Category-slug.php not being used

Question

I have this category-newbie.php template in my theme. And I have the category "newbie" in categories, but it is not using newbie it is using the category.php

EDIT:

Answer 1

So I actually solved this and forgot to write my solution.

So in my wordpress directory structure I have a categories directory. So I was putting my custom category template there. Apparently wordpress uses that categories directory for the built in categories or something and doesn't check it for custom ones. I just added my custom-slug.php to the root of the theme and it works.

I dont really like it personally because it doesn't seem to organize, but they may have their reasons for that.

Answer 2

Since you are having so much trouble, here is a band-aid solution. There is nothing wrong with this solution it just isn't as handy as simply using the WordPress template hierarchy and renaming the file.

Have a look at is_category().

Something like this:

<?php 
  $newbieID = 1; // put the ID for the Newbie category
  if( is_category($newbieID) ) {
    // Put template code here for Newbie
  } else {
    // Put template code for all other categories
  } 
?>

You will likely have to include this in both the category.php and archive.php template files.