Featured post [shortcode]

Over at RhodiaDrive.com, they wanted to be able to sprinkle featured posts in the sidebar using widgets. Via my solution, the authors can choose a post to feature, add a text widget to the sidebar, and enter a simple shortcode. The widget will then display the post’s title and an excerpt of the content with a link to the post page.

Usage:
[ahs_featuredpost id=364]

Want it? Just copy the code below/after the jump into the functions.php file for your current theme and voila! You can then style the elements in the widget, which are all in a div with class=”featuredpost”.

/*
 * shortcode handler to display featured post info in text widget
 * author: april hodge silver http://springthistle.com
 * @param array attributes from shortcode filter (expects only id)
 * @returns string with h3 post title, excerpt in


 */
function ahs_featuredpost_handler($atts) {
	extract(shortcode_atts(array(
		'id' => null,
	), $atts));
	if ($id == null) {
		echo '

This shortcode requires a post ID!

';
	} else {
		global $post;
		$out = '';
		$myposts = get_posts('numberposts=1&include='.$id);
		foreach($myposts as $post){
			setup_postdata($post);
			$ignore[] = $post->ID;
			$out .= '

';
			$out .= '

'.$post->post_title.'


';
			$out .= '

'.substrws(strip_tags($post->post_content),240).'... Read on »

';
			$out .= "


";
		}
		return $out;
	}
}
// register the above function to be connected to a new shortcode [ahs_featuredpost]
add_shortcode('ahs_featuredpost', 'ahs_featuredpost_handler');

// so that widget text is analyzed for shortcodes
add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

You can get the substrws() function from php.net

posted Oct 7 2009