Hi ysan,
Yes, as you’ve discovered, there are a number of use cases that the plugin doesn’t support right now. This includes a variety of logical expressions. For example, we don’t really have a way to express how to combine categories and tags using AND or OR operators.
I’ve submitted a feature suggestion to add more expression into the shortcode, so hopefully we’ll be able to free up some time to work on the plugin and see some added features coming down the pipe soon!
In the mean time, the simplest solution I can think of off hand — and there are drawbacks to this — would be to add a filter in the template. Basically, you’ll use the shortcode to get a larger list of results from the database than you want, then add a bit of code to the template to filter out the ones you don’t want.
The drawbacks to this are (1) a small efficiency loss due to dealing with extra posts, and (2) it may mess up pagination.
To illustrate the second point, let’s say you want 5 posts per page. Your shortcode draws 5 posts from the database, but the template filters 4 of these posts out, leaving only 1 viewable post.
With those caveats in mind, you might give this solution a try and see if it works, but may need to manage expectations.
If you only want to allow posts that include both tag1 AND tag2, you’ll add an if statement that uses the has_tag() function.
Add the following line above the line that says <!-- Start of Post Wrap -->
<?php if ( has_tag('tag1') && has_tag('tag2') ) { ?>
In English, this line says: if the post has ‘tag1’ and it has ‘tag2’ then include the following. You can use the tag slug or tag name in the parentheses.
At the bottom of the template, after the <!-- End of Post Wrap --> line, close the if block with another curly bracket:
<?php } //if has tag1 & tag2 ?>
The entire updated template would look something like this…
<!-- NOTE: If you need to make changes to this file, copy it to your current theme's main
directory so your changes won't be overwritten when the plugin is upgraded. -->
<?php if ( has_tag('tag1') && has_tag('tag2') ) { ?>
<!-- Start of Post Wrap -->
<div class="post hentry ivycat-post">
<!-- This is the output of the post TITLE -->
<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<!-- This is the output of the EXCERPT -->
<div class="entry-summary">
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>
<!-- This is the output of the META information -->
<div class="entry-utility">
<?php if ( count( get_the_category() ) ) : ?>
<span class="cat-links">
<?php printf( __( '<span class="%1$s">Posted in</span> %2$s', 'twentyten' ), 'entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links', get_the_category_list( ', ' ) ); ?>
</span>
<span class="meta-sep">|</span>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php
$tags_list = get_the_tag_list( '', ', ' );
if ( $tags_list ):
?>
<span class="tag-links">
<?php printf( __( '<span class="%1$s">Tagged</span> %2$s', 'twentyten' ), 'entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-tag-links', $tags_list ); ?>
</span>
<span class="meta-sep">|</span>
<?php endif; ?>
<span class="comments-link"><?php comments_popup_link( __( 'Leave a comment', 'twentyten' ), __( '1 Comment', 'twentyten' ), __( '% Comments', 'twentyten' ) ); ?></span>
<?php edit_post_link( __( 'Edit', 'twentyten' ), '<span class="meta-sep">|</span> <span class="edit-link">', '</span>' ); ?>
</div>
</div>
<!-- // End of Post Wrap -->
<?php } //if has tag1 & tag2 ?>
I hope this helps! Let me know what you find in any case 🙂
