Wordpress posts_per_page Query Option Not Working

Fixing the posts_per_page query parameter bug in Carrington Themes

This is just a quick but annoying bug fix for anyone using the Carrington Theme for Wordpress.

If you are creating your own custom templates or pages and want to create your own custom query for the loop then you will probably want to specify how many articles to show.

This is determined by the posts_per_page query filter which determines how many articles are displayed during the loop output e.g

query_posts('cat=234&posts_per_page=5); 

However when I was trying to create a custom template earlier this value was being ignored and I couldn't work out why.

I eventually stumbled across a thread on the Wordpress forums that gave me the solution and it relates to a "feature" in the Carrington theme. Apparently it creates it's own function which ignores any value you may give the posts_per_page query option.

The solution is to disable this "feature" by removing the filter that sets it in motion. Once this is done your loop queries will take into account any value you give the posts_per_page query option.

You can disable this feature on the page you are building by adding the following code before creating your query loop.

remove_filter('pre_get_posts', 'cfct_posts_per_archive_page');

A full example of a custom template page based on the Carrington theme that uses this feature can be seen below.

<?php
/*
Template Name: SomethingTemplate
*/

if (__FILE__ == $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']) { die(); }
if (CFCT_DEBUG) { cfct_banner(__FILE__); }

get_header();

?>

<div id="content">

<?php


// get category id by name - if you know it then skip this and add it directly to the query
$id = get_cat_id('Some Category');

// remove the carrington blog filter that overwrites the posts_per_page query filter parameter
remove_filter('pre_get_posts', 'cfct_posts_per_archive_page');

// create a query to filter by the desired category and show the number of posts as specified in the global settings and handle paging
query_posts('cat='.$id.'&posts_per_page='.get_option('posts_per_page') . '&paged='.$paged);


if (have_posts()) {
 while (have_posts()) {
  the_post();?>
  <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="This is my blog article: <?php htmlspecialchars(the_title()) ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

 <?php the_content(); ?>

<?php
 }
}

?> 

 <div class="pagination">
 <span class="previous"><?php previous_posts_link('« Previous') ?></span>
 <span class="next"><?php next_posts_link('Next »') ?></span>
 </div> 

</div>