You could also try posting a question at the WordPress forum. Be sure to put “Blix” in your title and explain your problem clearly. Volunteers run the forum, so don’t be impatient if they don’t answer quickly.

Good luck to you!

Remember that I made a mistake trying it out, and Ashwin had to set me to rights. If you’re not sure how to work within your WordPress theme files, then I don’t recommend trying this unless you’re willing to risk making a mistake and messing up your blog.

Open up your wp-content–> themes–> [your theme]–> index.php file. Before you do anything to index.php, be sure to save a copy of it in a safe place, so that if you mess things up, you can go right back to the “good” copy of index.php.

Find where “the Loop” begins. If you have the most recent version of WordPress (should be 1.5.2), you want to look for these lines within the index.php file:


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


…or something similar. “The loop” ends with these lines:


< ?php endwhile; else: ?>
< ?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
< ?php endif; ?>


If you want to try copying and pasting, copy this text over the old Loop:


< ?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
< ?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
< ?php list ($post_expired) = get_post_custom_values('postexpire');
/* only pay attention to the first one if there's a duplicate */ ?>
< ?php if ( !$post_expired || current_time('mysql') < $post_expired) :
/* if there's no expiration date or it's not been reached yet, go
ahead with displaying the post */ ?>
< ?php require('post.php'); ?>
< ?php endif; /* end not-expired test */ ?>
< ?php endwhile; ?>

Save this index.php and upload it to your theme folder, and see if your website works correctly. If it does, then you can go ahead and create a custom field value on the post’s editing page in the Dashboard.

If it doesn’t work, replace the index.php file that isn’t working with the saved one that does work, and find somebody else to do it!