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.

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?

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!