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How to use wp custom fields

Wp Custom Fields

WordPress has the ability to allow post authors to assign custom fields to a post. This arbitrary extra information is known as meta-data. This meta-data can include bits of information such as:

  • Mood: Happy
  • Currently Reading: Cinderella
  • Listening To: Rock Around the Clock
  • Weather: Hot and humid

With some extra coding, it is possible to achieve more complex actions, such as using the metadata to store an expiration date for a post.

Meta-data is handled with key/value pairs. The key is the name of the meta-data element. The value is the information that will appear in the meta-data list on each individual post that the information is associated with.

Keys can be used more than once per post. For example, if you were reading two different books (perhaps a technical book at work and a fiction at home), you could create a “reading” key and use it twice on the same post, once for each book.

Here is an example of what this information might look like on your post:

Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes

Today’s Mood: Jolly and Happy

Function Reference

Add, Update, Delete

Get Custom Values/Keys

Template Tags

Usage

Based upon our example above, let’s put this into action. We’ll add two custom fields, one called “Currently Reading” and the other “Today’s Mood”. The following instructions will demonstrate how to add this information to a post using Custom Fields.

  1. After you have written your post, scroll down to the area titled Custom Fields.
  2. To create a new Custom Field called “Currently Reading”, enter the text “Currently Reading” (without the quotes) in the text entry field titled Key.
  3. The newly created Key should now be assigned a Value, which in our case is the name of the book currently being read, “Calvin and Hobbes”. Type “Calvin and Hobbes” in the Value field, again without the quotes.
  4. Click Add Custom Field button to save this custom information for that post.

To add your “Today’s Mood”, repeat the process and add “Today’s Mood” to the key and a description of your mood in the value text boxes and click SAVE to save this information with the post.

On your next post, you can add a new book and mood to your meta-data. In the Custom Fields section, the Key will now feature a pull down list with the previously entered Custom Fields. Choose “Currently Reading” and then enter the new book you are reading in the value. Click Add Custom Field and then repeat the process to add “Today’s Mood”.

You only need to create a new “KEY” once, after which you can assign a value to that key for every post, if you so desire. You can also assign more than one Value to a key, for a post. This will come in handy for people who read more than one book at a time.

Displaying Custom Fields

With a Custom Field added to the post, it’s time to display your books and mood to the world. To display the Custom Fields for each post, use the the_meta () template tag. The tag must be put within The Loop in order to work. Many people add the_meta() template tag to the end of their post or in their Post Meta Data Section. Here is a basic example of using the tag:

<?php the_meta(); ?>

It might look like this in the source code:

<ul class='post-meta'>
<li><span class='post-meta-key'>Currently Reading:</span> Calvin and Hobbes</li>
<li><span class='post-meta-key'>Today's Mood:</span> Jolly and Happy</li>
</ul>

The template tag automatically puts the entire meta-data into a CSS style called post-meta. The key is in a span called post-meta-key so you can style it in your style sheet. All of this is showcased in an unordered list.

To customize the look of the post-meta list, change the characteristics in your style sheet. For instance, let’s add some style to our example from the top. The style sheet elements would look like this:

.post-meta {font-variant: small-caps; color: maroon; }
.post-meta-key {color: green; font-weight: bold; font-size: 110%; }
  • Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes
  • Today’s Mood: Jolly and Happy

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How to transfer one WordPress site database to another domain

Ever wondered how to transfer one WordPress site database to another domain? Here’s how step by step. Let’s say you have a site at domainone.com and you want to move it to domaintwo.com/yoursite and you have cPanel.

  1. go to domainTwo.com/cpanel and install wordpress in a new folder or directory called ‘yoursite’ (using fantastico’ from your cpanel)
  2. Now go to domainOne.com/wp-admin and click on ‘Tools’, then click on export to export the whole site to your desktop
  3. Now go to domainTWO.com/YOURSITE/wp-admin and click on Tools, then click on import to inport your site to this new location. THAT’s it!

You can now see the new database for your site when you go to domainTWO.com/cpanel and click on ‘phpmyAdmin’. The new database should be located on your left hand. Click on it to see all the tables that have been created. Your posts/pages should be located in a table named something like wp_………posts

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WP CMS Hack: How to List WordPress Subpages Links using wp_list_pages()

Are you using WordPress as a CMS and want to know How to List WordPress Subpages using wp_list_page().

wp_list_page() is an important function nicely implemented in the newer versions of WordPress as WP becomes a more mature CMS. Creating Subpages (also called childpages and grand childpages) is one nice feature which you can use to really extend the functionality of WP as a CMS. Now let’s say you want to display all the childpages of a particular parent page while viewing the parent page or one of the other childpages, then you can use the following trick.

Here are the steps:

  1. Create a DIV element in your stylesheet.css like this one: #subpageslistings { float:left; display:inline; margin:55px 0 0 -10px; color:#777; }
  2. Now insert the following code, wherever you want these links to appear (header, main page content area or sidebar?)<div id=”subpageslistings”>
    <?php
    $output = wp_list_pages(‘echo=0&depth=1&title_li=<h4> Other Links </h4>’ );
    if (is_page( )) {
    $page = $post->ID;
    if ($post->post_parent) {
    $page = $post->post_parent;
    }
    $children=wp_list_pages( ‘echo=0&child_of=’ . $page . ‘&title_li=’ );
    if ($children) {
    $output = wp_list_pages (‘echo=0&child_of=’ . $page . ‘&title_li=<h4>Other Links</h4>’);
    }
    }
    echo $output;
    ?>
    </div>
  3. Now spice it up with some CSS styling and let it look the way you want!

Hope this helps.

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Tips for Easy Coding and completing tasks

Tips for easy coding: Example task: How to display a table using PHP
1. Go to google.com and search for all answers to your questions, eg just google ” How to display a table in PHP” and you will find a lot of answers.
2. Go to Youtube.com for videos that will answer your questions. Just search there
3. Search for ‘How to display a table using PHP forums’ and you will get answers from forums. You will also discover some good forums in your niche which you can join
4. search on hotscripts.com for sample code, which you can then customize. DON’T INVENT THE WHEEL. JUST USE IT!

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How to Import MS Excel spreadsheet into MySQL using PHPmyadmin

This is How to Import MS Excel spreadsheet into MySQL using PHPmyadmin.

  1. Create the table in your mySQL database with the same number of fields as the excel spreadsheet
  2. Now Delete the Column titles on your Excel Spreadsheet
  3. Save Excel file as ‘CSV’ (go to File, Save as in MSExcel )
  4. Now Click on ‘Import’ in your Table View (in PHPAdmin)
  5. Now browse to your ‘CSV’ file and select it for import
  6. Now check the radio button at the bottom: ‘CSV using LOAD DATA’ and then under options do the following
  7. Leave the first two boxes: ‘Replace table data with file’ AND ‘Ignore duplicate rows’ BLANK!
  8. Now put a comma at ‘Fields terminated by’;
  9. Leave ‘Fields enclosed by’ AND ‘Fields escaped by’ BLANK
  10. For ‘Lines terminated by’ leave ‘auto’ in the box there as it is
  11. For the ‘Column names’ type in the column names as in your mySQL database table, seperated by commas, with NO spaces!
  12. Now Click ‘Go’ and you are done!

Hope this helps you in your efforts to create a mysql database.