Adding custom post type archives to a WordPress menu

Question

Is there a way (besides adding a Custom Link) to add a custom post type archive to a menu in WordPress? If it's added using a custom link (e.g. /cpt-archive-slug/), WordPress does not apply classes like current-menu-item to the list element, which presents challenges when styling the menu.

If the custom link contains the entire URL (e.g. http://site.com/cpt-archive-slug/), those classes are added. However, that's probably not a 'best practice'.

Answer 1

your best opption is custom link with full url as Custom post types archives are different form taxonomy based archives (categories,tags,any custom taxonomy) and date based archives which have there own archive slug.

Answer 2

You can create a Page and then apply a custom archive template to it. I create and use archive-{post-type}.php fo the template name just like you would for the default archive, I just manually apply it to the Page.

If you do this, I'd recommend setting your CPT to has_archive='false' to avoid permalink collisions, regardless just make sure your Page has a different permalink slug than your CPT archive slug is set to.

Answer 3

I ran into the same exact problem, and found this solution:

// $menu is the menu as a string 
if ( check if youa re on the page you are looking for )
    $menu = str_replace( '<li class="menu-item"><a href="http://bla.com/bloop/">', '<li class="current-menu-item menu-item"><a href="http://bla.com/bloop/">'>, $menu );  

Source: http://www.wptavern.com/forum/plugins-hacks/2169-current-page-custom-post-type-archive.html

Answer 4

I think I'd have to create a new "parent" post-type, so the custom-post-type I want to show becomes a "child", and that parent WILL be listed in the menu.

This should be an option. Creating a dummy parent just for getting it listed in the menu is too much work.

I'd like a way to do it from the template, or functions, so I don't have to do it in each menu settings for each site in my multisite installation.

Answer 5

I Found this answer when searching for a similar issue. I just copied the code into my finctions.php file and it worked right out of the box :) hope it helps!

Dynamic navigation for custom post type (pages)