Is there a way to have custom post type and page with the same slug?

Question

I have a custom post type registered as follows:

register_post_type( 'news',
    array(
        'labels' => $labels,
        'public' => true,
        'show_ui' => true,
        'menu_position' => 5,
        'capability_type' => 'post',
        'has_archive' => false,
        'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'news'),
        'hierarchical' => false,
        'show_in_menu' => true,
        'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'thumbnail' )
    )
);

My intent is to have the permalink /news/name-of-the-news-item for the post and a /news/ page listing all the news.

I created a page with slug "news" and a template page for that but when I use the pagination to reach /news/page/2/ I get a 404, because it seems I cannot have a page and a custom post type with the same slug.

Is there a workaround or a strategy to achieve the permalink structure I need? Note that I cannot use archive-news.php for the listing, bacause I also need a text in the page editable in WP admin. Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd add 'has_archive' => true to your arguments array. That turns on archives automatically (with pagination too) for your post type. The template for the post type archive is archive-news.php.

Edit

For the editable text (sorry, missed the last paragraph), I would either use an option field or a custom sidebar (w/ text widget, I suppose). The amount of effort to get the page + cpt setup to play nicely AND be forwards compatible is vastly greater than the effort required to simply add a custom text field to an already standard piece of functionality. As a general solution, if the core API gets me at least 90% of the way there, I always try to figure out how to make it work instead of reinventing the wheel.