder. For example, if your theme is called “my_theme”, the file single-creative_work.php should be in wp-content/themes/my_theme/single-creative_work.php. You can also include template files from differents locations using template_include() function.

    The folder structure you are talking about is not the usual in WordPress (roots/lib/, roots/templates/, etc). Are these folders from a plugin?

  3. I also use roots and I have a small workaround (not really pretty but for me it keeps things organized). In the root of the template directory there’s a single.php. There you can put:

    if(is_singular('creativework')){
    get_template_part('templates/creativework', 'header');
    get_template_part('templates/creativework', 'main');
}

    Then you’d put creativework-header.php and creativework-main.php in the templates directory.
    I use this method because I have several custom post types and this way I can use my own naming instead of having a lot of single-cptname.php files. I actually deleted all contents of single.php and put the above function (and some more for each post type) there. Next to that, I can include multiple template parts per custom post type (some have up to 5). This keeps my stuff way better organized!

    PS, are you sure the name of your custom post type is creativework and not creative-work?

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