Custom Post Type Slug / Page Slug Conflict - Prevent use of reserved slug on page save?

Question

I have a custom post type of portfolio (slug portfolio) in my theme and all is working well except one thing. When people create a page with a slug of portfolio, eg: example.com/portfolio, the theme thinks I'm wanting to use the custom post type archive page, not my page created in the editor.

Can I somehow "reserve" the slug portfolio when pages are saved to be sure it never gets used, maybe renamed to portfolio-page?

My project uses the methods outlined in this tutorial, here's the conflict I'm referring to:

"Beyond having to patch the code there is one other catch here in that you can’t call your Page slug the same thing as your custom post type slug. Think of your custom post type slug as a reserved keyword; however, you can make the title of your Page the same name as your custom post type slug just as long as your Page slug is something different." - http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/custom-post-type-pagination-chaining-method/

Thanks for any advice!

Answer 1

The following 2 filters allow you to hook into when WordPress checks the slug and are found in the function wp_unique_post_slug() in the wp-includes/post.php file.

There are 2 filters, one for hierarchical posts and one for non-hierarchical. The hierarchical filter provides the ID for the post parent so if the $post_parent is 0, you know this is a "base" post.

The filters also pass the $post_type if you wanted to add specific post types to your logic.

By returning "true", you're telling WordPress that this slug is bad so WordPress adds on a suffix, just like it would do if you were trying to us a post name/slug that is already taken.

add_filter( 'wp_unique_post_slug_is_bad_hierarchical_slug', 'portfolio_is_bad_hierarchical_slug', 10, 4 );
function portfolio_is_bad_hierarchical_slug( $is_bad_hierarchical_slug, $slug, $post_type, $post_parent ) {
    if ( !$post_parent && $slug == 'portfolio' )
        return true;
    return $is_bad_hierarchical_slug;
}

add_filter( 'wp_unique_post_slug_is_bad_flat_slug', 'portfolio_is_bad_flat_slug', 10, 3 );
function portfolio_is_bad_flat_slug( $is_bad_flat_slug, $slug, $post_type ) {
    if ( $slug == 'portfolio' )
        return true;
    return $is_bad_flat_slug;
}

Answer 2

Create a page with a slug of 'portfolio' and make it 'Private'. It will be hidden from public when reserving the slug from futher usage.

Answer 3

Came across exactly this problem when investigating a pagination problem. We have a News homepage (slug "news") and pagination was failing ... attempts to get to /news/page/2/ always resulted in '404 - Not Found'.

The problem turned out to be that our News custom type had also been given the slug "news". By changing the latter (for example to "news_archive") the problem was fixed. This left the original news URL references unchanged. Changing the News homepage slug also worked but then all URLS would incorporate the changed slug.