Jon Christopher

<p>Template Map is a utility plugin designed to make the creation and management of navigation elements in your custom theme that much easier. It abstracts the need to hard code post IDs and the like from your global and header navigation systems (if you choose to not use Menus) for instance.</p>
<h4>For Example</h4>
<p>Many times you may use something like the following to build your main site navigation:</p>
<pre><code><nav>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <a href="<?php echo get_permalink( 83 ); ?>">About</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</nav>
</code></pre>
<p>That works great during initial development, and continues to hold up when you migrate to production en masse for the first time. But what about when you’re making subsequent updates and the post IDs in your development environment are different than those in production? You could take the time to sync the databases each and every time, but that’s a bit overkill. Here’s where Template Map comes in to play:</p>
<pre><code><nav>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <?php $about_page_id = TemplateMap()->get_id_from_template( 'template-about.php' ); ?>
      <a href="<?php echo get_permalink( $about_page_id ); ?>">About</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</nav>
</code></pre>
<p>Template Map allows you to <em>dynamically</em> retreive your desired post ID based on the Page Template you told it to use. Page Template filenames rarely (if ever) change, so it’s the core concept of Template Map’s implementation. Everything works backwards from here.</p>
<p>Naturally this philosophy assumes your Page Template is used only once, it’s important to keep that in mind. Modern client sites often use unique Page Templates for the ‘parent’ pages of each site section.</p>
<h4>Current Site Section</h4>
<p>Template Map also makes it easier to determine whether the current page is within a site ‘section’ which is defined as a top level Page with a unique Page Template that has any number of child Pages and/or Custom Post Types within it. This is very useful when trying to set a ‘current’ state in your navigation, for example:</p>
<pre><code><nav>
  <ul>
    <li class="<?php if( TemplateMap()->maybe_in_section( 'template-about.php' ) ) : ?> current<?php endif; ?>">
      <?php $about_page_id = TemplateMap()->get_id_from_template( 'template-about.php' ); ?>
      <a href="<?php echo get_permalink( $about_page_id ); ?>">About</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</nav>
</code></pre>
<p>Based on the same principle you can use this utility method to properly orient yourself when outputting conditional classes contingent on the current page being within a ‘secton’ on your site.</p>


Template Map

Automagic mapping of Page Templates to post IDs to facilitate better dynamic link generation

Simon Wheatley

<p>Provides a drop-down to select different templates for posts from the post edit screen. The templates are defined similarly to page templates, and will replace single.php for the specified post. This plugin will NOT switch the templates for the different posts in a listing page, e.g. a date or category archive, it will only affect the template used for single posts (i.e. you can choose a template which is not single.php).</p>
<p>Post templates, as far as this plugin is concerned, are configured similarly to <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#Creating_Your_Own_Page_Templates" rel="nofollow ugc">page templates</a> in that they have a particular style of PHP comment at the top of them. Each post template must contain the following, or similar, at the top:</p>
<pre><code><?php
/*
Template Name Posts: Snarfer
*/
?>
</code></pre>
<p>First note: <em>Page</em> templates use “<em>Template Name:</em>“, whereas <em>post</em> templates use “<em>Template Name Posts:</em>“.</p>
<p>Second note: You <em>must</em> have the custom post template files in your theme in the same directory/folder as your index.php template file, <em>not</em> in a sub-directory/sub-folder.</p>
<h3>Developers</h3>
<p>If you want to implement the custom post <em>templates</em> on a custom post <em>type</em>, you can use the <code>cpt_post_types</code> filter, here’s an example below of adding the custom post template selector and metabox to the “Movie” and “Actor” custom post types. This code can be added to a plugin or to the <code>functions.php</code> file in your theme.</p>
<pre><code>/**
 * Hooks the WP cpt_post_types filter 
 *
 * @param array $post_types An array of post type names that the templates be used by
 * @return array The array of post type names that the templates be used by
 **/
function my_cpt_post_types( $post_types ) {
    $post_types[] = 'movie';
    $post_types[] = 'actor';
    return $post_types;
}
add_filter( 'cpt_post_types', 'my_cpt_post_types' );
</code></pre>


Custom Post Template

Provides a drop-down to select different templates for posts from the post edit screen. The templates replace single.php for the specified post.

Template Map vs Custom Post Template