Custom post type page highlights wrong menu item [closed]

Question

I have a wordpress site based on the Thematic framework which has a static Home page, a Blog page (posts) and a News page displaying a custom post type named 'news'. My attempt to highlight the current menu item is as follows:

.aside .current-custom-item a, .aside .current-menu-item a, .aside .current-menu-parent a, .aside .current-menu-ancestor a, .aside .current-post-ancestor a, .aside .current_page_item a, .aside .current_page_ancestor a, .aside .current_page_parent a { color:#00f; }

I created the News page as follows:

1) Copied template-page-blog.php from Thematic to my Child Theme folder and renamed to template-page-news.php.

2) Edited the comment at the top of the file to:

/** * Template Name: News * * This template allows you to display the latest news posts on any page of the site. * */

3) Edited the query in the file to:

$wp_query->query( array( 'posts_per_page' => get_option( 'posts_per_page' ), 'paged' => $paged, 'post_type' => array('news', 'attachments') ) );

This all works fine except when on the News page, the 'Blog' menu item is highlighted rather than the 'News' menu item!

It seems like what is missing is some way of 'telling' my news page template that it is not the main posts page but a custom post type page... This is my first WordPress and Thematic site so I could have missed something basic here!

Thanks in advance for any help. 8-)

Answer 1

I had the same issue on a theme I was working on. The deal is if you want the "News" menu to stay highlighted when you are looking at a single News item you have to: Create a file called archive-new.php and design it however you like, but for displaying a list of your News items..so something like:

  <?php query_posts('post_type= news','showposts=20'); ?>

Create a file called single-news.php and develop that to show a single post:

<?php if(have_posts()): ?><?php while(have_posts()):the_post(); ?>

and then your menu item for News can just be whatever your permalink to the News posts is set to, which will get directed to that archive-news.php page, and clicking on a single News item will get directed to that single-news.php page, and your menu will know to stay highlighted for News.