wp_guy

oh… I thought that whas the whole sidebar… Hmmm… Since the widget title gets echoed inside the widget and not outside as in your code…

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
        'before_widget' => '<div class="sidebar-head">',
        'after_widget' => '</div>
<div class="sidebar-footer"></div>',
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3></div>
<div class="sidebar-content">',
    ));

But you’re probably going to have problems with widgets that don’t have a title, like the search widget.

The code in your sidebar should look something like:

<div class="sidebar-head"><h3></h3></div>
<ul class="sidebar-content">
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
    <!-- What happens if you don't have the widgets functionality. Static widgets for example. -->
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
<div class="sidebar-footer"></div>

Then, in the functions.php file:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
        'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
        'after_widget' => '</li>',
        'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
        'after_title' => '</h2>',
    ));

And that should do it.

Sweet! 🙂

Aw… You da man Ivovic 😉

You can restrict the category you want to show by changing the parameters inside query_posts(). Like: query_posts('showposts=1&cat=1');, that would show the latest article in the category with ID 1. More info here:
http://codex.ww.wp.xz.cn/Template_Tags/query_posts#Exclude_Categories_From_Your_Home_Page

As for showing the date:

<?php the_time('M j'); ?>

You can use the setup_postdata(); function to setup all the necessary variables… like this:

<ul><?php $myposts = &get_posts('numberposts=10');
foreach($myposts as $post) :
setup_postdata($post);
?>
<li>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
    <br /><?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?></ul>

How about <?php the_excerpt(); ?> ?