wordpress Recent Posts Function

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Technique #1

This function is useful when you need to display content, excerpt, custom fields, or anything related to the post beyond it's link and title. If you just need a list of linked titles, see the next technique. Put the following function in functions.php

function recent_posts($no_posts = 10, $excerpts = true) {

   global $wpdb;

   $request = "SELECT ID, post_title, post_excerpt FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type='post' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT $no_posts";

   $posts = $wpdb->get_results($request);

   if($posts) {

               foreach ($posts as $posts) {
                       $post_title = stripslashes($posts->post_title);
                       $permalink = get_permalink($posts->ID);

                       $output .= '<li><h2><a href="' . $permalink . '" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: ' . htmlspecialchars($post_title, ENT_COMPAT) . '">' . htmlspecialchars($post_title) . '</a></h2>';

                       if($excerpts) {
                               $output.= '<br />' . stripslashes($posts->post_excerpt);
                       }

                       $output .= '</li>';
               }

       } else {
               $output .= '<li>No posts found</li>';
       }

   echo $output;
}

Usage

After you've made the function. Put the following in the sidebar or wherever you like the recent posts to list..

<?php recent_posts(); ?>

You can give it 2 arguments, the first is the number of posts and the second is whether or not you want to display the excerpts. so recent_posts(2, false) will display the 2 most recent post titles.

Technique #2

<?php wp_get_archives( array(

    'type'            => 'postbypost',   // or daily, weekly, monthly, yearly
    'limit'           => 10,   // maximum number shown
    'format'          => 'html',   // or select (dropdown), link, or custom (then need to also pass before and after params for custom tags
    'show_post_count' => false,    // show number of posts per link
    'echo'            => 1     // display results or return array

) ); ?>

Technique #3

More succinct version of #1, which also includes a more standardized query string.

<?php
   $recentposts = get_posts('numberposts=12&category=4');
   foreach ($recentposts as $post) :
       setup_postdata($post); ?>
       <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Reference URL

wordpress Prevent Search Bots from Indexing Search Results

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In the <head> section of your header.php file:

<?php if(is_search()) { ?>
   <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" /> 
<?php }?>

wordpress Prevent CSS Caching

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WordPress:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); echo '?' . filemtime( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/style.css'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

bbPress:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bb_stylesheet_uri(); echo '?' . filemtime( bb_get_active_theme_directory() . '/style.css'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

Adds stylesheet with time of last update. If the number changes the browser updates the CSS instead of using cached version. Easily amended to be none WP specific.

wordpress Paginate Custom Post Types

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<?php 
  $temp = $wp_query; 
  $wp_query = null; 
  $wp_query = new WP_Query(); 
  $wp_query->query('showposts=6&post_type=news'.'&paged='.$paged); 

  while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post(); 
?>

  <!-- LOOP: Usual Post Template Stuff Here-->

<?php endwhile; ?>

<nav>
    <?php previous_posts_link('&laquo; Newer') ?>
    <?php next_posts_link('Older &raquo;') ?>
</nav>

<?php 
  $wp_query = null; 
  $wp_query = $temp;  // Reset
?>

wordpress Output Excerpt Manually

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There is always the_excerpt(), but that does some pretty specific stuff (e.g. adding paragraph tags, adding [...], not respect the more comment, use the saved excerpt...). Advanced Excerpt is pretty good at customizing that.

If you want to get real simple though:

<?php 
  $content = get_the_content(); 
  echo substr(strip_tags($content), 0, 130) . '...'; 
?>

wordpress Natural Sort Using Post meta_key

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@@ -2033,6 +2033,7 @@

      if ( !empty($q['meta_key']) ) {
              $allowed_keys[] = $q['meta_key'];
              $allowed_keys[] = 'meta_value';
+             $allowed_keys[] = 'meta_value_num';
      }
      $q['orderby'] = urldecode($q['orderby']);
      $q['orderby'] = addslashes_gpc($q['orderby']);

@@ -2056,6 +2057,9 @@

      case 'meta_value':
              $orderby = "$wpdb->postmeta.meta_value";
              break;
+     case 'meta_value_num':
+             $orderby = "$wpdb->postmeta.meta_value+0";
+             break;
      default:
              $orderby = "$wpdb->posts.post_" . $orderby;
}

This is a direct edit to a core file: /wp-includes/query.php Note the plus signs in the above code indicate new lines to add.

Author Notes:

A client wanted me to setup a custom field called "Guide Rank" which allowed them to assign #1 - 20 for a list of Bars they were posting about.

After running the posts query I found that the meta_value was being treated as a string and as such the sort order was jumbled:

eg. 1, 10, 2, 3css-tricks.comC 7 , 8 , 9

To get WordPress/MySQL to use "Natural Sort Order" you just need to apply +0 to the field name and it'll be treated as a number (eg. meta_value+0).

So that existing behavior is not interrupted I've just added the new type 'meta_value_num'.

My query line now looks like:

$guide_posts = new WP_Query("cat=12&meta_key=guide_rank&orderby=meta_value_num&order=ASC&showposts=10");

Which returns: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

This is up for inclusion in the WordPress trunk - so hopefully once it gets applied there should be no need for manually editing the file.

wordpress Move WordPress Admin Bar to the Bottom

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Pre WordPress 3.3 only. Either add this CSS to your CSS file, add all the code to your functions.php file, or make a quick little plugin.

function fb_move_admin_bar() {
    echo '
    <style type="text/css">
    body {
    margin-top: -28px;
    padding-bottom: 28px;
    }
    body.admin-bar #wphead {
       padding-top: 0;
    }
    body.admin-bar #footer {
       padding-bottom: 28px;
    }
    #wpadminbar {
        top: auto !important;
        bottom: 0;
    }
    #wpadminbar .quicklinks .menupop ul {
        bottom: 28px;
    }
    </style>';
}
// on backend area
add_action( 'admin_head', 'fb_move_admin_bar' );
// on frontend area
add_action( 'wp_head', 'fb_move_admin_bar' );

Reference URL