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.
Themes
Jon Asked: How to add thumbnails above post on the THiCK theme
I was asked by a reader:
I’m using the THiCK theme for my new design blog. I noticed you were able to add thumbnail images above your blog posts on the home page. What would I need to do to enable this on my blog?
Well Jon, this can be done very simple, since the theme is already using the Tim Thumb script.
What you will need to do is find in your index.php
file, the second loop. Which you can find on line 40
.
<?php query_posts('offset=1&showposts=' . get_option('woo_other_entries') . '&cat=-' . $GLOBALS['ex_asides'] ); ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div class="post"> <h2><a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> <div class="post-meta"><?php the_time('j/m/y'); ?> <span>|</span> <?php comments_popup_link('0 Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></div> <?php the_excerpt(); ?> </div> <?php endwhile; ?>
Now we are going to add in the code. At line 43
we are going to add:
<?php if (get_option('woo_resize')) { // Check if we should use the image resizer ?> <a title="Continue reading this entry..." href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><img src="<?php echo bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/thumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>&h=80&w=280&zc=1&q=90" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a> <?php } else { ?> <a title="Continue reading this entry..." href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a> <?php } ?>
That’s it, just make sure that in the THiCK options panel you choose the “resize” option, or the image might break the layout. Or you may change the this code: $post->ID, "image",
to: $post->ID, "image_thumb",
and use a separate image for the lower blog.
Tips & Tricks
How to: Add any authors gravatar to their post
This is an easy one, just add one line to your single.php
file where you would like the Gravatar to show up.
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_id(), $size = '96', $default = '<path_to_url>' ); ?>
Tips & Tricks
How to: Show what a user is searching for in the title
Want to show what any user was searching for?
It is simple, just add this line where your title would be.
<h1>Browsing search results for <strong>"<?php the_search_query() ?>"</strong>.</h1>
The important line is the_search_query()
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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