ejm

Thank you for your reply, Marzar. But it does not really clarify for me how to use a conditional tag in order to surround the fields in an unordered list as described in this thread:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/138355

I’m running wp 2.0.11 with “Get Custom Field Values 2.1” and had hoped that this thread might resolve the difficulty I am having because not every post uses the fields. I read the thread Anyone using “Get Custom Field Values” plugin in WP2.2? and also have stared many times at WP Codex: Using Custom Fields but have been unsuccessful at translating the contents. (I have only a vague understanding of PHP…)

This is the code I am currently using that does not break the page:

<?php // add custom fields
if (function_exists('c2c_get_custom')) {
echo '<ul class="post-meta">';
echo c2c_get_custom('Date of Publication', '<li>', '</li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication', '<li class="publication"><strong>', '</strong></li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication Title', '<li class="pubtitle"><strong>', '</strong></li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication Author', '<li>By ', '</li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication URL', '<li><small>(<a href="', ' " title="offsite link">learn more by following this link</a>)</small></li>');
echo '</ul>';
}
else {echo '';}
?>

Unfortunately, this does not quite achieve my expected results – if there are no custom fields filled in, then the source code shows

<ul class="post-meta"></ul>

which means that the page does not validate.

After reading this thread, I tried the following:

if (is_array(c2c_get_custom($field))) {
echo '<ul class="post-meta">';
echo c2c_get_custom('Date of Publication', '<li>', '</li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication', '<li class="publication"><strong>', '</strong></li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication Title', '<li class="pubtitle"><strong>', '</strong></li>');
echo c2c_get_custom('Publication Author', '<li>By ', '</li>');

echo c2c_get_custom('Publication URL', '<li><small>(<a href="', ' " title="offsite link">learn more by following this link</a>)</small></li>');
echo '</ul>';
}
else {
echo '';
}

I’ve also tried opening with

if (!empty(c2c_get_custom)) {

and while these do not cause error messages, they also do not display any custom fields at all.

In the css for .post-meta, there is a border, so adding an empty set of <li></li> is not a viable option either because there will be an empty bordered section whenever the custom fields are not filled in.

Any ideas on how I can fix this?

(I hope this made sense!)

-ejm

P.S. Here is a post that has the custom fields filled in: etherwork.net/blog/?p=447
and here is one that does not:
etherwork.net/blog/?p=446

(Please refrain from making those URLs into live links – I’m really getting tired of spammers…)

I just had a pingback from this site on my blog and took a look at the post on IP 74.208.16.30 (consalsita.com). I was not sure whether it was a spammer or not and googling has brought me to this post.

The title of the suspect post is exactly the same title as a post on my blog and the text written is an excerpt of my post. However, the links to that are posted directly below the suspect post title are not mine. There was also a popup that was blocked by firefox. I did NOT choose to look at whatever was there.

I believe that the reason for this site is to garner google ad revenue.

I have just reported the site to wordpress.com just in case it is a wordpress.com site. I also plan to report it to google.

edit: This is how I reported the site to google ads:

I clicked on the “Ads by Google” link that was on the suspect page. I was taken to a feedback page and clicked on the link “Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw” and filled out the form that appeared.

You can also use the google adsense contact form. If you use the form, Google asks that

In your message, please be sure to include:

# The URL of the violating website
# A description of the violation
# The specific location of the violation, if applicable

Bonafide, your second thought is correct. The only people who can change the topic status from unresolved to resolved are the person who created the thread and moderators. As mentioned, the moderators are reluctant to change the status because only the person who asked the question will know whether the solution actually works.