Architecting the Archive Page

We want our plugin to provide a default archive template for the FAQ post type. This archive will group the FAQs by their topic and provide the HTML structure for each FAQ. We can’t expect theme developers or customizers to build this template for us. That’s not a reasonable expectation. Instead, we need to build the template and then serve it up.

But WordPress does not serve templates from plugins out-of-the-box. Therefore, we will need to write the code to tell WordPress: “Hey, load this template please.” We’ll want to provide the means for the theme to override when it has an archive-faq.php in it.

Do you understand how WordPress loads the right template file from the theme? Let’s talk about the calling sequence:

1. WordPress looks for a archive-faq.php first in the child theme (if there is one). If it finds, it loads it. Else, go to the next step.
2. It looks in the parent theme. If it finds it, that one loads. Else, continue.
3. It looks in the child theme for archive.php.
4. If no, it looks in the parent for it.
5. If no, next it looks for index.php.

In this episode, I’ll show you the order that it looks for the template files. We’ll look at a child theme and the Genesis framework. But it works the same for any theme.