simplistik

Has nothing to do with WP, it’s all about your stylesheets.

Navigation issue is this rule

#header-menu > li:hover,
#header-menu > li.current-menu-item,
#header-menu > li.current-menu-ancestor {
	background: url(images/sprite_h.png) left -4px repeat-x #eee;
}

line 31 of style-light.css

Links issue is this rule

a:hover {
	color:					#0d0d0d;
	text-decoration:		none;
}

line 56 of page.css

Actually if you don’t need the flexibility of say, being able to associate robust content w/ your imagery, it might just be simpler to use NextGEN: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/ that would be the quickest.

because you’re using a custom query loop you need to use this method:
http://scribu.net/wordpress/wp-pagenavi/wpn-2-74.html

in that template looks like you just need to do

<?php if ( function_exists('wp_pagenavi') ) wp_pagenavi(array('query' => $wp_query)); ?>

LOL to be honest it’s just all kinda strange, something should work.

1. Did you try hard coding the 5 into the $args['posts_per_page'] = $posts; change it to $args['posts_per_page'] = 5;.
2. Next thing to ask is to make sure that all the items you’re calling are in fact posts, and not some other post_type.
3. Inside the original function we are screwing with do a print_r on $popular:

   $popular = new WP_Query($args);
   print_r($popular);

   View source on your page, and check the query that it’s outputting in the object and make sure that it’s correct (or post the whole object array here)

Yea, I assumed $args['post_type'] = 'post'; would do nothing since it’s the default, go ahead and remove the post_type argument.

I had to give in and open up a WordPress site to test this out, cause this is a weird friggen problem. So here’s the deal, the codex says to use post__in like:

array(603,654,657,714,724)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Parameters

this seems to work for everything except posts, to get it to work for posts i had to do:

array('603','654','657','714','724');

so you should have

$args = array();
$args['posts_per_page'] = $posts;
$args['post__in'] = array('603','654','657','714','724');
$args['ignore_sticky_posts'] = 1;
$args['orderby'] = 'ID';

try that, lemme know how it goes

Hrmmmm, I guess try setting the post_type after the orderby… lol, add

$args['post_type'] = 'post';

if you want posts or

$args['post_type'] = 'page';

if you want pages or if post doesn’t work … LoL

To be honest I’m not sure. It’s isolated to the front end of WordPress. I used to encounter this issue a lot, and that’s the only way I know to fix it. I know that the function that gets used inside of the get_header() function is a require_once() but it’s still strange none-the-less.

You haven’t changed the $orderby, if you read it, it still shows $orderby, with the dollar sign it needs to be the ampersand &orderby

$the_query = new WP_Query('showposts='. $posts .'&orderby=ID&include=603,654,657,714,724');

should be the exact code