In this part of the tutorial, I continue making a WordPress Featured Content Slider.

I’ll specifically show you how to do many things with WordPress like:

• Find out what category a post is in
• Get the URL for the Plugin Directory
• Retrieve Post Titles, Excerpts, Meta Data
• Make custom queries for the WordPress database

<?php

// Get an object that contains all posts in the category Featured

$postsFeatured = get_term_by(‘name’, ‘Featured’, ‘category’);

// if( in_category(‘Featured’) AND ($ntt_posts_featured > 5) ){

// Make sure I only retrieve a maximum of 15 posts

$ntt_posts_featured = (($postsFeatured->count) > 15) ? 15 : ($postsFeatured->count);

// Call the function that will create the featured content

ntt_make_fc_pages($ntt_posts_featured);

}

?>

<?php

// This function creates all of the featured content code

function ntt_make_fc_pages($ntt_num_fc_pages) {

// Figure out how many featured content pages I should make

// knowing I need a minimum of 5 posts per page

$ntt_fc_pages = floor($ntt_num_fc_pages / 5);

$ntt_fc_info = array();

// Get the url for the plugin

$ntt_plugin_directory = WP_PLUGIN_URL.’/’.str_replace(basename( __FILE__),””,plugin_basename(__FILE__));

// Issue a custom query that outputs the titles for all featured articles

// To issue queries I need to hijack $wp_query. So, I can use it later

// on the page I’m saving it to a temporary variable

$tempWPQuery = $wp_query;

$wp_query = null;

// Create a new WP_Query Object

$wp_query = new WP_Query();

// Get the total number of posts to retreive

$postsFeatured = $ntt_fc_pages * 5;

// Issue a query that returns all posts in the category Featured

$wp_query->query(‘posts_per_page=’.$postsFeatured->count.’&category_name=Featured’);

// Cycle through all of the posts

$ntt_post_num = 1;

while ($wp_query->have_posts()):

$wp_query->the_post();

// Output the title of the post

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][0] = get_the_title($post->ID);

// Retrieve the value of the excerpt and trim it to 330 characters

$ntt_long_excerpt = get_the_excerpt();

$ntt_short_excerpt = substr($ntt_long_excerpt, 0, 330);

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][1] = $ntt_short_excerpt;

// Output the link url for the post

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][2] = get_permalink($post->ID);

// Retrieve the url for the featured image which is saved as a meta value

$ntt_post_id = get_the_ID();

$ntt_featured_image = get_post_meta( $ntt_post_id, ‘_ntt_mbe_image’, true );

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][3] = $ntt_featured_image;

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][4] = ‘<img src=”‘ . bloginfo(‘template_directory’);

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][4] .= ‘/timthumb/timthumb.php?src=’ . $ntt_featured_image;

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][4] .= ‘&h=48&w=48&zc=1″ alt=”‘ . $ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][0];

$ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][4] .= ‘” width=”48″ height=”48″ title=”‘ . $ntt_fc_info[$ntt_post_num][0] . ‘” /></div>’;

$ntt_post_num++;

endwhile;