Dino Latoga

Display Recent Posts

There are different methods I use for this kind of function and it depends on the need and how the template is laid out. You can check out the 3 methods that I use below. I hope you find it useful in your projects.

Method 1: This code displays the 10 latest posts. You can place this code anywhere on your template. For more info on wp_get_archives() you may want to check out the codex

<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=10'); ?>
</ul>

Method 2: This is just basically the loop except that we defined a number of posts to be shown using the query_posts() function. You may want to read more on query_posts()

<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); ?>
<ul>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile;?>
</ul>

Method 3: This is I think the best way to display the recent posts since it’s very simple and you can customize the way the posts are displayed. You can use this code anywhere on your template. Read more about the get_posts() function.

<?php
$recentposts = get_posts('numberposts=12&category=4');
	foreach ($recentposts as $post) :
	setup_postdata($post);
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Display Recent Comments

I found this piece of code somewhere around the web but I don’t know who the original source is. So the credit goes to him or her. This piece of code will display the 7 most recent comments.

<?php
global $wpdb;
$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID,
comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt, comment_approved,
comment_type,comment_author_url,
SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt
FROM $wpdb->comments
LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID =
$wpdb->posts.ID)
WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND
post_password = ''
ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC
LIMIT 7";
$comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
$output = $pre_HTML;
$output .= "\n<ul>";
foreach ($comments as $comment) {
$output .= "\n<li>".strip_tags($comment->comment_author)
.": " . "<a href=\"" . get_permalink($comment->ID) .
"#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID . "\" title=\"on " .
$comment->post_title . "\">" . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt)
."&hellip;</a></li>";
}
$output .= "\n</ul>";
$output .= $post_HTML;
echo $output;?>

Display Categories

There are different ways in displaying categories and most of the time I like the categories to be displayed in a simple list.

<h4>Categories</h4>

<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('use_desc_for_title=0&title_li=&show_count=0'); ?>
</ul>

Display Archives as Simple List

Method 1: This will display the archives in a month list. I usually place this on the sidebar. Learn more about wp_get_archives.

<h4>Archives</h4>
<ul>
	<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
</ul>

Method 2: This will display all the posts in a simple list. I usually use this on an archives page template.

<ul class="archives">
<?php
$myposts = get_posts('numberposts=-1&offset=0');
foreach($myposts as $post) :
?>
<li><small><?php the_time('d.m.y') ?></small> <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

Display Tagclouds

This will display the tags in a tagcloud. This is the simplest on how to use it. For more details you may check out wp_tag_cloud() from the WordPress codex.

<?php wp_tag_cloud('smallest=8&largest=22'); ?>

Display Blogroll

This will display the links in a simple plain list. More on wp_list_bookmarks.

<ul>
<?php wp_list_bookmarks('title_li=&categorize=0'); ?>
</ul>

While I know that these are not all of the most commonly used WordPress snippets, I hope this post will still help out people who want to learn WordPress. I have written this post so it can serve as a reference for me and by all means you can make it your reference too. But if you want to learn more on WordPress functions you can always go to the Codex or you can get a copy of WordPress for Dummies.

Tags: Code Snippets, Codex, Snippets, WordPress