Tips & Tricks
Pulling custom fields from outside the loop
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", $single = true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a></li> <?php endforeach; ?> </ul>
That’s it! The most important item you may want to change for your own custom field is the line : AND wpostmeta.meta_key = 'gallery-url'
. Where you would change the text in bold to match your own custom field value.
Update:
Check out Austin from PressedWords comment below.
With his great advise I was able to figure out why all my attempts to use the query_post weren’t working. it came down to this line of code: <?php echo get_post_meta($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.
Tips & Tricks
Can′t add pagination on WooThemes Thick Theme
Everything I have tried has led to nothing. And I have tried six way’s from Sunday to get my main posts to paginate.
example one:
<?php $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; query_posts('offset=1&showposts=' . get_option('woo_other_entries') . '&cat=-' . $GLOBALS['ex_asides'] . '&paged=$paged' ); ?>
example two:
<?php global $myOffset; global $wp_query; $myOffset = 1; $paged = intval(get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; $temp = $wp_query; $wp_query= null; $wp_query = new WP_Query(); $wp_query->query(array( 'offset' => $myOffset, 'category__not_in' => array($GLOBALS['ex_asides'],7,84), 'paged' => $paged, 'showposts' => get_option('woo_other_entries'), )); ?>
example three:
<?php global $myOffset; $myOffset = 1; $wp_query = new WP_Query(); $wp_query->query(array( 'offset' => $myOffset, 'category__not_in' => array($GLOBALS['ex_asides'],7,84), 'paged' => $paged, 'showposts' => get_option('woo_other_entries'), )); ?>
And after those tries, I just can’t get more pages beyond the option’s that I choose, and can only pull an archive via the browse more link.
Any suggestions or anything?
Tips & Tricks
Creating a custom widget
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!
Tips & Tricks
Display custom url if comment authors url is blank
Here is a nifty trick for your comments.php
template. If someone comes to your site and leaves a comment but doesn’t leave a url back to there site, the default link that is shown in place of the php code comment_author_url
is the current page link.
That might not look good. So, here is a little trick that I just implemented into my site. Besides installing the twittar plugin and pulling Twitter avatars I wanted to use the image itself for the authors url like. But if the author doesn’t have a Twitter avatar or a Gravatar it will display a default Gravatar that I set. If the default Gravatar is shown, usually the author will not leave a url link.
I would like to link the image to Gravatar.com so that they can get an image attached to their email address. So.. here is the code:
<?php if($comment->comment_author_url != "") { ?> <a href="<?php comment_author_url(); ?>"><?php gravatar(); ?></a> <?php } else { ?> <a href="http://gravatar.com" title="Get a Gravatar today!"><?php gravatar(); ?></a> <?php } ?>
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Austin
January 17, 2009 at 1:49 pm
No need to query the database directly. You can use the WordPress API to accomplish the same thing:
<ul>
<?php
query_posts(array(
'meta_key' => 'gallery-url',
'showposts' => 8,
));
while( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), "gallery-url", $single = true); ?>" title="<?php echo attribute_escape(sprintf('Link to %s', get_the_title())); ?>">
<img src="<?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), "image", $single = true); ?>" alt="<?php echo attribute_escape(get_the_title()); ?>" /></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>
If you can, it’s usually better to use the WordPress API, because your code won’t have to change if the underlying database structure in WordPress changes (as it has before), you get the benefits of the built-in object caching (or caching plugins, if they’re being used), and it tends to allow better compatibility with other plugins.
Austin’s last blog post..WordPress Use Declines Among Top 100 Bloggers
frosty
January 17, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for that, I will give that code a shot. I tried so many variations, and it wouldn’t show the custom fields, just the html code I input.
😉
P.S. If that works I will write a post based on your recommended code!
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Guennadi M
June 14, 2009 at 8:56 am
To display custom field outside the loop, you need to make the post ID available outside the loop, as per http://www.ausbusiness.net/review/wordpress-custom-fields-outside-loop/
Guennadi M