WordPress Yoast Breadcrumbs custom post type fix

I just ran into a problem with the WordPress Breadcrumbs plugin included in WordPress SEO by Yoast and I thought I share it here. The problem I encountered was with the custom post types not displaying in the breadcrumbs trail if you use the custom post type archive page instead of a page with a custom template. So I’ve created a Yoast Breadcrumbs custom post type fix to display custom post types in the breadcrumbs trail when viewing post type archives.

For example:

I have a Custom Post Type called “Events” which has a slug named “events”. I wanted to show the EVENTS loop (custom post type archive) without having to create a page called “Events” and use a custom template for it to display a loop with the custom post types. Usually the page you will create for displaying a custom post type loop will conflict with the custom post type slug (the page will have the slug events-2 or something or vice-versa) so that’s why I wanted to do this as WordPress intended for us to use.

After I’ve created links in my menu to reflect the archive page for the events, pointing to http://mydomain.com/events, I assumed it will work as expected. For my disappointment the Breadcrumbs plugin didn’t display the title of the archive pages, or the post type name in the breadcrumb trail.

I had to fix it somehow, keeping in mind that I had to use this fix with multiple custom post types. Here’s a quick fix for this if you are using the above mentioned plugins on your project.

Put the following code in your template files where you have the breadcrumbs displayed:

<?php
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) :
  $post_types = array('events','custom_post_type_2','custom_post_type_3');    
if(is_post_type_archive( $post_types )):
?>
<div class="breadcrumbs">
You are here:
<span xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#">
<span typeof="v:Breadcrumb"><a href="<?php echo home_url(); ?>/" rel="v:url" property="v:title">Home</a></span> »
<span typeof="v:Breadcrumb"><strong class="breadcrumb_last" property="v:title"><?php post_type_archive_title(); ?></strong></span>
</span>
</div>
<?php
else :
yoast_breadcrumb('<div class="breadcrumbs">You are here: ','</div>');
endif;
endif;
?>

To explain the code a bit:

I’m checking to see if the plugin function exists function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb')
I’m creating an Array of custom post types I want to apply this fix to $post_types = array('events','custom_post_type_2','custom_post_type_3');
I’m checking to see if we are on a post-type archive page which matches any of the above defined custom post types if(is_post_type_archive( $post_types ))
If I’m on a post-type-archive page, I will display the HTML code structure generated by the Breadcrumbs plugin and add the dynamic title of the current post type post_type_archive_title();
Else, if I’m not on a custom post type archive page, the plugin should work as expected so I’m using the default plugin functionality.

That’s all!

I hope it helps many of you narrow down the time spent on searching for a fix for this.