Anyway today I set about exploring 3.0 alpha 1 and had a mess with custom posts, and immediately decided it would have saved days of work when building this site alone, but what I couldn’t figure out was how to customise the display of my custom posts, after a few searches I came across someone  in the WP.org forums with the same problem and no answers.

So I did some digging in the 3.0 code to figure out what template was getting used, and how it was getting chosen.  After an hour or so looking at the WP_Query class, and the theme.php file in the core I came up with a simple  and more advanced solution.

Simple Solution

Its build in, just not documented, atleast anywhere I could find.  The template used for a custom post view is decided by the ‘get_single_template()’ function in the wp-includes/theme.php file.  And it basically tells locate_template() to look for single-’post_type’.php or single.php.

So the simplest way to customise the way a custom post is displayed is to add a template file to your theme with the name single-xxxxxx.php

Advanced Solution

Anyway that solution worked but what if you want to do other stuff like single out a specific custom post by id, or anything.

Well a bit more reverse engineering and I came up with a solution.  First I wrote a simple is_ funtion for my custom post type ‘publication’, that way I could test for them.

function is_publication()
{
    $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
    // short had for if / else;
    return $post_type == 'publication' ? true : false;
}

Then I added my own get_xxx_template function to choose which template file to load including publication-id.php and fallback to single.php if none is found.

function get_publication_template()
{
    global $wp_query;

    $object = $wp_query->get_queried_object();

    $templates = array( 'publication-'. $object->ID .'.php',
     'publication.php',
     'single-'. $object->post_type .'.php',
     'single.php' );

    $page_template = get_post_meta( $object->ID , '_wp_page_template', true );

    if ( !empty( $page_template ) ) {
        $templates = array( $page_template ) + $templates;
    }

    return locate_template( $templates );
}

Finally I added a function to use the  ’template_inlcude’ filter hook.  It uses is_publication to check if the publication templates need to be loaded, and if so replaces/filters the template being loaded with the template determined by my get_publication_template function.

function set_publication_template( $template )
{
    if ( is_publication() ) {
        $template = get_publication_template();
    }

    return $template;
}

add_filter('template_include', 'set_publication_template');

And Finally the code in full including declaration.

function ttd_post_type_publication()
{
	register_post_type( 'publication',
						array(  'label'   => __('Publications'),
								'public'  => true,
								'show_ui' => true,
								'supports'=> array(
													'post-thumbnails',
													'excerpts',
													'custom-fields',
													'comments' ) ) );

	register_taxonomy_for_object_type('post_tag', 'publication');
}	

function is_publication()
{
	$post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
	// short had for if / else;
	return $post_type == 'publication' ? true : false;
}

function get_publication_template()
{
	global $wp_query;

	$object = $wp_query->get_queried_object();

 	$templates = array( 'publication-'. $object->ID .'.php',
						'publication.php',
						'single-'. $object->post_type .'.php',
						'single.php' );

	$page_template = get_post_meta( $object->ID , '_wp_page_template', true );

	if ( !empty( $page_template ) ) {
		$templates = array( $page_template ) + $templates;
	}

	return locate_template( $templates );
}

function set_publication_template( $template )
{
	if ( is_publication() ) {
		$template = get_publication_template();
	}

	return $template;
}

add_filter('template_include', 'set_publication_template');
add_action('init', 'ttd_post_type_publication');

Key Features

• The true file URL is never revealed preventing hot linking.
• cherry pick which files you want to protect.
• simple shortcode interface.

Planed Features

• Set file specific permissions Subscriber/author/contributor/1 -10 etc..
• Random file keys (replacing current attachment ids)
• permalinks

Download the latest version of File-Proxy from WordPress.org

Once again, this year we have donated money to the Help the Aged Charity instead of producing and sending Christmas cards to our clients. Our contribution has been made to the ‘1 is a lonely number’ campaign providing a Christmas dinner for elderly people who live alone.

We are therefore delivering our seasonal message in an email with special thanks for your support, creative ideas and exciting projects that you have sent our way during 2009.

In addition to wishing you a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year we have added another little special extra something to the email. Click the link to find out just how clever we can be. Hope it makes you smile!

http://www.twothirdsdesign.co.uk/xmas.html

Our very best wishes from the
Two Thirds Design Team

It’s time for us to take our Halloween theme down, if you missed it there is a photo after the break.  We also have some more seasonal themes all ready to go throughout the coming year, so come back soon to see what’s new!

If you wondering when the next theme will appear, here’s a little tip it may or may not contain snow!!