?How do I make a page that brings up posts with specific custom fields?

Hello everyone!

I am editor of an online zine, and we are preparing to launch our first wordpress issue. My goal is to be 100% WP!

My problem is this:

I want to create a custom field, so that each post may be categorized according to issue. For example: a Key of “ISSUE” and a value, eg “1”.

My hope is that I can create a page that will bring up all posts with the key “Issue” and organize them according to their values. For example one heading would be “Issue 1” and would have a ul with links to all the posts in that issue, the next would be “Issue 2” etc.

Another option is to have a page that brings up all posts with a certain value & key combined (for example, a page just for Issue 1, with key “ISSUE” and value “1.”

Any help would be appreciated.

I might be resigned to just using categories (a new category for each issue), and then excluding all “Issue” categories in the sidebar so as to not clutter it.

Thanks!

(ps) my miserable attempt at this failed, using the codex help (you can see it at https://www.volutionsmagazine.com/blog”