Using wordpress to power a magazine site

[bbackhouse]

Firstly let me say that I don't really know anything about PHP or web development but I've been tasked by my brother in law to put together a website for a small magazine that he is starting. I built the main site in HTML and CSS and I decided to use Wordpress as a CMS system. On each relevant page of the website I have inserted the following code:

 

 

  <?php

require('wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');

?>

 

<?php

query_posts('category_name=sport');

?>

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

 

<?php echo "<br />"; ?>

 

<h1>

<?php the_title();  ?> 

</h1>  

 

<p>

<?php the_content(); ?>

</p>

 

<?php endwhile; ?>

 

 

 

This works great to bring in the content I want on that page using categories to define where it ends up. The problem is that as soon as I have a few posts the page gets very long. So what I would like to do is show just the image and first paragraph of the first 8 posts with a little "...more" link which when clicked will display the full post.

 

I would also like to add "next" and "previous" at the bottom of the page so older posts are still accessible to browse through.

 

If anyone would be able to help me with this I would be eternally grateful!

 

Thank you in advance and let me know if you need more info... As I mentioned I don't really know what I'm doing here!

 

 

[bbackhouse]

I'm need to get this site finished asap so would anyone be able to direct me to a resource that might help me work it out for myself? Any snippets of code that I could string together to get these functions working would also be of a massive help. Thanks!

[Ron916]

You probably want to research "wordpress child themes" and then make a child theme of the Twenty-Eleven theme and modify it to your liking