Yes, there isn't currently built-in support for CPT archives, but that doesn't mean you can't extend WP to provide it. I just did this myself the other day...
This won't create the date-based archives you're looking for, but it will give you virtual archive behavior for custom post types. Adding the date should just be a matter of tweaking the rewrite rules (actually, date-based permalinks might just work as-is)...
EXAMPLE: you have a custom type of "movies" and single movie post called "gone with the wind". This code will give you a URL structure of website.com/movies/gone-with-the-wind. Also, going to website.com/movies will list just the movies (just like a category archive, though it will not call the archive.php template for output, but will format the output just like the standard index.php loop template).
function register_post_type_archives( $post_type, $base_path = '' ) {
global $wp_rewrite;
if ( !$base_path ) {
$base_path = $post_type;
}
$rules = $wp_rewrite->generate_rewrite_rules($base_path);
$rules[$base_path.'/?$'] = 'index.php?paged=1';
foreach ( $rules as $regex=>$redirect ) {
if ( strpos($redirect, 'attachment=') == FALSE ) {
$redirect .= '&post_type='.$post_type;
if ( 0 < preg_match_all('@\$([0-9])@', $redirect, $matches) ) {
for ( $i=0 ; $i < count($matches[0]) ; $i++ ) {
$redirect = str_replace($matches[0][$i], '$matches['.$matches[1][$i].']', $redirect);
}
}
}
add_rewrite_rule($regex, $redirect, 'top');
}
}
call this function right after having generated your custom post type:
register_post_type('movies', $args);
register_post_type_archives('movies');
Then, if you would like to be able to use custom templates to control the output of these quasi-archive listings, you can use this:
add_action('template_redirect', 'post_type_templates');
function post_type_templates() {
$post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
if (!empty($post_type)) {
locate_template(array("{$post_type}.php","index.php"), true);
die;
}
}
Now you can create a "movies.php" template in your theme and customize the loop output to your liking..
UPDATE: having the archive functionality for custom types is great, but I realized I needed a way to access them. You can obviously hard-code buttons somewhere that point to the slugs, but I made a function to generate a wp3.0 navbar with all my custom types in it. Right now it spawns a new navbar and makes it the primary, but you could change it to be the secondary, or to just add the items to an existing navbar. Note: the nav links will only work if you're using the rewrite rules from above.
function register_typenav() {
$mainnav = wp_get_nav_menu_object('Types Nav');
if (!$mainnav) {
$menu_id = wp_create_nav_menu( 'Types Nav' );
// vav item for each post type
$types = get_post_types( array( 'exclude_from_search' => false ), 'objects' );
foreach ($types as $type) {
if (!$type->_builtin) {
wp_update_nav_menu_item( $menu_id, 0, array(
'menu-item-type' => 'custom',
'menu-item-title' => $type->labels->name,
'menu-item-url' => get_bloginfo('url') . '/' . $type->rewrite['slug'] . '/',
'menu-item-status' => 'publish'
)
);
}
}
if ($mainnav && !has_nav_menu( 'primary-menu' ) ) {
$theme = get_current_theme();
$mods = get_option("mods_$theme");
$key = key($mods['nav_menu_locations']);
$mods['nav_menu_locations'][$key] = $mainnav->term_id;
update_option("mods_$theme", $mods);
}
}
add_action('init', 'register_typenav');
