Use WordPress page instead of post type archive

Question

Sorry if this is a duplicate – I can't find an answer.

How do I rewrite a custom post type archive page to a 'man-made' WordPress page?

For example:

• Single page: http://www.mywebsite.com/cool-post-type/awesome-single-post/
• Archive page: http://www.mywebsite.com/cool-post-type/

I want http://www.mywebsite.com/cool-post-type/ to rewrite to http://www.mywebsite.com/about-cool-post-types/.

Can I just do this with htaccess and what would the syntax be? (I'm not good at htaccess!)

This does not work:

RewriteRule ^cool-post-type\/\?$ /about-cool-post-types [L]

Or do I have to do this in the WordPress source code? I don't want to!

Answer 1

This one's actually pretty easy. When you declare your post type using register_post_type, you need to add a new argument for 'has_archive'.

So you'll add in something to the effect of:

'has_archive' => 'about-cool-post-types'

Then, go to your Settings > Permalinks to flush them and it should work. I tested it locally, and this seems to be the way to automatically generate your archive page at a different URL. Then, you should be able to create a page at the CPT's slug.

Answer 2

There's also a simple, 1-file plugin for this now, by the HumanMade folk;

https://github.com/humanmade/page-for-post-type

(Meta: I know answers with links aren't generally great, but I don't just want to copy and paste the source-code for that thing into an answer. What's the best strategy for this type of thing?)

Answer 3

Follow up to the accepted answer.

When you declare your post type using register_post_type, you need to add a new argument for 'has_archive'.

What I currently (2023) do is the following:

'has_archive' => wp_make_link_relative(get_permalink($page_id))

where as the post id I define a ACF options field and get the id for that page like so:

'has_archive' => wp_make_link_relative(get_permalink(get_option('archive_page_id','options')))

Doing it this way, the page can easyly changed via the wordpress backend. Don't forget to re-save the permalinks in order for this to work!