Displaying a video on the homepage via a custom field inside a php widget

Question

I'm trying to get a video to display inside a widget which is called from a custom field inside a post. The code I am using is here:

<?php query_posts('cat=8&showposts=1'.get_option('posts_per_page')); ?>
<?php if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?><?php if( get_post_meta($post->ID, "youtube", true) ): ?>

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="The W Club: <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

<iframe width="250" height="199" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "youtube", true); ?>?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<?php else: ?>

Video can not be displayed.

<?php endif; ?>

<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "youtube", true); ?>    

I have created a post inside category 8 (videos), entered a title, added the custom field (youtube) with the right code for the URL to display the video.

When I load the page all the widget displays is "Video can not be displayed", it doesn't use the post title and I can't get it to even echo the custom field entry.

Any ideas as to what is going on? The custom php widget I am using is http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/

Thanks in advance.

Of course if anyone has a better way of doing what I'm trying to achieve that would be awesome too :)

Answer 1

query_posts is for modifying the main loop only, if you're doing additional queries outside of or within the main loop, create a new WP_Query instance.

also- I'm not sure why you have showposts=1 and then get_option('posts_per_page') immediately after. If for example posts_per_page was set to 10, that string would evaluate to showposts=110

Answer 2

I didn't undertand you well but if you are saying that you save a custom field in a specific post you could use get_post()

<?php $youtube_post = get_post($my_id); ?>

<h2><a href="<?php echo get_permalink( $youtube_post->ID ); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="The W Club: <?php echo get_the_title($youtube_post->ID); ?>"><?php echo get_the_title($youtube_post->ID); ?></a></h2>

<iframe width="250" height="199" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/<?php echo get_post_meta($youtube_post->ID, "youtube", true); ?>?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Just replace $my_id with the post ID that you can retrieve, however if you just show a static video the best solution will be using a custom Video Widget where you can put the title and the video url, and the WP Embed class would do the work.

Answer 3

I have solved it using the following code, thanks to @Milo for the help in locating the issue and also an online guide: http://justintadlock.com/archives/2008/01/25/how-to-add-videos-to-your-wordpress-sidebar

<?php $my_query = new WP_Query('cat=8&showposts=1');
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); 

$video = get_post_custom_values($key = 'youtube');?>

<?php if(isset($video[0]) && strcmp($video[0],'')!= 0)  {?>

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="The W Club: <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>


<iframe width="250" height="199" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/<?php echo $video[0]; ?>?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


<?php } else {
echo 'Did not add a video URL to the custom field <strong> Key</strong> of "Video"';
echo '<!-- This user did not add the video URL to the correct custom field -->';
} 
?>

<?php endwhile; ?>