Custom post type, permalinks, taxonomies and blog posts

Question

I am creating a custom theme for a bike shop and thought having a custom post type for bikes would be easier for the shop assistant to manage the bikes they would like to appear on their website rather than have a huge amount of child pages.

To start things off, here is my code for the bikes custom post type in functions.php

/*
* Register `bikes` post type
*/
function bikes_post_type() {

   // Labels
    $labels = array(
        'name' => _x("Bikes", "post type general name"),
        'singular_name' => _x("Bike", "post type singular name"),
        'menu_name' => 'Bikes',
        'add_new' => _x("Add New", "bike item"),
        'add_new_item' => __("Add New Bike"),
        'edit_item' => __("Edit Bike"),
        'new_item' => __("New Bike"),
        'view_item' => __("View Bike"),
        'search_items' => __("Search Bikes"),
        'not_found' =>  __("No Bikes Found"),
        'not_found_in_trash' => __("No Bikes Found in Trash"),
        'parent_item_colon' => ''
    );

    // Register post type
    register_post_type('bikes' , array(
        'labels' => $labels,
        'public' => true,
        'has_archive' => false,
        'rewrite' => true,
        'menu_icon' => get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/images/icon-bikes.png',
        'supports' => array('title', 'editor', 'thumbnail'),
        //'taxonomies' => array( 'category', 'post_tag' ),
        //'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'bikes', 'with_front' => false,)
    ) );
}
add_action( 'init', 'bikes_post_type' );


/*
 * Register `bikes` taxonomy
*/
function bikes_taxonomy() {

    // Labels
    $singular = 'Bikes Category';
    $plural = 'Bikes Categories';
    $labels = array(
        'name' => _x( $plural, "taxonomy general name"),
        'singular_name' => _x( $singular, "taxonomy singular name"),
        'search_items' =>  __("Search $singular"),
        'all_items' => __("All $singular"),
        'parent_item' => __("Parent $singular"),
        'parent_item_colon' => __("Parent $singular:"),
        'edit_item' => __("Edit $singular"),
        'update_item' => __("Update $singular"),
        'add_new_item' => __("Add New $singular"),
        'new_item_name' => __("New $singular Name"),
    );

    // Register and attach to 'bikes' post type
    register_taxonomy( 'bikes_category', 'bikes', array(
        'public' => true,
        'show_ui' => true,
        'show_in_nav_menus' => true,
        'hierarchical' => true,
        'query_var' => true,
        'labels' => $labels,
        //'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'bikes', 'with_front' => false),
    ) );
}
add_action( 'init', 'bikes_taxonomy');

The commented out lines at the end of the register_post_type() and register_taxonomy() functions are causing a problem for me.

The permalink structure I have set is /blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ as that is the way I would like the blog posts to be structured.

The page hierarchy is set up like this: domain.com/bikes/

domain.com/bikes/mountain-bikes/

domain.com/bikes/road-bikes/

The /bikes/ page will be a landing page of sorts with some text about bikes in general as well as a sentence or two regarding mountain bikes and road bikes with links to the child landing pages /bikes/mountain-bikes/ and /bikes/road-bikes/.

When I create a new bike, the permalink is /blog/bikes/giant-anthem-x-29er/. I would like the permalink to be something like /bikes/giant-anthem-x-29er/ or /bikes/mountain/giant-anthem-x-29er/. I managed to get /bikes/giant-anthem-x-29er/ to work by changing the permalink setting to /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ but that gave me a 404 error for /bikes/mountain-bikes/ and a permalink for the blog posts without 'blog', which is not what I would like to happen.

I've googled and searched through this site but I can't seem to find anything that will allow me to have an architecture like this:

/bikes/ - standard page template

/bikes/mountain-bikes/ - standard page template

/bikes/road-bikes/ - standard page template

/bikes/mountain-bikes/ - standard page template

/blog/ - default template

/blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%post-name%/ - single post template

/bikes/giant-anthem-x-29er/ - custom bike template (with example slug from the custom post type)

or

/bikes/mountain/giant-anthem-x-29er/ - custom bike template (with taxonomy in the permalink)

Any help in achieving this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I would do as @cfx suggested:

register_taxonomy( // Call before register_post_type() to give rewrite rule priority.
    'bike_category', // Should be singular, not bikes_category
    'bike',
    array(
        'rewrite' => array(
            'with_front' => false, // This will strip the "blog" prefix 
            'slug' => 'bikes',
        ),

        // Other args
    )   
);

register_post_type(
    'bike', // Post type should be singular
    array(
        'has_archive' => 'bikes',
        'rewrite' => array(
            'with_front' => false, // This will strip the "blog" prefix 
            'slug' => 'bike',
        ),

        // Other args
    )
);

This will give you:

• /bikes/ for global bikes archive (archive-bike.php)
• /bikes/category for a bikes category archive (taxonomy-bike_category.php)
• /bike/bike-name for a single bike (single-bike.php)