I’m glad it helped.

All code goes in the same file (except for function) in page-{custom-post-type}.php, assuming your CPT is ‘movie’, then you will create page-movie.php by copying page.php file available in your theme folder.

Hi Zerobde,

As I mentioned above in comments, all code goes, including REGEXP, in the same file (except for function) in page-{custom-post-type}.php.

Here’s the logic and process:

1. Create a Listing page by copying the page.php in your WordPress theme folder and name it ‘Listing Template’.
2. Crate a Page ‘Books Listing by Alphabets’ with a slug ‘/books/’ and select the ‘Listing Template’ you just created from Page Attributes and not the default template.
3. Go on to create few more pages for more letters whose slugs will look like this ‘/books/a/’, ‘/books/b/’ and so on to ‘/books/z/’. Make sure you create all these letter pages as child pages of the Listing page you just created in second step using the same ‘Listing Template’ of step 1. You will have to create sub pages for all 26 letters.
3. Now generate the alphabetical navigation using the function above. That code generates links for each letter page. These links will point to the pages you created in the third step above.
4. Now all you have to do is to catch the letter from the slug and pass it on to the query. I have written all that code already so you just have to copy that code and place inside your template.
5. Just make sure you change the example custom post type ‘book’ to your actual custom post type. I have commented it in the code wherever you need to do this.

By the way, your custom post type slug must be different than your listing page slug, because if you do that, all your CPT records will be considered as sub-pages of the listing page by WordPress.

That’s it.

Let’s assume we have a page and slug for numerals like this ‘books/numbers/’, we will check and if it finds numerals page, we will change the query, rather than querying the database for those posts starting with a specific alphabet, we will search the numbers range like this:

 
$url_array = explode('/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); 
$alpha = $url_array[sizeof($url_array)-2];
 
if (ereg('[0-9]',$alpha)) $posts_to_search = '[0-9]';
else  $posts_to_search = $wpdb->escape($alpha);
 
$postids = $wpdb->get_col("
    SELECT p.ID
    FROM $wpdb->posts p
    WHERE p.post_title REGEXP '^" . $posts_to_search . "'
    AND p.post_status = 'publish' 
    AND p.post_type = 'book' /*replace 'book' with your custom post type*/
    AND p.post_date < NOW()
    ORDER BY p.post_title ASC"
);

I have not tested the code but it should work. At least you get the idea what to do here. You are querying the database for the whole range of numbers not just one alphabet.

You might also want to update the the navigation function for this so that numerals link is also generated.

Updated function get_alphabet_nav would become this:

 
function get_alphabet_nav($sef=''){
 
   $url_array = explode('/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); 
   $folder = $url_array[sizeof($url_array)-2];
 
   $base='http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/';
   $sef = $sef.'/';
  $nav .= '<a href="'.$base.$sef.'numbers/" rel="nofollow">#</a>'."\n";
 
   $path= $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
 
   for ($i=65; $i<=90; $i++) {
    $x = chr($i);
    $nav .= '<a href="'.$base.$sef.strtolower($x).'/" rel="nofollow">'.$x.'</a>'."\n";
   }
 return $nav;
}

Hope that helps.

Hi Cody,

You need to do either or both of the following:

Make sure that your custom post type slug is different from your listing page slug, because if they are same, all your CPT records will be considered as sub-pages of the listing page by WordPress. Using your example, if your listing pages slug is ‘classmates’, your CPT should be ‘classmate’ so that WordPress routes those requests to your CPT page.

e.g. http://www.hhsclassof68.com/2012/classmates/daleen-lewis/ should open at http://www.hhsclassof68.com/2012/classmate/daleen-lewis/

Also make sure that your loops code is working and your CPT is setup properly before the loop like this:

 
query_posts(array('post_type'=>'classmate')); 
 
if ( have_posts() ) while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

And make sure you refresh the permalinks url structure once (by saving it again going to settings> permalinks) if you change your CPT slugs.

You should echo the above sql statement whatever that turns out to be after variables value,s and then run it in the phpMyAdmin and see the results. Your query looks right. If there’s any error, you will be able to sort it out in phpMyAdmin first and then fix it in the template code.

Yes, the above post does exactly that.