mattspace

Right, so we have the ability to not everything as a filter to leave the thing we want, but lack the ability to specify the thing we want from the outset?

If you wouldn’t mind, would you set out the combined version with the ORs, so I can see what the syntax difference is?

thanks.

That’s interesting, when you say the ID isn’t available, I have functions that remove post categories from both the home page, and the RSS feed, and they target category IDs:

// This function excludes posts of the diary categories from the home page feed
	
function mg_exclude_category_home( $query ) {
	if ( $query->is_home ) {
	$query->set( 'cat', '-97, -95, -93, -81, -80, -109, -112, -117, -123' );
	}
	return $query;
	}
 
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'mg_exclude_category_home' );

// This function excludes diary category posts from the RSS feed

function exclude_category( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_feed ) {
        $query->set('cat', '-97, -95, -93, -81, -80, -109, -112, -117, -123');
    }
return $query;
}

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

…but is the issue that the targeting of the function:

if ( $query->is_home ) {

… or:

if ( $query->is_feed ) {

…are specifically done with recognised fixed landmark targets hardcoded into WP – home and feed. Is there not some equivalent for explicitly naming the category by name, slug, or ID? Something like:

function custom_sort_for_photostream( $query ) {
 if ( $query->is_archive( 120 ) ) { // can we identify by ID or slug here ?

// or should it use is_category ?
// or is_whichever( 'cat', '120') ?


        $query->set('orderby', 'post_modified');
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'custom_sort_for_photostream' );

…or is there another way to get the category id?

thanks – learning this stuff bit by bit.

The publish date IS being used for sorting. That’s the problem I’m trying to solve.

I want it to order posts on the page, and in the feed for that category by modified date.

So a post I add today, with a published date of last year, shows up as more recent than a post I added last week, with a published date of last month.

Right, so conceptually I should think of things as if the parent and child themes are hardcoded to require being in the same directory, and speak to my webhost about whether I can symlink from the first site’s /themes directory, to the second?

So I’d have:

• /public_html/site_one/wp-content/themes/parent_theme
• /public_html/site_two/wp-content/themes/parent_theme(symlink)
• /public_html/site_two/wp-content/themes/child_theme

Is that the easiest / best way to go about it?

Thanks.

haha, nice catch, late night message replying, all my php code is <?php etc in my theme files.

But yes, that’s my level of php fluency that I didn’t recognise it myself.

I managed to get it all working, after figuring out what could and could not sit within echo’d html. This isn’t throwing up any errors, and produces a wonderful conditional result where there’s nothing output on posts where I haven’t added the custom field:

function mytheme_get_the_original_date() {
	$first = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'first_published_date', true );
	if ( ! empty( $first )) {
		echo '<p class="entry-meta entry-meta-footer mod-date">
				<span class="pre-in first-published">' , $first , '</span>
				<span class="in">: Initial</span>
			</p>';
	}
}

Assuming that’s all good and correct, thankyou so much for bearing with me on this little learning journey. It’s really been a significant improvement in my understanding of the system.

For perspective, I’m coding my themes from scratch, as .php classic template files.

One thing I found worked well for me cognitively with the programming theory lessons I was doing (Swift Playgrounds), was creating custom functions so that instead of putting all the functional code inline at the point it’s used, you put all that in the non-running part of the file in discreet units of functionality, with an arbitrary name, and then at the place you want it to run, you just have the function name reference.

So the code I made ended up being effectively just a running list of references.

It made sense to me from a compartmentalisation perspective, and I’ve tended to do that with functions in my wordpress theme building, so I try to have:

<php? my_utility_function() ?>

…and then all the actual stuff it does kept in the functions.php file. Buuut I know so little about how wordpress and php function that I really only learn things by seeing the completed example – I don’t have the knowledge base to build up, but I can backfill that knowledge by working backwards from the completed example (like the ones provided in this thread). Thats just how I learn if I’m not in a classroom with a live tutor.

So to my way of how I like to do things, I’d want to make the template file have something like this:

<!-- begin originally published date entry -->
<php? mytheme_get_the_original_date() ?>
<!-- end originally published date entry -->

So, would this be close to the answer for functions.php:

function mytheme_get_the_original_date() {
    $first = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'first_published_date', true );
    if ( ! empty( $first )) {
        echo "First published: $first";
        }
    }

Bearing in mind I’m operating at the edge of my knowledge here…

If you’re simply going to display the field, you can save it in any format you wish.

OK, so having tested it, it’s literally just an arbitrary text string, rather than a date calculation call. That’s workable for me.

Is there a way I can make this happen so the text string “First Published:” doesn’t have to be in the custom field value itself?

e.g is there an addition that can be made to:

<?php echo get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'first_published_date', true ); ?>

… which lets me put an echo of “First Published:” inside this, so it only shows if the first_published_date field has a recorded value?

Just because things are changed, doesn’t mean they’re fixed. IMHO apart from security fixes, almost everything WP has done since 4.8 has been to the platform’s detriment. What you call “fixes”, I call “breaks”.