Neater Implementation of Asides

Ok so I’m trying to sort out asides for my new design, and I was looking at the standard code that’s shown in the codex (https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Adding_Asides), and reading through Matt’s implementation (https://photomatt.net/2004/05/19/asides/) and I’ve got to say it really is as ugly as sin. Sooo I scrounged around a bit and found that Joen’s Fauna has got what seems to be a very nice implementation of it all, however I don’t fully understand every line of code on there, so I was wondering if someone could shed some light on the whole thing.

Just to review, all I’m trying to achieve is asides for a particular category. Once that category is called it wraps it in another div. Joen’s added the eventuality of actually adding a sidenotes feature as well if you want that, however I don’t so I’m effectively trying to streamline. So here’s the code:

<?php /* Guess special categories */
$asides_cat = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT cat_ID FROM $wpdb->categories WHERE category_nicename = 'asides'");

$sidenotes_cat = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT cat_ID FROM $wpdb->categories WHERE category_nicename = 'sidenotes'");

query_posts('cat=-'. $sidenotes_cat.'&paged='.$paged);?>

For my particular case I’d get rid of the sidenotes_cat etc part of the code, however what I’m actually not sure about is what the last part of the code is actually doing. The part that starts query_posts. So any help with explaining that would be cool.

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

<?php if ( in_category($asides_cat) ) { ?>

<?php /* Asides box start */ if (!$asides) { ?>
<div class="box asides"><?php } $asides = true; ?>

Don’t really understand the last part of this code. If (!$asides), isn’t that if it’s not asides? But then it says $asides=true? I’m a bit confused by this one.

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/template-aside.php'); ?>

<?php } else if (!in_category($sidenotes_cat)) { ?>

<?php /* Asides box end */ if ($asides && !$asides_end) { ?>

</div><hr />
<?php } $asides_end = true; $asides = false; $asides_end = false; ?>

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/template-postloop.php'); ?>

<?php } ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

I’m a bit unsure about why there’s $asides_end = true but then goes to false afterwards. Any ideas?

<?php /* Asides box end */ if ($asides && !$asides_end) { ?></ul></div><hr /><?php } $asides_end = true; $asides = false; $asides_end = false; ?>

<?php $numposts = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish'"); ?>
<?php if ($numposts > $posts_per_page) { ?>
<div class="box-blank">
<div class="align-left"><?php next_posts_link(__('&laquo; Previous Entries')) ?></div>

<div class="align-right"><?php previous_posts_link(__('Next Entries &raquo;')) ?></div>
</div>

<?php } ?>

Ok last one is I don’t understand why there is another asides box end statement here?