By default, Pages within WordPress will look for a file called “page.php” within your theme, and use that to control their layout/visual appearance. If that file isn’t there, then they’ll use “index.php” (read more about the WordPress Theme Hierarchy). You also have the option of creating custom Page Templates, and then selecting a specific one to use when you create a Page. That’s what I did, using something like the following process:

1. Go into your theme directory and make a copy of your “page.php” file. I called mine “page-headlines.php”
2. Open up page-headlines.php in your favorite text editor, and paste the following code after you output the content (and possibly any footer/meta information) for the Page. This is going to be different for each theme, but generally they will use <?php the_content(); ?> somewhere (which outputs the content of the Page). Make sure you don’t mess up any DIVs or other tags that are required for layout. Here’s the code you need:

   <?php if ( $tag = get_post_custom_values( 'headlines-tag' ) ) : ?>
       <?php $headlines = get_posts(array('tag'=>$tag[0])) ?>
       <?php if ( count( $headlines ) ) : ?>
           <h2>Recent Headlines</h2>
           <ul>
           <?php foreach ( $headlines as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post ); ?>
               <li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
           <?php endforeach; ?>
           </ul>
       <?php endif; ?>
   <?php endif; ?>

3. At the top of that file, you need to make sure you have a unique name for selecting this template. The name can be pretty much anything, but must be included as shown below:

   <?php
   /*
   Template Name: Project Details with Headlines
   */
   ?>

4. Upload that file into your theme directory.
5. Go to Pages > Add New (or edit an existing one) in wp-admin, and add a title/Page content if you need to.
6. On the right of the Page Edit screen (unless you moved it), there will be a block titled “Attributes” which includes a “Template” option. Select your option from the list.
7. Here comes the magic bit. Jump over to the “Custom Fields” block, and add a custom field with the name set to “headlines-tag” (which you’ll notice is what we’re querying in the code above). Set the value to any tag name that you’ll then use on a blog post (or may already have used).
8. Publish the page and then go and view it. If you have any posts in your blog that match the “headlines-tag” you specified, they should show up in a list underneath your Page content.

You can customize the output however you like, using the same sort of template tags as you have available in The Loop. Get creative. Oh, and there’s another way to do this, using shortcodes, described over at SmashingMagazine.

The projects really could use a little work, but I just don’t have time to work on them right now. Once the site is live, I will be working on RESTments again to get that going, and then when that is up, the projects will all receive a make-over to ensure that they work with PHP’s register_globals off and magic_quotes_gpc off as well. I will also eventually get to working on new versions of webpad (which I have some great plans for) and AvantBlog (want to make a few versions, so that there is one for each major type if possible.

So now, with no other external contracts to take up my time, it is just a matter of not falling asleep and then all I have to do is my website, should mean that it’s up within a week or 2.

I’ve been spending some time on the projects section, getting the project pages up to scratch and re-formatted; it’s looking pretty good. I am taking a few of the old projects offline, because they don’t have any documentation, don’t work anymore, things like that

I’m not going to put a date on when the site will be live, but given the current progress, and the list of things to do still, I would estimate about 2 weeks. Here’s the current list;

1. Projects Sections
   1. Blogger API (functions, classes + meta)
   2. phpMassMail (also requires some work to make it 4.2+ compatible, and re-format documentation to include)
   3. JSSearch (would like to get some more information/documentation/examples included)
   4. JSValidate (want to update this to include the ability to open a popup window rather than an alert – optional)
   5. Client work and websites
2. Contact Form
   1. Layout/design
   2. Contingency design
   3. Processing/handling
   4. Result/output page
3. Search System
   1. Layout/Design (of the results, as well as extra options, defining manual entries etc)
   2. Processing system (integrating my manual results with Google/XooMLe’s results)
   3. Management of my manual entries (and a decent name for them

So there we go. That’s what I’ll be working on in the near future. And for those interested, I will be creating a custom search system, which integrates Google‘s results for within my website (using XooMLe) with a selection of manual “Top Picks” or “Best Bets” which I have selected for certain terms. I have the rough idea planned out already, just need to implement it in code. I will probably make the code available for download once it’s complete as well, so keep an eye out for that

That’s all for now – time to get back to life.