Display Latest Post on Static PHP Page

If you have a mixture of static pages and WordPress-built pages on your website it can be quite useful to display an excerpt from your blog on a static page, for example your homepage.

The following guide shows you how simple it is to show an excerpt as well as control how much of the excerpt to display. To do this you will need to make sure the static page is a PHP page (I.e. has a .php file extension).

How to use get_the_post_thumbnail() for WP 2.9.2

In WordPress 2.9, the get_the_post_thumbnail is a new function that was added to allow you to select and display a post’s thumbnail image. If you have a version of 2.9+ installed, in your wp-includes folder, you will find a file called, post-thumbnail-template.php. Inside, the get_the_post_thumbnail() function is what will allow you to display your post’s thumbnail or thumbnails for a list of posts such as on your homepage or category (archive) pages. The get_the_post_thumbnail WordPress function will return your thumbnail in an html img tag so all you have to do is call the function where you want your thumbnail to be displayed, then style it using css.

Creating a Custom Taxonomy

Editing your theme’s functions.php file

WordPress version 3 does not allow you to create custom taxonomies from the administration screen. To initially define your custom taxonomies without a plugin, you’ll need to add a little bit of code to your theme’s functions.php file. This isn’t too difficult — just follow my lead.

To add custom taxonomies, we need to edit the “functions.php” file found inside your theme directory. Location of functions.php :  [website_root]/wp/wp-content/themes/[your_theme]/functions.php

Custom Post Type UI

This plugin provides an easy to use interface to create and administer custom post types and taxonomies in WordPress. This plugin is created for WordPress 3.0.

Below is a short example video showing Custom Post Type UI in action!

Download

Latest version: Download Custom Post Type UI v0.6 [zip]

Installation

1. Upload the Custom Post Type UI folder to the plugins directory in your WordPress installation
2. Activate the plugin
3. Navigate to Settings > Custom Post Type UI

That’s it! Now you can easily start creating custom post types and taxonomies in WordPress

Comments with avatar in sidebar

Comments with avatar in sidebar

<?php
function src_simple_recent_comments($src_count = 8, $src_length=35, $pre_HTML='', $post_HTML='') {
 global $wpdb;
$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt, comment_approved, comment_type,
SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,$src_length) AS com_excerpt
FROM $wpdb->comments
LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID)
WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND post_password = ''
ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC
LIMIT $src_count";
$comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);

$output = $pre_HTML;
foreach ($comments as $comment) {
$output .= "\n\t
	<li>" . get_avatar($comment, $size="40", $default_avatar ) . ' <a title="on ' . get_the_title($comment->ID) . '" href="' . get_permalink($comment->ID) . '#comment-' . $comment->comment_ID  . '">' . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt) . '...</a></li>
<a title="on ' . get_the_title($comment->ID) . '" href="' . get_permalink($comment->ID) . '#comment-' . $comment->comment_ID  . '">';</a>
}
$output .= $post_HTML;

echo $output;

}
?>

How to fill “gray thumbnail box” with thumbnail image?

Go to “custom fields” section and add a new field as thumbnail and put the image path in the value field. See the example

Now put the following code in the custom theme’s template file

<?php
if(get_post_meta($post->ID, 'thumbnail', $single = true)) :
echo '<img src="'.get_post_meta($post->ID, 'thumbnail', $single = true).'" title="'.$post->post_title.'" width="98" height="82" />';
endif;
?>