Page templates in a sub-folder in theme from scratch in Wordpress

2
votes

I am building a theme from scratch and I want to have all my custom page templates and single post type templates in a sub folder (see below).

-theme/ - page.php - single.php -- templates/ --- page-news.php --- single-report.php

However, when I have moved page-news.php to this folder the "Default Template" does not pick up the template.

N.B. I am using WordPress 4.6.1 and using a theme I've built from scratch.

2
phpwordpresstemplateswordpress-theming
Are you basing your structure off of the Wordpress Template Hierarchy? - Frits
Yes I am @Frits - WebDevDanno
Cool - move the files inside your template folder, directly in to your theme folder. :) - Frits
Possible duplicate of How to keep custom wordpress page templates in different folder other than the theme folder - random_user_name

2 Answers

1
votes

You can only define templates in the root of your themes. I generally manage all my partial templates as following:

 -Theme
 -- Templates Folder (partial templates etc.)
 --"news-template.php" file (I require/load all the templates I need here.)

This way you can keep all the partial templates in the template folder and structure them as you want. And load them into the template file in the root of the project.

I hope my explaination is clear enough.

0
votes

As far as i know WordPress will not automatically recognize any of your templates if you put them into a subfolder. I guess furthermore that there is not hook to fix this. However you can search the core and try to modify this.

What I recommend is the following: Do not use the WordPress auto detection of template files it is quite clumsy anyway. In your index.php file use conditional tags in order to route WordPress correctly.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags

This way your are 10 times more flexible regarding subfolders as well as code: You do not need to copy/paste code within the template files.

Use

get_template_part(..)

within your routing functions.

I have built hundreds of WordPress sites and I always do it this way. It is also recommended in some WordPress books.

Note: The loading mechanism of WP is shown within the following image: https://developer.wordpress.org/files/2014/10/wp-hierarchy.png

Update 2018: It is possible to put page templates which are selectable in the post edit screen into a /page-templates/ subfolder and they are detected automatically.