Blog Post Page with Introductory Text

[Mark]

I am trying to do something which should be drop-dead simple and is apparently insanely complicated.

I want to create a page template which:

- displays some text that I added to a page via the dashboard; and,
- displays the titles of each blog post

In other words, the page is a list of post titles with some introductory/framing text.

I am fine with writing PHP code to accomplish this (it's what I've been doing for the last couple of days trying to implement this idea).

Surely this is a solved problem. I can't be the first WordPress author who wants to wrap some context around a set of posts? So if anyone has any links for me to read I'd love to get them.

[nutsandbolts]

It might be easiest to add a widget area to display at the top of the blog page - that way you can drop in your content and the blog posts will show up underneath.

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[Mark]

Thanks, Andrea. I considered that but didn't pursue it because it looked like more work than what I eventually did. Which basically was to include the static text in the custom template file as HTML markup.

It feels very wrong to include content in what amounts to a code file, but it worked. I may take a shot at using the widget area approach when the dust settles, because it would be nice to be able to use the dashboard page editing capability to change the introductory text. Rather than having to fire up a console to edit a code file.

[Summer]

Technically, that's not much different than including a widget in the template. In one, you'd have to edit the template to add your hand-rolled HTML, in the other, you'd be updating your hand-rolled HTML in the text widget you added.

I've created page templates that included paragraphs of intro, and even some that displayed a banner splash (that the end user could manage by changing the page's featured image).

So what you didn't isn't "wrong"... it's just a matter of persepective on where you put your code!

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Mark]

Good point. My MVC background is showing :).

[Author]

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