Let’s say you wanted to use the post thumbnail feature of WordPress, but had a whole archive of posts that would take too much time to go through. For new posts, you can be specific and use the feature as intended. For old posts, you just want to use the first image it finds in the content for the thumbnail, or a default if none present.

Add this to functions.php or make a functionality plugin:

function catch_that_image() {
  global $post, $posts;
  $first_img = '';
  ob_start();
  ob_end_clean();
  $output = preg_match_all('/<img.+src=[\'"]([^\'"]+)[\'"].*>/i', $post->post_content, $matches);
  $first_img = $matches[1][0];

  if(empty($first_img)) {
    $first_img = "/path/to/default.png";
  }
  return $first_img;
}

To use it, use this code in the loop:

if ( get_the_post_thumbnail($post_id) != '' ) {

  echo '<a href="'; the_permalink(); echo '" class="thumbnail-wrapper">';
   the_post_thumbnail();
  echo '</a>';

} else {

 echo '<a href="'; the_permalink(); echo '" class="thumbnail-wrapper">';
 echo '<img src="';
 echo catch_that_image();
 echo '" alt="" />';
 echo '</a>';

}

I found that has_post_thumbnail wasn’t as reliable as the logic above.

Some very easy copy-and-paste code here to add to the template for blog posts to allow for Facebook “liking” of the article. Probably best in the single.php template underneath where it outputs the content of the post.

<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo rawurlencode(get_permalink()); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show-faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" id="facebook-like"></iframe>

 

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("page_id=**ID**"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
       <h3><?php the_title(); ?></h3>
       <?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

The above code can be used within the regular page loop. Replace **ID** with the ID of the page you wish to embed.

WordPress has a built in function, the_meta(), for outputting all custom fields. But this function is limited in that it doesn’t always output all of them. For example, it misses custom fields added by plugins which begin with an _ underscore.

This bit of code uses an alternate function, get_post_custom() which will return all of them, and display all values. Good for debugging.

<h3>All Post Meta</h3>

<?php $getPostCustom=get_post_custom(); // Get all the data ?>

<?php
    foreach($getPostCustom as $name=>$value) {

        echo "<strong>".$name."</strong>"."  =>  ";

        foreach($value as $nameAr=>$valueAr) {
                echo "<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;";
                echo $nameAr."  =>  ";
                echo var_dump($valueAr);
        }

        echo "<br /><br />";

    }
?>

 

Right before the closing of the The Loop, insert this code:

<?php
if (($wp_query->current_post + 1) < ($wp_query->post_count)) {
   echo '<div class="post-item-divider">Post Divider</div>';
}
?>

This will create a <div> you can style as a post divider. The cool part being, it only gets inserted between two posts, skipping the last one. Thanks to Craig Maclean.