OK, I am totally lost. How do I make this work?

like, i’m looking for a
<php include("SOMETHING");?>
or something along those lines, so that it just includes my latest news, and doesn’t edit my nav bar or anything.

A link to your site, please, we can’t guess.
And, if I understand correctly, you have to create your “own” template to call WP data.
For example, you can start reading this (it takes time):
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Templates
then this:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/The_Loop
and this to go further:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags

Or, find an already existing template that is working the way you want, and replace the layout by yours.

https://winter-storm-designs.alamoria.net/
it’s just a graphics site, i want to make wordpress into a news script… i don’t want any fancy stuff, just the latest entries to display on index.php… and i want to be able to change my layout without having to make.. templates or whatever.

Now I see. Why not including the WP RSS feed into your website? You have to find a good php script that will connect to the RSS feed of your WordPress, and copy the content online. WP doesn’t do this, you need to find a third party script (after called, syndication, rss feed reader, syndication, etc.)
But, you have to install a plain WordPress for example here:
https://winter-storm-designs.alamoria.net/news/, where “news” is the folder where you have installed wordpress, and then, you configure your online RSS feed reader to connect to:
https://winter-storm-designs.alamoria.net/news/feed/ to retrieve and display the news.

Okay, where would I find this RSS script you speak of?
And, I changed the wordpress to /news/, like you said =D

As always, Google is your friend:
https://www.resourceindex.com/
https://www.hotscripts.com/

You should NOT remove the “short and sweet” index.php file from your WP installation directory (=news)!

O_O which one do I use?? There are like, a million.
And what exactly is this going to do???

Sorry for all the trouble, but I’m so new to this, it’s not even funny.

Well, first of all, try not to be “smarter” than WP – if there is a package you MUST upload all the files. There is only ONE index.php in the root (main) directory of the WP package. Why did you delete it?

XD I’m not trying to be smarter. I did upload the entire thing, but into my main directory (this was before i found out it should be in a subdirectory), and i had replaced MY index.php with WP’s index.php. I simply went to edit index.php so it would only show the news, and not the templates and such. Apparently, this doesn’t work like cutenews, so i uploaded WP’s index.php into the /news folder when i changed everything over.

So exactly what RSS feed thingy should I use? God, I’m bad at this.

Argh, can no one help me?

First of all, you should learn a little bit of patience. There’s lots of people asking for help, but only a few *volunteers* than can help out.

From your description, it sounds like you already have an existing website, but you just want to add WordPress to it. What you should do is – first of all, since you’ve messed up your current installation – remove the current installation. (This also means logging into your host site and deleting your database, then re-create it). Then, upload all of your wordpress files and folders into the folder yoursite.com/wordpress. Then run your installation from there.

After you’ve done that, you can open up your current and existing index page (on the site your running right now), and at the top of that file, put in include('/home/your_user/public_html/wordpress_directory/wp-config.php') (you want to use the direct path from your server – NOT the URL, and don’t go “relative” because it may get messed up).

Now, on your index page, you can simply include the Loop where you want the “posts” to show up.

@doodlebee
Woah! I learned something, including The Loop outside WordPress folder. This tip is far more better than my RSS thing (which is the way to work outside the same website).

Yeah, I discovered this form someone else on the forum (Handy, I think) a few months back. I have a contact form I’ve developed, and I wanted to use it on my site – he told me how to use *my* script, but utilize the WP stuff for the layout on the form.

It was such a neat trick that I’ve used it several times since for clients on their sites – I have one client that wanted a static front page, but she wanted 4 categories (one post each) to show up on the front page…using that trick it was easy to do for her.

(If you want to see what it looks like: https://www.soulofmoney.org – the text in the header, and the three “blurbs” at the bottom are all category posts – when she wants to announce something new, the new inof pops up in the correct place. And for the record, I *did not* design this site – so not my design. I’m just the one who coded it ?? )

But yeah, it’s been *really* handy to know that bitty piece of info. You can do *a lot* with it.