David Ogilo

Ever wondered how you can load a template for a post based on its ID or post type apart from using a default template that handles all type of posts? Well, there is an easy way! All you need to do is add a few lines in the functions.php file of your site theme. An explanation is shown below:

add_filter( 'single_template', 'singleTemplate' );

function singleTemplate( $template )
{
	global $post;

	if  ( $post->post_type == 'post' )
		$replace = 'post-';

	$replace .= $post->ID;

	$newTemplate = preg_replace( '/(.*)\.php$/', '$1-'. $replace . '.php', $template );

	if ( file_exists( $newTemplate ) )
		return $newTemplate;

	return $template;
}

The template file will be in the format single-{post_type}-{ID}.php