the_meta not working

the_meta() is inside the loop?

Yes it is:
<?php the_meta(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php edit_post_link(); ?>
The rest of the content appears fine.

and every key has a value?

Yes, there’s one key and it has a value.

in your CSS file do you have class ‘post-meta’ or ‘post-meta-key’? make sure the font color is not the same as the background color??

I kept the definitions from the default CSS file. But I’ve examined the generated HTML, and there’s nothing there.

Make sure you refresh, clear cache, and cookies, and refresh

Go to wp-admin/template-functions-post.php
and search for the_meta() function
and make sure it’s not an empty function (doubt it, but heh..)

You mean wp-includes, right? Because that’s where it is, and the function looks right.

Ok, I have nothing else to say but…
upload the original index file and call it from there and then…
I don’t know??

Weird… that actually worked.
The thing is, I have two pages where I’m displaying posts. One is my regular blog page, in /blog/. The other, where I’m trying to use the custom fields, is an the root level (it only shows messages in a certain category).
I tried moving the default page out to the root level, and it still worked, so it’s not the location of the page.

OK, I figured it out. It was because I was including wp-config.php instead of wp-blog-header.php; I did that because wp-blog-header seemed like it was set up to only work in the same directory as the rest of the WP stuff. But I guess that’s not really true.
What it boiled down to was the variable post_meta_cache wasn’t getting set up.

As I remember my various tweakings it always was necessary to include the wp-blog-header on other pages…

Without wp-blog-header.php, will the entry post even show up??