<a href="{comment_url_title_auto_path}#comments">{comment_total} {if comment_total == 1}Comment{if:else}Comments{/if}</a>

WordPress:

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In any case, here’s how you can do it using Custom Fields in WordPress.

Find a post that’s out of date and edit it. Down towards the bottom of the page, there’s a section labeled Custom Fields, click it to open it, and enter something like this:

Use whatever name you want for the key and value, but be sure to change the related fields in the other places I’m about to mention.

I want the notice to show up on the post’s permalink page, so in single.php, I put this right after the start of ‘the loop’:

$status = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'status', true);

As you can probably guess, that just grabs the content for the ‘status’ key for the current post and stores it in the variable $status. Easy. If the post doesn’t have the value, the get_post_meta tag is nice enough to fail quietly (as far as I can tell).

Now that you have this very valuable information, you can change CSS, add a warning message, or whatever your little heart desires.

For example:

if ($status == 'outdated') include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/outdated.php');

Sources

• I got the idea from Bryan Veloso‘s Avalonstar
• WordPress Codex / get_post_meta
• WordPress Codex / Using Custom Fields

Under Settings > Reading > Posts page, pick the page template you want to use.

If you’re using a static page template for the home page, be sure not to name it home.php. Name it something like homepage.php and choose that template for the home page (you can still call it “Home” inside the template).

The “Posts page” will use index.php whether you like it or not. I couldn’t find a way to override that inside of Post management in WordPress.

There are a couple of ways to keep your WordPress install up-to-date. The easiest way is to install it as an svn:external. In the root of your (Subversioned) site:

svn propedit svn:externals .

Then paste in:

wordpress http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/[current_tag_number]

Replacing [current_tag_number] with the current tag number (check wordpress.org/download/ to see the latest). Alternately, you can just download WordPress and put it in a wordpress folder (or wp or whatever you prefer) in the root of your site.

Now copy the default wp-content folder from the fresh copy of WordPress to the root of your site:

cp -R wordpress/wp-content .

Delete the existing .svn folders from your fresh new wp-content.

cd wp-content
rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

Now create your wp-config.php

cd ..
cp wordpress/wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Edit the file and add your database info. While you’re in there, add these settings to the top of the file:

// Custom wp-content folder: 
define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/wp-content' );
define('WP_CONTENT_URL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . '/wp-content');

define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . '');
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . '/wordpress');

Those settings do a number of cool things. First, you’re allowing WordPress to use your fresh copy of wp-content in the root of your site instead of the one that lives inside of the wordpress folder. Second, you’re specifically setting some WordPress variables that are normally defined in its database in PHP, so that you won’t have to readjust your settings between development (on your local machine) and where it lives in the wild. Third, you’re telling WordPress where to find it’s core files since you’ve put them in a subfolder (/wordpress).

Now copy index.php from WordPress to the root of your site:

cp wordpress/index.php .

Edit the file and change the line that says:

require('./wp-blog-header.php');

To this:

require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');

If you want fancy URLs (you do), create an .htaccess file:

touch .htaccess
chmod 666 .htaccess

Duplicate the default theme:

cp -R wp-content/themes/default wp-content/themes/[your_new_theme]

Replacing [your_new_theme] with what you want your new theme to be called.

Bonus: keep Akismet as an svn:external for automatic updates from Automattic.

cd wp-content/plugins/
rm -rf akismet

Or, if you’re already committed your code:

svn rm akismet
svn ci -m "Moving Akismet to external."

Then setup the external link:

svn propedit svn:externals .

Paste in:

akismet http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/akismet/trunk/

That’s it.

Now commit your code and get to it. If you get lost, check out wp-template for an example.

Updating WordPress

svn propedit svn:externals .

Change the tag number, then svn update and you’re good to go.

If you’re not using svn:externals, just dump a new copy of WordPress over the one that’s already in /wordpress. There’s no way you can hurt your existing content, because that’s all in the /wp-content folder in the root of your site.

Sources

• Installing/Updating WordPress with Subversion
• Changing File Permissions
• Recursively delete .svn directories
• Editing wp-config.php
• WP Config
• Giving WordPress its own Directory

Update (November 1, 2006): It really works. I’ve got all 3 of my blogs (one two three) now set up on SVN. The next step will to be when I add my customized themes to Subversion so all I ever have to do is go to the command line to do anything. No (s)FTP or anything. I imagine this will make switching servers really easy now.

Update (January 23, 2007): To upgrade to WordPress 2.1:

1. Disable all plugins (take a screenshot first)
2. Run this command:

svn switch http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/branches/2.1/

1. Go to your admin screen and update the database when prompted.
2. Enable your plugins again.

Update (May 22, 2007): Just upgraded to version 2.2