How to display recent posts on home page with custom HTML

Question

I am looking to display x (undecided) number of recent posts (no more than 10) on my home page. For each post, I would like to display the title and a snippet of the content. I can whip up a SQL query myself to get this but I was wondering what the WordPress function is to get this. The closest I have gotten is <?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=10&format=html'); ?>. I would also like to custom format the HTML. An example of the output I would like looks like this

<div id="posts">
    <section class="post">
        <h2><a href="[post uri]">[post title]</a></h2>
        <p>[post snippet]</p>
    </section>
    <section class="post">
        <h2><a href="[post uri]">[post title]</a></h2>
        <p>[post snippet]</p>
    </section>
</div>

Answer 1

<div id="posts">

<?php

    // define query arguments
    $args = array(
        'posts_per_page' => 8, // your 'x' goes here
        'nopaging' = true
        // possibly more arguments here
    );

    // set up new query
    $tyler_query = new WP_Query( $args );

    // loop through found posts
    while ( $tyler_query->have_posts() ) : $tyler_query->the_post();
        echo '<section class="post">'.
             '<h2><a href="'.
             get_permalink().
             '">'.
             get_the_title().
             '</a></h2><p>'.
             get_the_excerpt().
             '</p></section>';
    endwhile;

    // reset post data
    wp_reset_postdata();

?>

</div>

By default an excerpt is 55 words long. For a custom excerpt length drop the following in your theme's functions.php:

function tyler_excerpt_length( $length ) {
    return 70; // change number of words to your liking
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_length', 'tyler_excerpt_length' );

If your not satisfied with the default "Continue reading" link at the end of the excerpt, drop this into functions.php:

function tyler_excerpt_more( $more ) {
    return 'Read the whole post >>'; // again, change to your liking
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_more', 'tyler_excerpt_more' );

If, since you have the post link in the title, you want the excerpt's "more" link not to display, have the above function return an empty string, i.e. return '';.

Further reading:

• WP_Query class
• get_permalink
• get_the_title
• Excerpts
• get_the_excerpt