Static Page vs Blog Page

Hey Everyone,

I have the static homepage working fine.

Getting the “posts page” (the page that will show all of my posts) is causing a few problems for me.

Here is the code for my index.php file….

<?php get_header(); ?>

	<div id="contentWrap" class="group">

		<div id="article">

				<?php if (have_posts()) :
				while (have_posts()) :
			    the_post();?>
			    <?php if(is_page('blog') ) { ?>
			    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><h4 style="color:red;"><?php the_title(); ?></h4></a>

			    <?php } else { ?>
			    <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
				<?php the_content(); ?>
				<?php } ?>
			    <?php
				 endwhile;
				endif;

				wp_reset_query();
				?>		

				<?php if(is_page() ) { ?>
				<!-- do nothing -->
				<?php } else { ?>

				<div class="feedback">
						<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>
				</div>

				<?php } ?>

		</div><!--article-->	

	</div><!--contentWrap-->

<?php get_footer(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

What I want to happen is that when the page is my blog page is uses the <h4>’s and links to each post. I don’t want every page to self link to itself either if i had to use all <h1>’s.

In my reading options I set the posts page to blog. Oddly enough this if statement works if I don’t set that as my posts page, or if I replace it with a different page ( for instance is_page(‘contact’) ).

Is there a certain way to target the posts page?

Further frustration:

I’ve been able to get around this, by simply creating a blog page, but for some reason when I do this, if I am to set parent pages to a page the URL doesn’t include it.

For instance:

mysite.com/dog/husky/

When I make dog the parent page to husky I want the URL to show what is above but it only shows as:

mysite.com/husky/

That only happens when I do not select a certain page as my posts page. I am clueless as to why.

Here is my blog page:

<?php /* Template Name: Blog */ ?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

	<div id="contentWrap" class="group">

		<div id="article">

				<?php
							$temp = $wp_query;
							$wp_query= null;
							$wp_query = new WP_Query();
							$wp_query->query('posts_per_page=5' .'&paged='.$paged);
							while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post();
							?>

								<h4><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h4>

									<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

								<?php endwhile; ?>
			<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('? Older Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries ?') ?></div>

								<?php $wp_query = null; $wp_query = $temp;?>	

		</div><!--article-->	

	 </div><!--contentWrap-->

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Any help is appreciated.