Create New Variable In Post And Sort Category Template By That Variable

Having played with something similar a while ago, I’d suggest that you save your expiration dates in the form YYYY-MM-DD as this will make it much easier to run custom custom queries that return posts in the right order. Individual post/sale expiration dates could then be added as custom fields.

that format is acceptable and I had tried a plugin that was supposed to create a custom text field i named expiration and used the format YYYYMMDD to have a whole number.

but I really want to create the variable in each post content and not as a field since I need to display the date anyways. dont want to have to type it twice.

You can’t place PHP variables inside the post content area.

ok.

so then I have to do it twice. no big deal. the plugin I mentioned creates php variables right?

I guess if the answer is yes then I just need help with the sorting code.

I’ve not used or examined that plugin, so I couldn’t say either way.

were you able to sort yours by the php variable you made?

I used custom fields.

and the custom field makes a php variable?
I have a custom field plugin running now.

could you explain a bit more?

Have a look at Using_Custom_Fields. That might explain how you can use custom fields better than I can.

I’ve been trying to use that, but am really a novice at this part of wordpress.

Here is part of the code where I believe the new code should be inserted:

<div id="main" class="clear">
			<div id="content">
				<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
					<h1 class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
					<div class="entry page">
						<?php if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) the_post_thumbnail( 'index-thumb', array( 'class' => 'single-post-thm alignright border' ) ); ?>
						<?php the_content(); ?>
						<?php edit_post_link(__( 'Edit', 'traction' )); ?>
						<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>
					</div><!--end entry-->

I am looking to use this code snippet but do not know where in there to put it and retain the while loop:

$querystr = "
			SELECT wposts.*
			FROM $wpdb->posts wposts, $wpdb->postmeta wpostmeta
			WHERE wposts.ID = wpostmeta.post_id
			AND wpostmeta.meta_key = 'date'
			AND wposts.post_status = 'publish'
			AND wposts.post_type = 'post'
			ORDER BY STR_TO_DATE(wpostmeta.meta_value, '%m/%d/%Y') ASC
			";

		$pageposts = $wpdb->get_results($querystr, OBJECT);

Something like query_posts( $query_string . '&meta_key=expiration_date&orderby=meta_value_num'); should pull the posts in the right order.

thank you, and where is that placed in the first code block?

Immediately before <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>.

and the date format needs to be 10/05/2011 or 20111005 or something else?

thank you very much by the way