custom single.php not working

Question

Trying to solve this issue for the past hour and I can't figure out what's going on.

Trying to create single-blog.php (I have a few posts which are under the category 'blog') but Wordpress automatically redirects these posts to single.php! I've flushed the permalinks by settings > permalink > save changes but still nothing happens. To test & to see if Wordpress picks up on single-blog.php the code I used was:

<?php get_header(); ?>
     <h1>TEST HERE</h1>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Answer 1

Read Template Hierarchy article in the codex, especially pay attention to Single Post Display part.

As you can see you have only three options:

1. single-{post_type}.php
2. single.php
3. index.php

It means that you can't create a template for posts related to blog category. So you shouldn't use single-blog.php template, use single.php instead and add there something like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
    <?php if ( has_category( 'blog' ) : ?>
        <h1>TEST HERE</h1>
    <?php else : ?>
        <h1>Else posts</h1>
    <?php endif; ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Answer 2

<?php
if (has_category('blog')) {
    include('single-blog.php');
    exit;
}
?>

I just need to use this in the single.php file, it's very simple :)