ElevenTwenty2

Yes, I’m entering a category number into the custom field value.

the page is a custom page I created artist-template.php using the instructions from http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#Creating_Your_Own_Page_Templates

here’s the exact code i’m using in one of the sections.

<!-- begin top tracks -->
			<div id="artist-toptracks">
				<h2></h2>
				<div class="tptracksbox">

					<?php
						$toptracks = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'artist-audio-category', true);
						$tracks = new WP_Query('cat=' . $toptracks . '&numberposts=5');
  						while ($tracks->have_posts()) : $tracks->the_post();
					?>

					<!-- begin post roll-->
					<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
					<div class="instru-content2">
						<?php the_content(); ?>
					</div>

					<?php endwhile; ?>
				</div>
			</div>
			<!-- end top tracks -->

Could it be that it’s trying to pull the custom field from the posts instead of the page?

Hmm it seems if I replace the $post->ID with the Page ID # it seems to work fine. I use $post->ID on all previous get_post_meta functions on the same page, and they work fine. Would the WP_Query be causing the problem?