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💡 How to create a Custom WordPress Single Post Template

Before we get to the technical stuff, I highly recommend creating a Child theme first prior to any changes.

Step 1. Open up your theme’s folder and copy single.php file to something different like awesome-custom-template.php

awesome template - 💡 How to create a Custom WordPress Single Post Template
Create New Single Post Template

That’s it! Congrats, you’ve just created your very first custom WordPress single post template, now it’s time to modify it as you wish.

NOTE: Since WordPress 4.7 Post-Type-Templates are enabled in the WordPress core.

Create New Single Post Template

If you wish to create a new WordPress single post template from scratch, you can do so by creating a new file and put the following code inside it:

<?php
/* * Template Name: Featured Article
* Template Post Type: post, page, product
*/
get_header(); ?>

Now when editing posts you can switch templates to the newly created: Featured Article template.

select post template - 💡 How to create a Custom WordPress Single Post Template
WordPress Single Post Template

Author based Single Post Template

Different templates for different authors? No problem, just add this code snippet to the beginning of your active theme’s functions.php file:

define(SINGLE_PATH, TEMPLATEPATH . '/single');
add_filter('single_template', 'my_single_author_template');
function my_single_author_template($single) {
global $wp_query, $post; $curauth = get_userdata($wp_query->post->post_author);
if(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-author-' . $curauth->user_nicename . '.php')) return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-author-' . $curauth->user_nicename . '.php'; elseif(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-author-' . $curauth->ID . '.php')) return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-author-' . $curauth->ID . '.php'; }

Category based Single Post Template

Different templates for posts in different categories? Again, no problem, just add this code snippet to the beginning of your active theme’s functions.php file:

define(SINGLE_PATH, TEMPLATEPATH . '/single');
add_filter('single_template', 'my_single_template');
function my_single_template($single) {
global $wp_query, $post;
foreach((array)get_the_category() as $cat) :
if(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->slug . '.php'))
return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->slug . '.php';
elseif(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->term_id . '.php'))
return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->term_id . '.php';
endforeach;
}
See also  What to use: WordPress Post vs. Page – 📝🆚📄

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