Add a meta description for a custom post type archive in WordPress

Question

Here's my issue :
I have a WordPress site where I created a custom post type (named " collections ") with an article for each collection.
I'd like to add a meta description to the archive page of the custom post type

www.thesitename.com/collections

I have tried with this bit in header.php :

<?php
if (is_category('collections'))
{
    ?> 
    <meta name="description" content="the description">
<?php } ?>

but there's nothing in the source code...
I have looked everywhere in Yoast SEO but I can't find a solution, not even on google. Do you have ideas ?

Answer 1

If you want to check post_type archive page then you have to use is_post_type_archive() and if you want to check the archive page of custom post_type category then you have to use is_tax()

if (is_post_type_archive('collections'))
{
    echo 'This is the collections post_type archive page';
}

Addition info but not directly related to your question.

if (is_tax('collections_cat', 'cat-1'))//<-- Replace it with your taxonomy, term name
{
    echo 'This is the collections post_type, category cat 1 archive page';
}

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Wordpress is written in PHP , which means that HTML like that will not work by itself. It is for this reason that in most tracking codes are established by including something along the lines of <?php include_once("analytics.php"); ?> <?php include_once("analytics.php"); ?>

In your case, you would have to echo any HTML elements like this. Like so:

  <?php if (is_category('collections')) {

    echo"<meta name='description' content='the description'>";

     }
  ?>