WordPress.org

Hello,

I'm new in WordPress and I'm trying to build a static front page
that would look the same as the default one, except that I don't want it to show the recent posts but only the one I choose.

I have found this piece of code in WordPress, but I don't know how to customize a CSS so that posts appear in an ordered list with the CSS ID whats-new.

<?php
$how_many=5; //How many posts do you want to show
require_once('wp-config.php'); // Change this for your path to wp-config.php file ?>
<ol id="whats-new">
<?
$news=$wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID,post_title FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE post_type=\"post\" AND post_status=\"publish\" ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT $how_many");
foreach($news as $np){
printf ("