Template for regular posts (no custom post types)

Question

I'm running in a dilemma with something that should be very simple.

I have no custom post types. Just regulars posts. I just created a post with a category called "news". The official documentation says that defining a template for that category should be as simple as creating a category-news.php file inside the theme.

However it does not work, it keeps using the single.php file. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

If you take a look at Template Hierarchy category-news.php would be archive template, that is for a list of multiple posts having specific category.

There is no such thing as template for individual post, having specific category, in native template hierarchy.

There are different ways to handle such, depending on your needs. Typical are:

• styling it via CSS (WP tends to output a lot of useful body classes to use)
• handling markup conditionally inside template file
• adding your own template file logic to native hierarchy