This guide will show you how to use the “Templates” options for your taxonomies. You can find this by visiting the Taxonomies screen and clicking the “Templates” tab.
These templates allow you to use PHP layouts to modify the appearance of term archive pages. This technique will work for nearly all themes but is mostly useful for older themes that do not use new Full-Site Editing mode in WordPress. This “Templates” area will suggest files that you can create to override different displays for your taxonomies. These templates are not a feature that’s specific to TaxoPress, but this “Templates” area is making the information easy to find.
Introducing the Templates Screen #
- taxonomy-post_tag.php: This will override the archive page design for a specific term. For example, you could use category-uncategorized.php or post_tag-my-new-term.php.
- taxonomy.php: This will override the archive page design for all terms in a specific taxonomy. For example, you could use category.php or post_tag.php.
- archive.php: This will override the archive page design for all taxonomy terms.
Examples with the Templates Screen #
Let’s see an example using the Twenty Sixteen theme. In this image below, I’ve copied the default archive.php file and renamed it to category.php. If you do not have an archive.php file, you are probably using a more modern Full-Site Editing theme. This new file should be in the top level of your theme’s folder.
This new category.php file will be the default layout for all terms in the “Category” taxonomy. I could copy this file again and rename it to post_tag.php in order to be the default layout for all terms in the “Tag” taxonomy.
In the next example, we will target one single term. In this image below, I’ve copied the default archive.php file and renamed it to category-uncategorized.php. This new category.php file will be the default layout for the “Uncategorized” term.
