Ever wanted to display the title of a post somewhere but limit the amount of characters that are shown? For instance, this post has a very long title, and if I were to use <?php echo the_title() ?> it would show as follows: Limit the characters that display on the_title.

That may not fit well on one line in lets say a widget or small width div. So here is a neat trick you can use:

<?php $title = the_title('','',FALSE); echo substr($title, 0, 11); ?>

Pretty simple huh, just note the bold numbers, in this case 11 character would output like this: Limit the c.

Thanks to Tattershall Way for this snippet.

In the last post “Creating a custom widget” I showed you how to create a custom widget. Well in this post I will show you how I used my custom widget to display all post with a certain custom field from outside the WordPress loop.

In the last post I used this tag:

<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/includes/showcase.php'); ?>

Now I will show you what the file showcase.php has:

<ul>
<?php
global $wpdb;

$sql = "SELECT wposts.*
	FROM $wpdb->posts wposts, $wpdb->postmeta wpostmeta
	WHERE wposts.ID = wpostmeta.post_id
	AND wpostmeta.meta_key = 'gallery-url'
	AND wposts.post_status = 'publish'
	AND wposts.post_type = 'post'
	ORDER BY wposts.post_date DESC LIMIT 8";

$pageposts = $wpdb->get_results($sql, OBJECT);
$output = $pre_HTML;

foreach ($pageposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);  ?>

<li><a href="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "gallery-url", $single = true); ?>" title="Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
<img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a></li>

<?php endforeach; ?>

</ul>

That’s it! The most important item you may want to change for your own custom field is the line : AND wpostmeta.meta_key = 'gallery-url'. Where you would change the text in bold to match your own custom field value.

With his great advise I was able to figure out why all my attempts to use the query_post weren’t working. it came down to this line of code: <?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "gallery-url", $single = true); ?>, that was what I had in my code, and the $post->ID is the reason my code would not echo or print the custom field’s value. Solution? replace $post->ID with get_the_ID(). HA, so simple.

Today let’s learn a simple quick trick on how to create a custom widget. For my example I will show you how I created my Showcase widget located in the middle, to the right of the posts.

First under your functions.php file type in the following:

<?php // Custom Widget
function MyCustomWidget() { ?>
<li class="widget">
    <h2 class="heading">Latest Showcase</h2>
        <ul>
        	<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/includes/showcase.php'); ?>
        </ul>
</li>

<?php }

register_sidebar_widget('The Custom Widget for Showcase', 'MyCustomWidget'); ?>

• Always make sure your code is between the <?php and ?> for it to work.
• Once we call the function, the rest is assuming html code that you may or may not need.

• For instance, you may just put in a picture and call it a day. But my code starts with <li< because my sidebar’s start and end with <ul<.
• Any way, once your done, just set the final “register_sidebar_widget('the widget title', 'the name of the function');“

That’s it! Now you have a custom widget with what ever you want!