How Much of This Is Possible?

The short answer to “Can we do this in WordPress?” is “Yes!” The long answer is that you could certainly take the time to learn what you need and do it all yourself, but it would depend on your familiarity with the technologies that WordPress uses (PHP, MySQL, HTML, and CSS). If you’re already pretty good with these, then picking up how WordPress works probably won’t be too hard, as it is actually pretty simple.

So, how could you direct a specific post to a particular slot in a page like this? Well, in my personal opinion, you might want to consider displaing much less all at the same time, but that’s entirely up to you. To display multiple posts in multiple slots, you can use categories and multiple loops. A simple example for the “Item” column and the “What’s Inside” column might look something like this:

<?php
$item_query = new WP_Query('category_name=items');
// Loop for items
if ( $item_query->have_posts() ) while ( $item_query->have_posts() ) : $item_query->the_post();
?>
<!-- Your HTML markup of the post items goes here -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php
$inside_query = new WP_Query('category_name=inside');
// Loop for What's Inside
if ( $inside_query->have_posts() ) while ( $inside_query->have_posts() ) : $inside_query->the_post();
?>
<!-- Your HTML markup of the posts for "What's Inside" goes here -->
<?php endwhile; ?>

Hopefully that helps you some.

Great name! You can do it!

ThemeForest has a ton of inexpensive themes… you can get some help by getting started with a theme that does what you want.

Thanks to you both — especially for the trouble taken to supply code. I suspected the answer might be to assign each article its own category (and then presumably use CSS to place it).

We’re encouraged to press on. I’d like to say undaunted, however…

We’ll have a look at ThemeForest; hopefully it has a multi-column theme to give us a jump start.

(By the way, would have responded much sooner but had log in problems)

You certainly don’t need a category for each post, as that would defeat the purpose of categories. What you need is a category for each section of your layout. Then, as you add new posts, they will automatically be placed in the correct location without you having to go into the code and move things around.

Does that make sense?

> Does that make sense.

I think I get it. For example, in a 3-column layout, “category-2” might be assigned to posts meant for column 2 and they would therefore be summoned in their own loop.

If that’s correct, a question though: if the items are retrieved by default in the date-time sequence they were posted (which I believe is how WP fundamentally works), how would one alter the sequence so as to move, say, the 3rd item into the 2nd slot in the column (and the 2nd into the 3rd slot)?

I think I get it. For example, in a 3-column layout, “category-2” might be assigned to posts meant for column 2 and they would therefore be summoned in their own loop.

Yes, that is correct.

In answer to your question, when you create a post, you can easily change the post date to whatever you want it to be; the date is not hard-coded (so to speak). You can even change the exact time of day. That is one method of changing the order, and I’m sure there are other methods that are escaping my memory at this moment. I’m certain there are many plugins that will allow you to completely customize the order of posts.

JPry,

Thanks for the further advice!

Steve