I've spent a few days researching working with WP static pages - as separate from posts.
Although I've found useful guidance, I can't seem to find any good tutorials or worked examples that show me how to work with pages using a modified WordPress Loop that will enable me to filter on specific page criteria and extract relevant content.
I am creating a site that will be used annually for events. I want to have a page type (or custom post type) for Calls to Action. My expectation is that there will only ever be a limited number of call to action pages: typically only a few, and likely to be no more than 10 for the site.
I'd like the home page to list a summary of the content on these pages, and build that using a loop: but I want to filter this loop by both the specific page content type (e.g. CallToAction), as well as a status indicator, such as "sticky" or active.
I'd like to either interrogate the page by its template, or use some other indicator such as a custom field that I check.
Being able to set the desired order of the content pages, and sorting their appearance by that order is also a requirement, and I'd like these pages to be shown in the site menu: probably under a parent menu of Calls To Action.
Due to the limited number of pages and the relatively static nature of them, static pages feel like a good approach, however my reading so far indicates that what I want to do with the loop control could be challenging, maybe impossible.
My main question is can I interrogate a page to find out about template type or custom meta data within a loop?
A custom post type seems like a solution that will work, but having a separate post type seems overkill.
Suggestions?
[Edited 14 May 2013 to simplify/ clarify]