10,000 Foot Developer

I switched this blog theme to “Photon” for a bit, very minimalist,  where I had 10 posts per page.  I just wanted to get some Google Analytic stats on specific article reads, and having full articles on a page doesn’t give that to me.  I needed the articles to display like this on the navigational pages:

• Home Page  (Page 1)
  • Entire Recent Article
  • First 128 character excerpt of next 9 articles.
• Page 2
  • First 128 character excerpt of next 10 articles.
• Etc.

So I had to adjust index.php from the WordPress editor, and here’s what I did:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<div id="wrapper">

<!-- $posts defaults to 10 but you can change it-->
<?php /*$posts = get_posts('numberposts=10');*/ ?>

<div id="posts" class="excerpts">

<ul>

<!-- this section sets the length of the preview for older articles, using a WP filter -->
<?php
 $firstElement = 0;
 function custom_excerpt_length( $length ) {
 return 128;
 }
 add_filter( 'excerpt_length', 'custom_excerpt_length', 999 );
 ?>
 <?php foreach ($posts as $post) : ?>

<?php setup_postdata ($post); ?>

<!-- this specifies what hyperlinks show up in the title position -->
 <li><h2 class="post-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink (); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
 <small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> by <?php the_author() ?></small>

<!-- reset the data query or there will be defects in the behavior -->
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

<!-- make sure the post is first one on first page, if so show all of it, else you just get a excerpt-->
 <?php if (get_option ('photon_index_post_length') == "full" && $firstElement == 0 && is_home() && '1' > $paged ) : ?>

<?php the_content (); ?>

<?php else: ?>

<?php the_excerpt (); ?>

<?php endif; ?>

 <p class="postmetadata">
 Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?>
 <strong>|</strong>
 <?php edit_post_link('Edit','','<strong> |</strong>'); ?>
 <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>

<?php $firstElement++; /* bil */ ?>
 </li>

<?php endforeach; ?>

<li>
 <p style="float: left"><?php previous_posts_link(); ?></p>
 <p style="float: right"><?php next_posts_link(); ?></p>
 <p style="clear: both">&nbsp;</p>
 </li>

</ul>

</div>

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>