Hello. I am a beginner to wordpress. I only downloaded it the other night for the first time. I did get it to work right away and I will give a description of what I did and what I want and hopefully someone can help me.

I downloaded wordpress, changed the config file and installed it like this to my website: ie 'http://www.mywebsite.com/wordpress/'

I set up my wordpress account and everything works fine.

NOW, what I would like to do is on my main index file of my website (www.mywebsite.com/index.html) I would like there to be a section that automatically updates with the name of my blog article and a link to that blog. Something like this Expample:

Recent Posts:
(Note these would be links directed to my blog)
1. I ran through the woods.
2. My Computer died today.
3. I posted on the wordpress support forum.

I wanted these links to appear and updated on their own without having to manually change the index file. It is similar to the "Active Topics" section on the front of ATS.

I am not even sure what the jargon term for this process is called. How do I do this? Can I do this? Help me please. lol.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[edit on 5-3-2007 by zerotime]

[edit on 5-3-2007 by zerotime]

Thank you for that information. It did help. I am slowing understanding how it works and what I need to do now.

Your page looks very nice. It is exactly what I am trying to do -- take a static HTML page and integrate wordpress. I know basic HTML but the php programming stuff is slowing me down. Trying to dissect through codes divided up on headers, foots, sidebars, etc is making my head explode. I figure it will take a couple of months of beating my head against the wall before I get it. I've made enough progress in the last week to stop me from becoming to discouraged and giving up. I will probably check back on your site once in a while to reference it.


[edit on 15-3-2007 by zerotime]

Let's break this down line by line"

$this_page_comment = $_GET['p'];
$this_page = $_GET['paged'];

Here I'm checking the URL to see if someone is requesting to see a specific page number or a specific post. Without this ability you won't be able to do next page or add comments easily. Now that we have this information we're going to ask WordPress to hand us the information we want.

if(!empty($this_page_comment)){
query_posts('cat=9&p=$this_page_comment');
}
else if(empty($this_page)){
query_posts("cat=9");
}
else{
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("paged=$paged&cat=9&orderby=date&order=DESC");
}
$this_page_post_count = 0;

So we make one of three queries. We either ask for a specific post, a specific page, or just all the information. I'm asking for category 9 only in this case. If you leave that out you'll get all information. So "query_posts()" would return everything. In the same manner query_posts(-9) would return everything but the items in categtory 9. This is all fairly simple unless you want to filter out more than one category. Sadly you can't filter out more than one category. Insted you have to ask for every category except for the few you don't want to see. I haven't had to do that yet, and hopefully you won't either.

You can do more fun things like filter by year and month. "query_posts(&year=2007&monthnum=2)". I dont' remember every single possiblity, but the odds are that if you want to do it, someone has done it before.

if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();

This is the main loop for all WordPress pages.

akpc_the_popularity();

A plugin I'm using. Exclude this line.

$this_page_post_count = $this_page_post_count + 1;

I'm keeping track of entries and later you'll see that I'm stopping once I get to 10. My way of showing only 10 items at a time.

Now we're in a specific post so I get the post date and title for display. I add in an edit link, which only shows if you're logged in as an admin.

the_content(__('(more...)'));

This code displays the content of the post entry. Now let's add in links for people to leave a comment.

wp_link_pages();
comments_popup_script(625, 625);
comments_popup_link(__('Be the first to comment on this'), __('Read comment or leave one yourself '), __('Read the % comments or leave one yourself'));

I specified the size for pop-up page comments. Then I defined the text of the comment link. You supply three values One for uncommented items, and two for items with comments. (I dont' remember why at the time)

comments_template(); // Get wp-comments.php template

Self explanitory

endwhile; else:
_e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.');

This is the end of the main loop. The part after "else" is text I write out if there were no matching post for the query made earlier.

In the next part (if(empty($this_page_comment) ) we make a decision to include a link for older or newer entries if needed.

That's all there is to it. I don't have a sidebar or header for this page, but if you download someone's template you'll see how it's easily done. Usually the header, sidebar, and footer are in their own php file. This is how it's done on my actual blog page. I just call get_header(); and get_sidebar(); before the posts. Then I call get_footer(); at the end.

[edit on 16-3-2007 by dbates]

Originally posted by dbates
Let's break this down line by line"

This information was a tremendous help. Thank you for taking the time to show and explain it. I will start working with this next week and I think it will push me weeks ahead in my development. It definitely seems easier when it is broken down by line and explained. Thanks again!

I just went back and re-read the first post. If you're just wanting to show the title of recent links on a seperate page, then you would

require('./blog/wp-blog-header.php'); // correct to actual blog location

query_posts();
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$this_post_title = the_title('', '',FALSE);
echo $this_post_title;
endwhile;

Tada! That's it I believe. Of course you'll need to add some HTML in there to make it look pretty, but you seem to know all about that part. The empty strings in my sample call to "the_title" are for text before and after the title. For instance if you want it numbered as in your example you would do this:

$post_number = 1
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$this_post_title = the_title($post_number . '.', '',FALSE);
$post_number = $post_number + 1;
echo $this_post_title;
endwhile;

Tell us when you get it done and we'll check it out.

EDIT I almost forgot about the url path. Use "the_permalink()" to get the url to your blog article.

<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>

[edit on 16-3-2007 by dbates]