Corey Salzano

Hiding posts from showing up on the home page is something I have been thinking about all week. Last night I finally dug into the WP Codex and figured out how to make it happen. Hide WordPress posts from appearing on your home page by adding their post IDs to the following array (where you see 603 and 621), and place this code before the loop starts in your theme’s main index file.


<?php
if( is_home()){ query_posts(array('post__not_in' => array(603,621))); }
?>

This code prevents posts from showing up on your home page, but allows them to be directly accessed and shown in views other than the home page like category archive. The posts will also be included in your RSS feed.

F.A.Q.

• Where do I put this code?

  Place the code before the loop starts in your theme’s index. To edit the index file, browse to Design > Theme Editor > Main Index Template. Place the code anywhere before this line: <?php if (have_posts()) ?>

• How do I find the IDs of my posts?

  Go to Manage > Posts and mouseover the titles of your posts. Look at the URL showing up in your browser’s status bar. The post ID will be at the end of the edit post link URL you see.

Most ‘hidden post’ tutorials explain to use a hidden category. The problem with the category approach is the need to hide the category from showing up in the sidebar and any other place it may appear. WP does not have built in hidden or secret categories. The idea of chasing out a category everywhere categories are shown on my WP is not an attractive idea.

This code lets me publish posts that are not intended for prime time viewing but work great as a post rather than a page.

Here is a small piece of code that will display the category name of a WordPress post without a hyperlink to the category page. Typically, the category data is retrieved with the_category( ). This function is not useful for manipulating the category name in plain text. Displaying the category in plain text is easy with get_the_category( ), however.


<?php
$category = get_the_category();
echo $category[0]->cat_name;
?>


Discontinued! This plugin is dead, details here.

I made a WordPress widget to display latest Twitter updates for any Twitter user in a WordPress website’s sidebar. A widget is activated just like a plugin on any “widget ready” theme and can be positioned within the sidebar using the drag and drop Widgets page in the Administration Dashboard.

• Links @usernames, #hashtags and URLs
• Displays up to 20 twitter updates
• Works for any username with public tweets
• Does not require twitter password
• CSS friendly element IDs

Requirements to run

• WordPress version 3.0.0 minimum (MySQL 5 + PHP5)
• json extension for PHP

This project is based on some code written by Ryan Barr. I added some sauce and already have a nice idea of where the next version will progress. Thanks for introducing me to the twitter API, Ryan.

PHP5 required

This will be the last version of this plugin that runs uses PHP4’s DOMXML object. All future versions published to this plugin’s page on the WordPress Plugin Directory will be PHP5 only. Click here to download the last PHP4 compatible build from my server, version 0.100210 of this plugin.

This WordPress plugin creates a list of links to the most recently updated pages and posts on any WP website. The following image is a screen shot of the widget output. I am running this widget on this website, so forget the screen shot. Look at the sidebar on this page and you will find the widget itself.

Install this plugin

1. Download recently-updated-pages-and-posts.zip
2. Decompress the file contents
3. Upload the recently-updated-pages-and-posts folder to a WordPress plugins directory (/wp-content/plugins)
4. Activate the plugin from the Administration Dashboard
5. Open the Widgets page under the Appearance section
6. Drag the Recently updated widget to the active sidebar
7. Configure the widget options to suit your needs and click Save

Sample HTML output

View sample-html-output.txt

Styling the output with CSS

/* reference the list by id */
#recently-updated-widget-list{ list-style: disc; }

/* apply style to all of the list items */
.recently-updated-widget-item{ margin-left: 25px; }

/* make the first list item font size larger */
#ruwi-0{ font-size: 125%; }

WordPress.org plugin page

Visit this plugin’s page in the official WordPress Plugin Directory.

Here is some code I hacked together to display a list of recently updated pages and posts on a WordPress site:


<?php
$today = current_time('mysql', 1);
$howMany = 5;
if ( $recentposts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_modified_gmt < '$today' ORDER BY post_modified_gmt DESC LIMIT $howMany")):
?>
<h2><?php _e("Recent Updates"); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php
foreach ($recentposts as $post) {
if ($post->post_title == '') $post->post_title = sprintf(__('Post #%s'), $post->ID);
echo "<li><a href='".get_permalink($post->ID)."'>";
the_title();
echo '</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>


The variable $howMany holds the number of items to display in the list. I used some code I found in a WordPress theme I am using on some website, and modified it to help someone in need of this specific solution.

Update 02/22/2010:

Including post excerpts

A commenter below asks, “Is it possible to combine the_excerpt(); with the code you provided?” The function you are naming is only useful inside “the loop,” but yes, including excerpts is easy. Try this:


<?php
$today = current_time('mysql', 1);
$howMany = 18;
if ( $recentposts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title, post_excerpt FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_modified_gmt < '$today' ORDER BY post_modified_gmt DESC LIMIT $howMany")):
?>
<h2><?php _e("Recent Updates"); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php
foreach ($recentposts as $post) {
if ($post->post_title == '') $post->post_title = sprintf(__('Post #%s'), $post->ID);
echo "<li><a href='".get_permalink($post->ID)."'>";
the_title();
echo '</a><p>' . $post->post_excerpt . '</p></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>


I wrote a small WordPress plugin today to prevent these link elements from showing up in the header of my websites:


<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="WPURL/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />
<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="WPURL/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />


The first of these link elements instruct blog clients where to find the WordPress XML-RPC interface via really simple discovery (RSD).

The second tells Windows Live Writer where to find your WordPress administration dashboard, the location of the edit posts and manage comments scripts.

If you are not using any blog clients to log into your WordPress and make changes to your posts or approve comments, these is no reason to be publishing these script locations.

Download no-blog-clients.zip

This plugin is now included in the official WP Plugins Directory.