Code for posts in functions.php so can't change loop

Hi there,

I’ve gone round and round in circles all day with this, so hopefully someone can help!

I’m setting up a completely different (from the main site) template for the blog for a client, and the theme was designed by someone else some time ago.

The blog page that was already set up was very simple, and the blog template that existed was (strangely..) a copy of the custom home page, so I’ve tried to replace it (the blog template page) with a simple loop, just to get going.

Loop:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

	<div <?php post_class(); ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<h1><?php the_category(); ?><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
		<?php the_content(); ?>
	</div>

	<div class="navigation">
		<div class="next-posts"><?php next_posts_link(); ?></div>
		<div class="prev-posts"><?php previous_posts_link(); ?></div>
	</div>

    <?php endwhile; else: ?>
    <p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>

However, the previous designer did something I’ve never seen before: they have this code in functions.php:

if (!function_exists('show_blog')){
    function show_blog(){
        $args = array(
            'numberposts'     => 3,
            'offset'          => 0,
            'orderby'         => 'post_date',
            'order'           => 'DESC',
            'post_type'       => 'post',
            'post_status'     => 'publish' );

        $posts = get_posts($args);
        foreach($posts as $key=>$value):
?>
    <div style="width: 700px;">
        <h2><a href="<?=get_bloginfo('wpurl');?>/<?=$value->post_name;?>"><?=$value->post_title?></a></h2>

        <?=nl2br($value->post_content)?>

        <br/>
        <br/>
        <br/>
        <br/>
    </div>
<?php
        endforeach;
    }
    add_shortcode('showblog', 'show_blog');
}

To get the posts to show up as expected under /blog, I need to:

– keep that code in functions.php
– have the loop on the blog template (eg template-blog.php)
– have the shortcode [showblog] on the page ‘Blog’

But this isn’t giving me much freedom with styling and arranging how the posts are shown – I need to do this on the blog template (so I can include comments, categories, navigation etc etc).

Does anyone know what the previous designer has done here, and how I can take out this code from the functions file, and just have the normal loop show the posts in the blog template.

Am I being completely stupid?!