SO NOW…I successfully removed category titles and—without doing ANYTHING ELSE— mediareportcard.com is now acting like the VCmonterey.org site. EXACTLY WHAT I DO NOT WANT.
Here is the area in featured-content.php, that I think can be changed to STOP WordPress from posting sticky posts as featured when featured posts are not available. Any advice on how to change this would be appreciated:
/**
* Get featured post IDs
*
* This function will return the an array containing the
* post IDs of all featured posts.
*
* Sets the “featured_content_ids” transient.
*
* @static
* @access public
* @since Twenty Fourteen 1.0
*
* @return array Array of post IDs.
*/
public static function get_featured_post_ids() {
// Return array of cached results if they exist.
$featured_ids = get_transient( ‘featured_content_ids’ );
if ( ! empty( $featured_ids ) ) {
return array_map( ‘absint’, (array) $featured_ids );
}
$settings = self::get_setting();
// Return sticky post ids if no tag name is set.
$term = get_term_by( ‘name’, $settings[‘tag-name’], ‘post_tag’ );
if ( $term ) {
$tag = $term->term_id;
} else {
return self::get_sticky_posts();
}
// Query for featured posts.
$featured = get_posts( array(
‘numberposts’ => $settings[‘quantity’],
‘tax_query’ => array(
array(
‘field’ => ‘term_id’,
‘taxonomy’ => ‘post_tag’,
‘terms’ => $tag,
),
),
) );
// Return array with sticky posts if no Featured Content exists.
if ( ! $featured ) {
return self::get_sticky_posts();
}
// Ensure correct format before save/return.
$featured_ids = wp_list_pluck( (array) $featured, ‘ID’ );
$featured_ids = array_map( ‘absint’, $featured_ids );
set_transient( ‘featured_content_ids’, $featured_ids );
return $featured_ids;
}
/**
* Return an array with IDs of posts marked as sticky.
*
* @static
* @access public
* @since Twenty Fourteen 1.0
*
* @return array Array of sticky posts.
*/
public static function get_sticky_posts() {
$settings = self::get_setting();
return array_slice( get_option( ‘sticky_posts’, array() ), 0, $settings[‘quantity’] );
}
