Here is the template i created for my main Neighborhood page that would link to all the other neighborhoods on the site. You may ask why didn't i just make a drop down nav? Too many neighborhoods to include.
What i believe i did was called all the posts for this custom post type dynamically on the page so that in the future new neighborhoods could be added.
What i failed miserably at was finding a way to add new neighborhoods to the list and sort them from the back end so i had to add my neighborhoods alphabetically in descending order. Meaning if i tried to enter new neighborhoods from A-Z neighborhoods with "A" would be at the bottom of the list and "Z" at the top (I tried the order=ASC) within my template page and it had no effect, not sure why yet.
Needless to say i entered my neighborhoods in reverse alphabetical order, i know, pretty weak. But hey it works!
<?php
/*
Template Name: Neighborhoods Main Page
*/
get_header( 'internal' );?>
<div class="container-space"></div>
<div class="container-main">
<?php
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'neighborhood'
);
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
?>
<ol class="col-neigh-title neighborhood">
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_field( 'neighborhood_name' ); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>
</ol>
<p>There are no posts or pages here.</p>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
Then in my single-neighborhood.php page i did it like this:
<?php get_header( 'neighborhood' );?>
<?php
$bg = get_field( 'bg_img' );
?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="bg-img-default" style="background-image: url(<?=$bg?>); "></div>
<div class="container-main">
<!--COL 1-->
<div class="col-block">
<h2><span class="bold">latest</span> <span class="font-condensed">news</span></h2>
<?php the_field( 'latest_news' ); ?>
</div>
<!--COL 2-->
<div class="col-block">
<h2><span class="bold">local</span> <span class="font-condensed">events</span></h2>
<?php the_field( 'local_events' ); ?>
</div>
<!--COL 3-->
<div class="col-block-last">
<h2><span class="bold">listings</span></h2>
<?php the_field( 'listings' ); ?>
<a href="/search-listings/">Search Listings</a>
</div>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'content', 'slider' ); ?>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
Note to noobs: The initial error in my ways was that i assumed that single type posts (of any category really "Neighborhoods", "Cities", "Cars" , "Operating Systems") also needed to be templates and that i would have to create a "Page" for each neighborhood (in my case), assign it a template to render the page differently and then link to that page from my main Neighborhoods page and some how hope it would know to grab that custom content from the post type, i know pretty foolish.
Another break through, in my understanding at least, was that you can add all of the fields associated with a neighborhood in one Custom Post type and call them from different templates. Meaning, in my case the "Name" "Background Image" "Background Color" "Content column1" "Content Col2", etc can all be entered from the user on the backend from one place but you can then call different pieces of that content within different templates. So in my example above i called the "neighborhood_name" custom field for one page (which linked to the single neighborhood) and then the remaining content was included in the single-neighborhood page. This may be a no-brainer to many people here but it was a highlight of my week:) when i discovered it.
WordPress it appears doesn't work that way and instead you create all of your custom content by creating a new Post of your Post Type and NOT by creating a new page. This made me realize there is no need to create a template that can be called on by a single neighborhood page, but rather a single-neighborhoods template that would render the single version of that post, that the user would arrive to through the permalink(), and would then grab its unique content from the post. It took me 7 days to figure this out btw.
If anyone has a cooler more advanced way to do this please share, because my near future question (which i'll link to from here when i write it) will be on how i can create a "Places" CPT that once i get into a specific neighborhood i can then click on a "Places" link from a custom sub-menu (controlled through the appearance>menus panel) and be taken to a list of places within that neighborhood that will also have it's own template rendering its look (it will look just like the neighborhoods template though).
One thing's for sure i know i won't be creating Pages (and assigning them templates) for each of these places i'll create.
