Devin Price

Hey Jenny, if you wanted to use an include file, you would need to create a file. Let’s call if fiveposts.php. You would paste the following code in and save it in your directory:

<div class="recent-five-posts">
<?php query_posts("orderby=desc&showposts=5"); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<div class="individual-posts">
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

Then, wherever you wanted this code to appear in your template, you would use this line of code:

<?php include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/fiveposts.php' ); ?>

If you wanted the five posts to appear on your home page, you would need to put this code in your home.php or index.php file.

If you really want this in a separate file, you can save this snippet of code and then call it with:

<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . 'file-name.php'); ?>

Or you could just paste this into your template:

<div class="recent-five-posts">
<?php query_posts("orderby=desc&showposts=5"); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<div class="individual-posts">
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">Read More</a></h3>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

If you don’t have a single.php file, it means your theme is defaulting to index.php. You can follow adamcorley’s advice above, but use index.php instead of single.php.

You could also set up conditional statements, which is more difficult, but would be useful if you want to exclude multiple pages/posts through the code. You would replace <?php get_sidebar();> in the index.php with the following code. Instead of page-slug, your would put the actual page slug for the page you didn’t want to have the sidebar.

<?php

global $post;     // if outside the loop

if (is_page('page-slug') {
    // Do nothing 

} else {
    get_sidebar();
}
?>

I would suggest taking a look at the code for other themes that do this type of thing. Try looking at the Magazeen Theme from We Function.

The Query Posts function will be your friend on this one.

For instance, if you have a category called “Featured Posts”, and you want your first five posts from this category to show up somewhere on the home page, you could put this code somewhere in your index.php file:

<div class="featured-articles">
            <h3>Featured Articles</h3>
            <?php query_posts("category_name=Featured Articles&orderby=desc&showposts=5"); ?>
            <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
            <div>

                <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"></a></h3>
       <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
                </div>
            <?php endwhile; ?>
        </div>

Hi Billkoe. You simply need to add another item to the menu. Open your nav.php and put the following at before the close ul tag:

<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Subscribe</a></li>

Here’s what the whole thing should look like when you are finished:

<!-- Navigation -->
  <div id="nav">
    <ul class="sf-menu">
      <li><a href="#">Categories</a>
        <ul>
			<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&title_li='); ?>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li><a href="#">Pages</a>
        <ul>
        	<?php wp_list_pages('orderby=name&title_li='); ?>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li><a href="#">Contact</a>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="#">1-800-867-5309</a></li>
          <li><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li><a href="#">Search</a>
        <ul>
          <li><?php if(function_exists('get_search_form')) : ?>
				<?php get_search_form(); ?>
				<?php else : ?>
				<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
				<?php endif; ?></li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Subscribe</a></li>
    </ul>
  </div>

My page attributes are also missing. I am attributing this to the Flutter plug-in (though I am not entirely sure).

Same problem as others:

<div id=”pageparentdiv” class=”postbox ” style=”display:none;”>

I found this resource and tried to run the SQL query, but no dice. Perhaps I just did it wrong. Ideas:

http://www.digitaltonic.co.uk/2009/09/03/wordpress-postpage-attributes-meta-box-missing/