NC@WP

Your theme has something like this in its index file:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
  <div class="post">
    <!-- post-level stuff here -->
  </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

In WordPress lingo, it’s called The Loop. What you need is to modify it along these lines:

<?php 

// This part is responsible for retrieving information
// about the current user and can be placed anywhere
// before The Loop:
global $user_ID;
get_currentuserinfo();

?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
  <div class="post">
    <!-- post-level stuff here -->
<?php
  if ('' == $user_ID) {
    // user not logged in
    if (!is_defined('AD_SHOWN')) {
      // show ad
      define('AD_SHOWN', true);
    }
  }
?>
  </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

You can definitely use the template as a starting point for developing a theme. But to complete the development, you need to understand quite a few things about HTML, CSS, and PHP programming (both in general and as it pertains to WordPress).

Not a clue… There’s a great plugin called Embedded Video, but last I checked it doesn’t work with 2.5…

It never was at www.ads-software.com, it’s always been (and still is) at themes.wordpress.net…

No, but is does have a sister product called bbPress, which can be seamlessly integrated with it.

You’re going about it in reverse… You can’t “add WordPress to a template”; you need to adapt the template into a theme usable by WordPress (or install and enable a ready-made theme, of which there are literally thousands).

What you wrote won’t work as a plugin, simply because your function has no argument (and because you’re using the wrong hook). Here’s a rough (but tested) alternative draft:

<?php

/*
Plugin Name: Show Price
Plugin URI: https://www.ads-software.com/support
Description: Displays product price based on product ID.
Version: 0.1
Author: NC(at)WP
Author URI: https://www.ads-software.com/support

Usage: [showPrice: ID]

*/

function showPrice_install() {
  return true;
}

function showPrice_display($content = '') {
  ob_start();
  $currencySymbol = '&_#36;'; // U.S. dollar; replace if necessary
  $prices = array(
    1 => 5,
    2 => 6,
    3 => 7
  );
  $matches = array();
  $match = preg_match_all('/\[showPrice:(.*)\]/Ui', $content, $matches);
  foreach ($matches[1] as $k => $match) {
    $match = (int) trim($match);
    if (isset($prices[$match])) {
      $price = $currencySymbol . number_format($prices[$match], 2);
    } else {
      $price = 'N/A';
    }
    $content = str_replace($matches[0][$k], $price, $content);
  }
  ob_end_clean();
  return $content;
}

// Plugin core

if (isset($_GET['activate']) && $_GET['activate'] == 'true') {
  add_action('init', 'showPrice_install');
}
add_filter('the_content', 'showPrice_display');

?>

What you can do now is rewrite the population of the $prices array inside the showPrice_display() function, so that the array is populated from a CSV file or a database…

Be sure to remove the underscore from the $currencySymbol assignment; I put it in just to show that it is an HTML entity rather than the actual dollar sign…

Sounds like you need to write a custom plugin… In your post, you would type something like [showPrice: 1234]; the plugin would replace this with the current price of item number 1234.

Of course it’s possible. But you (or whoever else takes this up) need to be well-versed in HTML, CSS, PHP in general, and PHP as it pertains to developing WordPress themes in particular.

There is a lot of information about theme development in the Codex, so you should check it out…

What sort of newsletter are we talking about? Is it something you want to publish on the Web site or is it something that’s supposed to go out in an e-mail?

Admin panel is located in the /wp-admin subdirectory. So if your blog was set up at yoursite.com, the admin panel will be at yoursite.com/wp-admin. If your blog was setup at yoursite.com/blog, the admin panel will be at yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin.

Yes. You just need to query the wp_posts table in the WordPress database. Note, however, that wp_ is the default prefix that could have been set to something else during installation, so your database might have a different table name.

You need to write a plug-in for that… See the Plugin API documentation.

It is already open, unless your firewall blocks it. Just have your colleagues type https://yourcomputername/ (where yourcomputername is your computer’s network name) into their Web browsers. They can also use your computer’s IP address, for example, https://192.168.1.123/

December 2007 is in fact ancient. Read the most recent post on wp-united.com, it clearly says, Updated to work with phpBB3 RC8 & WordPress 2.3.1. Since then, phpBB 3 went into production and actually had a minor upgrade (so the current version is 3.0.1) and, more importantly, WordPress 2.5 came out, containing major modifications to user management, including the new password storage using the phpass library.

Nevertheless, if you’re inclined to try it out, let us know how it went.