Using the WordPress Template Hierarchy to Improve a Resume Plugin
Category : The Journey
Every Sole Proprietor’s website needs a resume, and given the expansiveness of the WordPress plugin ecosystem, I expected to see a half dozen to choose from. In reality, there’s only one with any amount of attention, Resume Builder from Boxy Studio.
I’m still working on the resume content, but the auto-formatted layout is not bad. The “star ratings” for skills are maybe a little corny but fun.
The plugin adds a “Resumes” section to your admin console screen, and when you add a new resume you’re treated to a very structured layout.
Don’t expect to drag and drop sections like they’re blocks in a WordPress editor. The plug in works, but doesn’t have that level of polish.
A resume that looks like a blog entry
The problem I encountered was that the resume looked like this:
Ridiculous! One copy of my mug per page is plenty. You can see from top left corner of the image that there’s a bit of WordPress debugging going on (live on the website, of course). I just couldn’t figure out why it was displaying like a blog article.
Well, if it looks like a duck… OK, when I’m editing my resume, the URL ends with post.php?post=75&action=edit. So resumes are just posts with a hard coded ID of 75. This explains why the shortcodes have 75 in them (e.g. rb-resume id="75" section="intro"). That left me with a dilemma, because I want at least the date on the blog articles (not sure about the mug), but I don’t want it on the resume.
Working harder, I echoed the post type in single.php by adding the following after the header:
<?php echo get_post_type(); ?>
When I clicked on the link for an regular blog article (which you have to do to trigger single.php. Going to the Blog link isn’t enough!), I’d see “post” echoed on the screen. But when I clicked on the resume, I saw “rb_resume.” Resume Builder is using a post type of “rb_resume.”
A Single.php for different post types
To solve the problem, I copied my single.php file into a new file called single-rb_resume.php. Since single.php calls another template part, I had to copy that file as well. And then I started hacking, and more in the machete sense than the computer programming one. Finally I was able to pull away the parts that made an individual blog post look like a blog post, and I arrived at the following:
Of course, instead of actually finishing the resume, I left satisfied with solving the templating problem; it’s still a work in progress.
The template hierarchy is a pretty scary part of WordPress. I can’t even begin to say I understand it, but I know that it’s there, and this situation has proven that exploiting the hierarchy can be a very powerful technique.