When building out a custom “Blog” section for your WordPress site, sometimes it’s easiest to create a custom page template that you can customize that allows you to set the page location (such as http://upthemes.com/blog), as well as your very own title and description that are displayed at the top of the blog section.
Step 1. Copy index.php to tpl_blog.php
To start, copy your index.php file from your current theme and rename the copied file tpl_blog.php. The reason for this is to get an exact copy of the theme functions and HTML structure from your current theme and to create a page template that will eventually be selectable from the ‘Page Template’ dropdown.
Step 2. Create Page Template ID
In your new file tpl_blog.php, you need to add a special comment to the top of the file that WordPress will recognize as a custom template.
1 2 3 | /* Template Name: Blog Posts */ |
Simply add that to the very top of your page and now WordPress will recognize it in the Edit Page screen sidebar.
3. Use Custom Query for Posts
Place this below the get_header() template tag:
1 | <?php query_posts('post_type=post&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10&paged='. get_query_var('paged')); ?> |
This will override the current page query with a custom query for 10 paginated blog posts. Since we’re using query_posts(), we don’t need to generate a new custom WP_Query to store the custom query.
4. Add Navigational Links for Pagination
Below your post loop, add some links for pagination like so:
1 2 3 | <div class="navigation"> <span class="newer"><?php previous_posts_link(__('« Newer','example')) ?></span> <span class="older"><?php next_posts_link(__('Older »','example')) ?></span> </div><!-- /.navigation --> |
This should be between the endwhile; and endif; sections of code in your theme.
5. Reset the Query
Once you’ve output all your posts and navigation, you can use wp_reset_query() to reset the query_posts() results that you created earlier. In lamens terms, you’ve now reset the query to what it was before you called query_posts().
6. Putting it all together
Here’s a completed page template that utilizes everything described above with additional markup and includes the loop:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 | <?php get_header(); ?> <div id="content"> <?php query_posts('post_type=post&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=10&paged='. get_query_var('paged')); ?> <?php if( have_posts() ): ?> <?php while( have_posts() ): the_post(); ?> <div id="post-<?php get_the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>> <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_post_thumbnail( array(200,220) ); ?></a> <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> <span class="meta"><?php author_profile_avatar_link(48); ?> <strong><?php the_time('F jS, Y'); ?></strong> / <strong><?php the_author_link(); ?></strong> / <span class="comments"><?php comments_popup_link(__('0 comments','example'),__('1 comment','example'),__('% comments','example')); ?></span></span> <?php the_excerpt(__('Continue reading »','example')); ?> </div><!-- /#post-<?php get_the_ID(); ?> --> <?php endwhile; ?> <div class="navigation"> <span class="newer"><?php previous_posts_link(__('« Newer','example')) ?></span> <span class="older"><?php next_posts_link(__('Older »','example')) ?></span> </div><!-- /.navigation --> <?php else: ?> <div id="post-404" class="noposts"> <p><?php _e('None found.','example'); ?></p> </div><!-- /#post-404 --> <?php endif; wp_reset_query(); ?> </div><!-- /#content --> <?php get_footer() ?> |
