What the hell?

You may either be thinking oh yeah I know about that, or you're thinking what the hell is he talking about. Well, I'm not the first to know about this, and maybe the last. Antonio pointed this out to me today, and it was a lifesaver for me. I don't know how I missed it, in my quite extensive research of 3.0, and the reading I did of the source code of core WordPress files that have new 3.0 additions.

There are now page-slug.php and page-id.php Templates

No more need really to set up custom page templates where you do something like:

<?php
/*
Template Name: SomePage
*/
?>

Nope, and wow that's just great news. Just when I was freaking out, thinking I was insane (which is true but not always my fault) because my f***ing local setup and my live site setup of the theme I'm making, with the exact matching settings everywhere, would not for the life of me work. By that, I mean the custom page template I had created for using on a specific page, did not work in both places. Only on the local site. It drove me nuts for the better part of today.

Antonio happens to mention to me this page-slug.php thing, right before I was going to try submitting this as a bug in 3.0 (I tried everything srsly, it had to be a bug, maybe is idk). I don't care if it is a bug now though to be honest, what with this new page-slug thing, which resolved my dilemma.

I had heard of the custom single templates before, but didn't know that page had it too. It was one of those AHA! moments more or less, or something, maybe, not quite, but you know what I mean.

What? There's custom single templates too?

Yes! Isn't it great!

Here is the WordPress template hierarchy which lists all the new, (or not-so-new) custom templates which you can create, and easily use, as automatic pages, no need to do that bit of code mentioned above, just create a page with a slug or id # which is the same as in your file names.

Displaying Custom Templates Up To 3.0

I just realized I didn't talk about other custom single templates. I will have a crack at this before I leave for work, and will fix any wrongs when I get there, ha! Sorry, poor editorial management. I'm a designer, developer, and author. I can't always do it all, correctly and seamless.

Here goes:

<?php
$ptype_obj = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
$ptype_ID = $ptype_obj->ID;
$ptype_title = $ptype_obj->post_title;
$ptype_slug = $ptype_obj->post_name;
if (file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH.'/single-'.$ptype_slug.'.php')) {
	include(TEMPLATEPATH.'/single-'.$ptype_slug.'.php');
}
?>

What I am going for with this code is a way to use single.php templates, for ANY post type or.... Wait, that's really all there is to this isn't there hahaha. I guess this code is not necessary, since the single-post_type.php takes care of that right? So, for those that would like to check this code out or just see me have an AHA! moment while writing this update to a post that did not need one, here ya go.

* Note: The above code snippet is not something I've tested, I just wrote it up in the past 5 minutes to throw in here lol. If you try it somehow in the next hour, before I can get a chance to at work let me know if it works. I would just use the single-post_type.php that I've mentioned in the table above, before my nonesense. It actually works, and is built-in.

Wow, that is Awesome!

Yes, yes it is. I said it was good stuff didn't I. Well, I hope we all learned something today here folks.
That knowing is half the battle.- GIJoe

OH, I almost forgot

How's about the nifty stripey table I got going on here huh? eh? I'll have you know, cause I know you care so much, making that stripey table is something I learned to do in the JavaScript Live online course I am so thankful I signed up for at Sitepoint.com run by Kevin Yank. Thanks Kev, for helping me learn to make cool stuff! (even if jQuery can do it much simpler :P) but still, thanks a ton! :D