How should I name the node template files for my theme?

Question

I'm a bit confused about how to name my template files. It's the first time I started to mess with templates in drupal 7 and somehow I don't get it.

I want a template file that changes the behavior of my blog posts which are on my front page. In Drupal 6 a file named node-blog.tpl.php was all I needed to mess with my blog posts.

I tried the same with Drupal 7, but it didn't work. I searched for an answer and read that the following function should be relevant for choosing the template files.

function template_preprocess_node(&$variables) {
  ...
// Clean up name so there are no underscores.
  $variables['theme_hook_suggestions'][] = 'node__' . $node->type;
  $variables['theme_hook_suggestions'][] = 'node__' . $node->nid;
}

I also read about some conversion between '-' and '_' because '-' could not be used in function names. So I tried a few variants.

node__blog.tpl.php
node--blog.tpl.php
node-blog.tpl.php
node_blog.tpl.php

None of them is recognised by Drupal. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The following should work:

node--blog.tpl.php

Make sure that you also have a node.tpl.php in your theme folder and that you cleared the cache.

See also Page template suggestions are not working for more information.

Answer 2

Glad you got away from adding custom suggestions!

Only time that's a good thing is if you want to run several node types through the same alternate node template.