Custom post type archives with WordPress Cuztom Helper

WordPress Cuztom Helper now enables custom post type archives out of the box.  In the same way that posts are shown on their own archive with archive.php, custom post types will use archive-{post_type}.php .

I decided to add this feature because one, generally, wants to be able to view all the posts of a custom post type. So if you have a custom post type named ‘Acme Products’, you can view all the products of this type by visiting example.com/acme-products/ in the browser.

In WordPress, custom post type archive pages are not enabled by default when you register a post type. If we left it like this in WordPress Cuztom Helper, one would either have to create a page template manually

/* Template Name: Custom Post Type Archive */

//somewhere in the template file 
global $query_string; 
query_posts($query_string . "post_type=YOUR-CUSTOM-POST-TYPE&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10"); 
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

and then create a blank page, choose the template and publish it, which is a lot of unnecessary work just to view posts of a custom post type. Or one would set

'has_archive' => true

while registering a custom post type. When has_archive is set to true, the custom post type slug is used for the archive page by default, which is a little unintuitive because acme_products/ makes more sense than acme_product/ when you want to view more than one product of Acme Product post type (it’s an archive page and not a single page).

There is an additional benefit to this i.e. saving the trouble of having to deal with slugs manually. Instead of trying to figure out slug_to_view_all_acme_products, you simply register your Acme Product post type and this will be done for you. In exceptional cases, such as for a custom post type named Music or Country Music where it makes sense to use the post type slug as archive slug, you simply set

'has_archive' => true

and your archive will be accessible at example.com/music/ or example.com/country_music

And when you want to disable the archive, simply set

'has_archive' => false

One just doesn’t have to deal with slugs unless one wants to use something drastically different. Another advantage of using archive over writing a Page Template is that one doesn’t have to create an archive-{post_type}.php page unless one is using custom taxonomies or metaboxes. Simply, the existing archive.php file be used. One also doesn’t have to use query_posts unless absolutely required.

So, from now on, custom post type archives are turned on when registering Custom Post Types with WordPress Cuztom Helper, as the default behavior. There you go. Download WordPress-Cuztom-Helper and take your custom post types to the next level with archives.