How to Include WordPress Components in Your Custom Web Pages

Ever wanted to take a piece of WordPress functionality and put it in a non-WordPress portion of your website? Like, for example, pulling your WordPress Sidebar and dropping it into a custom page of yours?

Well, here’s how to make it work.

The Wrong Way ​

Many have tried doing this simple include below and have met with failure. What they did was add the include by itself, like so:

wp_get_archives('type=monthly');

This ends in a fail whale because PHP doesn’t know what to do with that request. Within a WordPress page it’s fine because you already have the required headers loaded, but in your own custom web site they aren’t there.

So we’ll add them.

The Right Way ​

// turn off WordPress themes and include the WordPress core:
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/wp-blog-header.php');
wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>

If you include the WordPress blog header first (wp-blog-header.php) and then invoke the piece of code you want, you’ll be able to add WordPress functionality anywhere you want on your custom pages!

The code above (get_archives) allows me to display my entire blog archive on any page of mine I want — even outside of a WordPress-generated page.

This lets you get tons of functionality from WordPress, including:

1. Get a list of all your links

2. Pull your tag cloud from your posts

3. Pull your WordPress sidebar into a page

…and there are dozens more here.

This is how I have created the page you’re reading this on. The entire page is custom code; I only have a couple of pieces of WordPress embedded within it — the loop, and my archives toward the bottom on the right. This gives me the ability to seamlessly blend my WordPress content with my custom content at danielmiessler.com/study and danielmiessler.com/writing.

It’s the perfect combination — custom control + WordPress functionality.

Ping me at daniel@danielmiessler.com with any questions…

Links ​

[ WordPress’s get_archives | wordpress.org ][ WordPress Template Tags | wordpress.org ][ The WordPress Loop | wordpress.org ][ The WordPress Codex | wordpress.org ]