I have recently installed the Montezuma theme and love the look and feel of it.

I am trying to create a page template that will list posts of a given category/multiple categories in alpha order by post title, but every time I create a custom template and assign it to my page, it seems to incorrectly parse out

What I have in my theme:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="main" class="row">
	
	<div id="content" class="col8">
		
		<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class('cf'); ?>>

			<h1>
				<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
				<?php bfa_comments_number(); ?>
			</h1>
			
			<div class="post-bodycopy cf">
				<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php
// The Query
query_posts( array( 
  'category_name' => 'food-drink', 
  'posts_per_page' => -1 ) );
?>

    <?php
// The Loop
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
	echo '<h1>';
	the_title();
	echo '</h1>';
	the_excerpt();
	the_date();
	echo 'Categories: ';
	the_category(', ');
	echo '</p>';
	endwhile; ?>

	  <?php

	  // Reset Query
	  wp_reset_query();

	  ?>
             <?php wp_link_pages( array( 
					'before' => __( '<p class="post-pagination">Pages:', 'montezuma' ), 
					'after' => '</p>'
				) ); ?>  
              
             
			</div>

			<?php edit_post_link( __( 'Edit', 'montezuma' ) ); ?>

		</div>
		
		<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>
		
	</div>
	
	<div id="widgetarea-one" class="col4">
		<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'Widget Area ONE' ); ?>
	</div>
		
</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

And this is what appears, formatted with the style of the main body text of my page:

Content goes here.

'food-drink', 'posts_per_page' => -1 ) ); ?> '; the_title(); echo ''; the_excerpt(); the_date(); echo 'Categories: '; the_category(', '); echo '
'; endwhile; ?>

I've run the PHP through a parser and removed all errors it reported, but it still doesn't seem to work as expected.

Am I doing something wrong? Is the Montezuma theme stripping out certain PHP code and rendering the loop inert? Do I need to change a setting or adjust the code somewhere?

I am a complete newbie to PHP so it could be something very obvious and I just don't have sophisticated enough understanding to recognize it, but if someone can point out my error and/or direct me to where I can learn more, that would be immensely helpful

Is this a physical or virtual template?

I believe it is a virtual template - I created it using the Main Templates option within the Montezuma theme backend.

if you read the onscreen documentation you wll notict that there is limitd PHP you can put in a template. There is even a tab in the upper right that will list all the php you can use.

Okay, thank you for clearing that up - I read that there was limited PHP allowed and scoped out the list of functions, but I didn't realize it was limited to ONLY those functions and their args.

I assume that is only for the virtual templates? i.e. if I bring it in as a physical template, I can still use the various bits of code I've found in the Codex to accomplish what I've been trying?

This post might help. A sidebar can go in the content section of a template, and you can use any php in the sidebar with this technique. You may need to adjust the CSS so nobody notices that you've used a sidebar. Juggledad also found a different plugin that works right in the text widget.