smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

As I have recently mentioned, the ‘forces has just been at the sharp end of a code overhaul.

While appearances may be deceiving and the layout may look virtually the same it’s the changes under the hood that are interesting. This is why WordPress is not just semantic blogging software - it’s CMS to the core, without the bells-and-whistles.

So what triggered this code quest? Two reasons - I hated the complexity of the existing code and Chris got me thinking. :)

Firstly, gone is the complex, two page code and layout. It worked well, but was less than efficient handling posts. Two loops were required to generate what can more easily be done in one the_loop.

Secondly, the previous code base could not handle asides unless they originated outside the standard WP posts tables. For some that might be fine, indeed a number of ‘asides’ plugins exist, some of whom create their own tables - I wanted 1 source to rule them all, not 20..

I’ve been asked to indicate the code used, which I intend to do. I would challenge others who use customised code to share with others how you’ve achieved a particular goal - share your code..

So, to action my own challenge, this is basically how the ‘forces works. Quick, robin, to the code!

So, the_post() is called, generates the first full post (customisable to any number one desires) and a loop counter is used to keep track of progress.

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So, if we have posts -> set a counter -> while have posts -> do something -> then increment $i by 1. When $i = $numcontents and thus is no longer less than, it will drop down to the next segment of code.

So what’s next? The next block is fairly simple - after the first n posts are displayed we drop into the following which basically will roll through whatever is in between the if and else. In my case I pull in asides using the awesome mini post plugin and then the del.icio.us bookmarks:

Finally we drop down into what I class as remainders - older posts and content basically. Remember at this point we are still running within the original the_post() loop. Here’s my remainders code:

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Obviously there will be more ’substance’ to each section - I’ve purposefully avoided showing the template code for posts, asides, del.icio.us and remainders to avoid confusion - hence the `` blocks to indicate where template code should be added.

One `the_post()` loop, one .php file (in my case index.php - I am considering using home.php however) and thus, one simpler block of code.

Here endith the lesson. :-)