Moving Wordpress Theme Template Files to Subdirectory

Question

I would like to restructure the template files in a Wordpress theme that I am creating. Right now, files such as single.php and archive.php are on the root level of my theme. I would like to move them into their own folder -- say a folder called pages. So that it would look something like this:

mytheme 
  -- pages
      -- archive.php
      -- single.php
  -- functions.php
  -- index.php
  -- style.css

Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks.

Phebephedra

Answer 1

You can use the single_template filter and {$type}_template filter for the archive, category etc.

I thing that something like this is what you look for:

function get_new_single_template( $single_template ) {
  global $post;
    $single_template = get_stylesheet_directory() . '/pages/single.php';
  return $single_template;
}
add_filter( 'single_template', 'get_new_single_template' );

function get_new_archive_template( $archive_template ) {
  global $post;
    $archive_template = get_stylesheet_directory() . '/pages/archive.php';
  return $archive_template;
}
add_filter( 'archive_template', 'get_new_archive_template' );

This goes to your functions.php

Kathe

Answer 2

For me works (type)_template_hierarchy hook.

Docs: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/type_template_hierarchy/

Long story

What it does? WordPress is looking for all template filenames that can match requested URL. Then it selects the best of them, by priority. But you can change this array of filenames before.

There are a lot of template names in WordPress, all of them listed here.

To replace single e.g. just index.php file location you can use this code

// functions.php

add_filter('index_template_hierarchy', 'replace_index_location');

function replace_index_location($templates) {
    return array_map(function ($template_name) {
        return "pages/$template_name";
    }, $templates);
}

Take a look:

• First of all we add hook to replace index file location.
• Function replace_index_location receives all candidates. Try to var_dump($templates) variable to see what is inside.
• And then simple map this array to another one, adding to each filename the "pages" folder or any other. All this paths are relative to theme folder.

But if you need to move all files, not just index.php?

Solution

Here we go:

// functions.php

function relocate() {
    // All available templates from 
    // https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/type_template_hierarchy/#description
    $predefined_names = [
        '404', 'archive', 'attachment', 'author', 'category', 
        'date', 'embed', 'frontpage', 'home', 'index', 'page', 
        'paged', 'privacypolicy', 'search', 'single', 'singular', 
        'tag', 'taxonomy', 
    ];

    // Iteration over names
    foreach ($predefined_names as $type) {
        // For each name we add filter, using anonymus function
        add_filter("{$type}_template_hierarchy", function ($templates) {
            return array_map(function ($template_name) {
                return "pages/$template_name";
            }, $templates);
        });
    }
}

// Now simply call our function
relocate();

This code makes our file tree looks like:

mytheme 
  -- pages
      -- index.php // index also here
      -- archive.php
      -- single.php
  -- functions.php
  -- style.css

If you don't need index.php to be in pages folder simply remove index from $predefined_names.

Lucky hacking!

Balbriggan