zmang

Sorry for the late reply.

And sorry yet again for asking yet another question without answering yours: Where do you want this to happen? Your main page? Category page? Static pages?

What I mean is that since you are talking about specific themes, I assume that you would want each theme and its related strand of posts to be in a particular location – though I have to ask to be sure.

The solution you are asking for substantially differs in difficulty depending on your answer.

Refer to the appropriate WordPress codex article on this.

Trying using the WP-Export plugin, and export to the MTimport format. You’ll get a text file which is highly (okay, maybe: reasonably) readable to me.

Edit your Sidebar template via Presentation >> Theme Editor.

Check the part at the bottom, where they talk about what has replaced it.

Then I suggest trying first. ??

1) Here’s one plugin that helps you list recent posts.

2) Sorry, I don’t completely understand this question. Which archive and list of what? Are you talking about the number of posts in your monthly or category archive pages?

See this WP Codex article. I do hope your posts only have one category though since when multiple categories come in, I’d say your job is going to involve substantial irritation.

Sorry, do you mean posts as in normal WordPress posts or comments?

I haven’t tried it myself, but are you sure you can’t put the plugin template tags on Pages and get it to work as well?

If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be difficult to modify the plugin involved. If it is necessary to take this path, please inform us which plugin you are using.

Let’s say this is how your posts are formatted in your Main Index Template:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
</div>
<?php endwhile;else; ?>'

So, each post that comes out will be wrapped by a div of class "post".

Therefore, in your stylesheet, add these to the post div:
.post {
float: left;
width: 200px;
height: 100px;
}’
assuming that your total container (page) width is 400px.

This might or might not be sufficient as it depends from theme to theme.

1. I apologise, I misread what you intended. What you want is still possible. Check Conditional Tags. They will allow you to set conditions for the display of your sidebar, e.g. only on certain pages, categories, etc.

2. By default in WordPress 2, the rich editor is turned on – that’s the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. And in fact, the steps you are already taking are correct. I suggest turning off the rich editor via the Users tab (a checkbox at the very bottom), and trying it again.

You might want to refer to an existing support thread on this issue.

1. Yes, this is possible. Refer to the WordPress Codex on wp_list_cats() and its parameters. The parameter you’ll be interested in is the “exclude” parameter.

2. You must enter your HTML via the non-WYSIWYG interface (press HTML on the WYSIWYG toolbar or turn off the rich editor).

3. You should be able to put any custom HTML, e.g. header, nav bar via the Theme Editor.

You might want to try this plugin.