Post Templates

Will your Portfolio be:

1) Part of your blog
2) A Static Page
3) A Custom Post Type

Reference the Template Hierarchy.

For your “Portfolio” custom post type:

1) Create a “archive-portfolio.php” as the template file for Portfolio post index (if needed)

2) Create a “single-portfolio.php” as the template file for the single-post view for Portfolio posts.

So how would it know to use the single-portfolio.php page to load my individual portfolio items????

Because WordPress is awesome like that! 😉

No, really: the template hierarchy system is setup for this very reason:

1) Single “Post” Post-type: use single.php
2) Single “Page” Post-type: use page.php
3) Single “Custom” Post-type: use single-custom.php

When you register your Custom Post Type, you assign it a slug, e.g. “portfolio”. WordPress then knows what to do with “portfolio”, and how to apply templates to “Portfolio” Post-types.