Archive & Search Templates

Archive templates control the layout of category archives, tag archives, author archives, date archives, and custom taxonomy archives, any taxonomy your site registers gets its own Archive target automatically. A Search Results template controls what visitors see after they submit a search query. Both use Composer's loop system to render lists of matching posts.

Create an Archive Template

1. Go to UiChemy → Theme Builder.
2. Click + Add New → Archive (or Search Results for search).
3. It opens for editing in Gutenberg by default. Use Edit on the template card to reopen it later. Elementor needs to be active on the site either way.
4. Add the Composer widget to the canvas.
5. Build your archive layout.
6. Click Update to save. Archive templates need a target; Search Results templates need nothing further, see below.

The term Provider in Archive Templates

On taxonomy archive pages (category, tag, custom taxonomy), the term Twig provider resolves to the current archive term:

<header class="archive-header uc-boxed">
  <span class="text-label">Category</span>
  <h1 class="text-heading-h1">{{ term.name }}</h1>
  {% if term.description %}
    <p class="archive-description">{{ term.description }}</p>
  {% endif %}
  <p class="text-body-sm">{{ term.count }} articles</p>
</header>

On author archive pages, use the user provider:

<h1>Posts by {{ user.name }}</h1>
<img src="{{ user.avatar('80') }}" alt="{{ user.name }}">

The Post Loop

Use get_posts with paged: current_page() to render the archive's posts:

<section class="archive-grid uc-boxed">
  <div class="uc-grid-3">
    {% for post in get_posts({
      post_type: 'post',
      posts_per_page: 9,
      paged: current_page()
    }) %}
      <article class="uc-blog-card">
        <a href="{{ post.link }}">
          <img
            src="{{ post.thumbnail.src('medium') }}"
            alt="{{ post.thumbnail.alt }}"
          >
        </a>
        <div class="card-body">
          <span class="text-label">{{ post.categories.name }}</span>
          <h2 class="text-heading-h4">{{ post.title }}</h2>
          <p>{{ post.excerpt|truncate(100) }}</p>
          <a href="{{ post.link }}" class="text-label">Read More →</a>
        </div>
      </article>
    {% endfor %}
  </div>

  {{ loop_pagination()|raw }}
</section>

current_page() reads the current page number from the URL (?loop_page=N). loop_pagination() renders numbered page navigation links.

Target and Conditions for Archives

An Archive template's primary scope is its target, chosen when you create it: blog (the main posts listing), author, date, a specific taxonomy (like Category or a custom taxonomy), or "any." Author and Date archives are targets, not conditions, there's no separate condition scope for them. Within a taxonomy target, conditions narrow further:

To apply one template to all categories and another to a specific category, use two templates targeting Category: a broad one with Include → Post Category (any), and a specific one with Include → Post Category → "News" (wins for the News category).

Search Results Template

The search results template uses request.get('s') to access the search query, and get_posts with the s parameter to fetch matching results:

<section class="search-results uc-boxed">
  <header class="search-header">
    <h1 class="text-heading-h2">
      {% if request.get('s') %}
        Results for "{{ request.get('s') }}"
      {% else %}
        Search
      {% endif %}
    </h1>
  </header>

  {% set results = get_posts({
    post_type: 'any',
    posts_per_page: 10,
    s: request.get('s'),
    paged: current_page()
  }) %}

  {% if results %}
    <div class="results-list">
      {% for post in results %}
        <article class="result-item">
          <h2 class="text-heading-h4">
            <a href="{{ post.link }}">{{ post.title }}</a>
          </h2>
          <p>{{ post.excerpt|truncate(150) }}</p>
          <span class="text-label">{{ post.date|date('F j, Y') }}</span>
        </article>
      {% endfor %}
    </div>
    {{ loop_pagination()|raw }}
  {% else %}
    <p class="no-results">No results found for "{{ request.get('s') }}".</p>
    <p>Try different keywords, or browse by <a href="/categories">category</a>.</p>
  {% endif %}
</section>

Search Results templates don't use conditions, there's nothing to set beyond building and activating the template. If you have more than one active Search Results template, the one you activated most recently is the one that shows.

Tips

Filtering by the current term in a loop. On a category archive, pass the current term to get_posts using tax_query, get the current term slug from term.slug:

{% for post in get_posts({
  post_type: 'post',
  posts_per_page: 9,
  paged: current_page(),
  tax_query: [{
    taxonomy: 'category',
    field: 'slug',
    terms: [term.slug]
  }]
}) %}

Empty archive state. Wrap your loop in {% if %}...{% else %}...{% endif %} to show a "no posts" message when the archive is empty.

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