wordpress custom post title viewer development - wordpress

Question

I want to create something like this in wordpress, so that in a wordpress page I can show users the post titles which are linked to their post links and also the date of those posts.
what kind of code should I use in wordpress? I am new to wordpress coding. so please give me some sample code so that I can use.
also I want to choose posts from one special category. how can I do that? is there any wordpress plugin which does this?
pagination links are also important to have.
Thanks

Answer 1

I would look into WP_Query. It may take a little while to get used to it but it lets you echo all the data you want. I use it for almost everything now.
In the $args array you define what you want to query (such as posts from a specific category, how many, in what order), and then from there you can pull the title, the date published, the attachments, the excerpt, featured image, etc.
<?php
// The Query
$args = array(
'numberposts' => '5',
'category_name' => 'my-category', // the slug
'offset' => '0',
'orderby' => 'post_date',
'order' => 'DESC',
'post_status' => 'publish'
);
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
// The Loop
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
echo '<ul>';
while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
$the_query->the_post();
echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
/* Restore original Post Data */
wp_reset_postdata();
} else {
// no posts found
}
?>
The great part about WP_query is that you can use it to have multiple loops on 1 template. This would replace the normal loop in the template.
For date, you would use the_date() or get_the_date(). So you might do an
echo '<p><span class="date">' . get_the_date() . '</span> <a class="my-title" href="' . get_the_title() . '">' . get_the_title() . '</a></p>';
There's more than one way to do this (and almost everything) in WordPress, so it depends on what you're doing and what else is going on in the code. There's query_posts() and wp_get_recent_posts()... really there's too many to mention. I'd post more links but my rep isn't high enough to.
I'd start looking into WP_Query as you can pull whatever data you want from that and format it to your heart's content.
Anyway, hope this well help you.