How to create a "latest news" page showing a list of posts from blog category

Question

I am using the Modest theme from elegant themes at http://lilsaintz.co.nz

Under the slider on the homepage, there are three content areas that are generated from pages.

I would like to make one of the content areas a "Latest News" element showing the last 5 posts from the blog (category = blog).

Bearing in mind that I am a complete WP novice - although I am really good at following instructions :) - what would be the best way to go about doing this?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Probably the get_posts tag. It's simple, you just need a loop.

<?php
   $args = array( 'numberposts' => 5, 'cat' => 5 );
   $postslist = get_posts( $args );
   foreach ($postslist as $post) :  setup_postdata($post); ?> 
   <div>
    <?php the_date(); ?>
    <br />
    <?php the_title(); ?>   
    <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
   </div>
<?php endforeach; ?>

That will show the last 5 posts from the category with ID 5. Complete parameters list.