wordpress displaying thumbnails and setting styles - css

Question

hi what i'm trying to do is show posts with thumbnails and display the title and the first three lines of the content what i'm trying to acheive is this
Date
thumbnail - title
some content
at moment i have the featured image coming through but i'm struggling to get the rest just to reiterate i'm wanting a featured image on the left hand side and next to it the title date and content next to it. heres what it looks like at the moment
heres my function
if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) {
add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' ); } //Adds thumbnails compatibility to the theme
set_post_thumbnail_size( 200, 170, true ); // Sets the Post Main Thumbnails
add_image_size( 'recent-thumbnails', 55, 55, true ); // Sets Recent Posts Thumbnails}
function recentPosts() {
$rPosts = new WP_Query();
$rPosts->query('cat=4&showposts=3&orderby=date');
while ($rPosts->have_posts()) : $rPosts->the_post(); ?>
<li>
<?php the_post_thumbnail('recent-thumbnails'); ?>
<h2><?php the_title();?></h2>
</li>
<?php endwhile;
wp_reset_query();
}
heres my css
#posts { width:600px; height:auto; float:left; margin-top:20px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#080808;}
#posts .news{ width:600px; height:auto; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#000000; display:inline-block;}
#posts a{ font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#000000; display:inline-block;}
heres how i'm calling it in my index.php
<div class="news">
<?php echo recentPosts(); ?>
</div>

Answer 1

To get the thumbnail, title and text displaying you could use something like this:
<?php the_post_thumbnail('recent-thumbnails'); ?>
<h2><?php the_title();?></h2>
<p><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
#news img {
float:left;
margin: 0 5px 5px 0;
}
#news h2 {}
#news p {}
You can control excerpt length to display only a certain amount of characters from the post. See more info on using the excerpt function on Wordpress Codex http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_excerpt