get_post_custom_values problem, please help

Question

i want get the "issue-cover" from archive page list, i done it. but it will cant get the meta value when i update/add new a post to the archice page.

<div class="monthly_archive">
    <?php $values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover"); 
          if (isset($values[0])) { 
      ?>
    <a target="_blank" href="<?php $values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover"); echo $values[0]; ?>" class="top-box-images"><img src="<?php $values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover"); echo $values[0]; ?>" title="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'issue', true); ?>"/></a>
    <?php }
        // if there's no img do replace it with no-img
     else { ?>
    <img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/no-img.gif" title="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'issue', true); ?>"/>
     <?php } ?>

    <span class="issue"><?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'issue', true); ?></span>
    <span class="cover-by"><?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'cover-by', true); ?></span>
    </div>

Answer 1

Just wondering why you are using $values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover"); so many times. You are missing the post->ID argument as the second parameter. You only need to define this variable once and then use it over and over.

I'm also wondering why you don't use post-thumbnails to solve this. There are two handy functions that are baked into Wordpress such as the following:

1. has_post_thumbnail()
2. the_post_thumbnail()

Your code would look like this:

<?php
global $post;
$values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover", $post->ID);
$title = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'issue', true);
$designer = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'cover-by', true);
if(has_post_thumbnail()):
    echo "<a target='_blank href='{$values[0]}'>";
    the_post_thumbnail(array(HEIGHT,WIDTH), array('title'=>$title));
    echo "</a>";
else:
    echo "<img src='".get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory')."/images/no-img.gif' title='$title' alt='$title' />";
endif;?>

To address the post meta not displaying, you will need to make sure you are operating within the loop.

Answer 2

Try sending the post id to the function:

$values = get_post_custom_values("issue-cover", $post->ID);