This little trick can be useful for calling custom functions and printing the title with out spaces for W3C compatibility. I used this trick in a new theme called Galleria, which will be out for public download in the coming days.

Using this comes in handy for a delicious text link:

<?php $title = get_the_title(); ?>
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php echo $title; ?>&amp;<?php echo str_replace(" ", "%20", $title); ?>">
Bookmark This (<?php echo $title; ?>)</a>

What I am doing is calling $title = get_the_title(); and using str_replace(" ", "%20", $title); to replace empty spaces with a %20, which is used in URL encoding empty spaces.

Alternatively you can use a dash or underscore.

Thanks to Jason Boyle for his adaption.

In my new theme, I am using this coded trick to display the excerpt on a single post only if I’ve got text inside. Usually if you use the_excerpt and you don’t have one, it will fake one for you.

This is not something that I wanted to do on the single post page. So I used the following code to check if the excerpt existed.

if ( !empty( $post->post_excerpt ) ) :

Once this action is taken into account, you can factor in what code you want to out put if the post_excerpt isn’t empty.

if ( !empty( $post->post_excerpt ) ) :
	the_excerpt();
else :
	false;
endif;

The above code checks if there is an excerpt and print’s it to the screen. If there isn’t an except, it doesn’t do anything.

How might you display a Google ad after the first post or anything you like? It is very simple. You just need to add the variable $loopcounter in the Loop. If the $loopcounter is less than or equal to 1, then include your option. Check out the code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); $loopcounter++; ?>

  // your loop

  <?php if ($loopcounter <= 1) { include (STYLESHEETPATH . '/you-file.php'); } ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php else : ?>

<?php endif; ?>

Pretty simple huh. Well in the $loopcounter line, you may change the include to point to any file or maybe a custom widget like so:

<?php if ($loopcounter <= 1) { dynamic_sidebar( 'Plus Post' ); } ?>

Or use your code directly in between the { & }.