Wordpress is ignoring my custom Archive template for CPT

Question

I have a custom post type called video and custom taxonomy acting as categories called video_category

I want to create a custom archive page for the video categories. So I created a new file called archive-video.php and placed a simple h1 tag inside.

But whenever I visit /video_category/category/ it get the default archive template and in there, I see the posts associated with the custom taxonomy but posts from the default post type as well and it displays the categories of the post type instead of the custom taxonomy.

in functions.php

function video_post_type() {

    $labels = array(
        'name'                  => _x( 'Videos', 'Post Type General Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'singular_name'         => _x( 'Video', 'Post Type Singular Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'menu_name'             => __( 'Videos', 'text_domain' ),
        'name_admin_bar'        => __( 'Video', 'text_domain' ),
        'archives'              => __( 'Item Archives', 'text_domain' ),
        'attributes'            => __( 'Item Attributes', 'text_domain' ),
        'parent_item_colon'     => __( 'Parent Item:', 'text_domain' ),
        'all_items'             => __( 'All Items', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_new_item'          => __( 'Add New Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_new'               => __( 'Add New', 'text_domain' ),
        'new_item'              => __( 'New Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'edit_item'             => __( 'Edit Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'update_item'           => __( 'Update Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'view_item'             => __( 'View Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'view_items'            => __( 'View Items', 'text_domain' ),
        'search_items'          => __( 'Search Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'not_found'             => __( 'Not found', 'text_domain' ),
        'not_found_in_trash'    => __( 'Not found in Trash', 'text_domain' ),
        'featured_image'        => __( 'Featured Image', 'text_domain' ),
        'set_featured_image'    => __( 'Set featured image', 'text_domain' ),
        'remove_featured_image' => __( 'Remove featured image', 'text_domain' ),
        'use_featured_image'    => __( 'Use as featured image', 'text_domain' ),
        'insert_into_item'      => __( 'Add into item', 'text_domain' ),
        'uploaded_to_this_item' => __( 'Uploaded to this item', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list'            => __( 'Items list', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list_navigation' => __( 'Items list navigation', 'text_domain' ),
        'filter_items_list'     => __( 'Filter items list', 'text_domain' ),
    );
    $args = array(
        'label'                 => __( 'Video', 'text_domain' ),
        'description'           => __( 'Videos', 'text_domain' ),
        'labels'                => $labels,
        'supports'              => array( 'title', 'editor', 'thumbnail', 'custom-fields', 'comments' ),
        'taxonomies'            => array( 'video_category', 'post_tag' ),
        'hierarchical'          => false,
        'public'                => true,
        'show_ui'               => true,
        'show_in_menu'          => true,
        'menu_position'         => 5,
        'menu_icon'             => 'dashicons-video-alt2',
        'show_in_admin_bar'     => true,
        'show_in_nav_menus'     => true,
        'can_export'            => true,
        'has_archive'           => true,
        'exclude_from_search'   => false,
        'publicly_queryable'    => true,
        'capability_type'       => 'post',
    );
    register_post_type( 'video', $args );

}
add_action( 'init', 'video_post_type', 0 );

// Register Custom Taxonomy
function video_category_taxonomy() {

    $labels = array(
        'name'                       => _x( 'Categories', 'Taxonomy General Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'singular_name'              => _x( 'Category', 'Taxonomy Singular Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'menu_name'                  => __( 'Categories', 'text_domain' ),
        'all_items'                  => __( 'All Items', 'text_domain' ),
        'parent_item'                => __( 'Parent Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'parent_item_colon'          => __( 'Parent Item:', 'text_domain' ),
        'new_item_name'              => __( 'New Item Name', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_new_item'               => __( 'Add New Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'edit_item'                  => __( 'Edit Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'update_item'                => __( 'Update Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'view_item'                  => __( 'View Item', 'text_domain' ),
        'separate_items_with_commas' => __( 'Separate items with commas', 'text_domain' ),
        'add_or_remove_items'        => __( 'Add or remove items', 'text_domain' ),
        'choose_from_most_used'      => __( 'Choose from the most used', 'text_domain' ),
        'popular_items'              => __( 'Popular Items', 'text_domain' ),
        'search_items'               => __( 'Search Items', 'text_domain' ),
        'not_found'                  => __( 'Not Found', 'text_domain' ),
        'no_terms'                   => __( 'No items', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list'                 => __( 'Items list', 'text_domain' ),
        'items_list_navigation'      => __( 'Items list navigation', 'text_domain' ),
    );
    $args = array(
        'labels'                     => $labels,
        'hierarchical'               => true,
        'public'                     => true,
        'show_ui'                    => true,
        'show_admin_column'          => true,
        'show_in_nav_menus'          => true,
        'show_tagcloud'              => true,
        'has_archive'                => true,
    );
    register_taxonomy( 'video_category', array( 'video' ), $args );

}
add_action( 'init', 'video_category_taxonomy', 0 );

This is archive-video.php

<?php

get_header();

?>

    <h1>Video Archive</h1>

<?php

get_footer();

Answer 1

can you try below code into function.php file.

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'query_post_type');
function query_post_type($query) {
    if(is_category() || is_tag()) {
        $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
        if($post_type) {
            $post_type = $post_type;
        } else {
            $post_type = array('post','video'); // replace CPT to your custom post type
        }
        $query->set('post_type',$post_type);

    }
    return $query;
}

Answer 2

Take a look at the WordPress docs for Custom Taxonomy template hierarchy.

It looks like you're using the custom post-type archive by using archive-{post_type).php for archive-video.php. If you want to create a template for the video_category custom taxonomy you'll need to create a file called taxonomy-video_category.php.

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Also, I found out that it you are using the WPML plugin for translation, if you do not set your custom taxonomy as translatable in the plugin settings, your taxonomy-{taxonomy}.php template will get ignored.