Thought I would post this, since I spent hours looking for a solution before I solved it. I was looking for any way to create a page where certain content was on the top (sticky or otherwise), and allow posts to populate it from a specific category. I didn't want just a list of post titles, I wanted the full posts. Here's my fix. I edited the page2cat.php from this plugin:

http://pixline.net/wordpress-plugins/category-page-wordpress-plugin/en/


Here was the original function:

function page2cat_content_catlist($content){
global $post;
	if ( stristr( $content, '[catlist' )) {
		$search = "@(?:<p>)*\s*\[catlist\s*=\s*(\w+|^\+)\]\s*(?:</p>)*@i";
		if	(preg_match_all($search, $content, $matches)) {
			if (is_array($matches)) {
				$title = get_option('p2c_catlist_title');
				if($title != "") $output = "<h4>".$title."</h4>"; else $output = "";
				$output .= "<ul class='p2c_catlist'>";
				$limit = get_option('p2c_catlist_limit');
				foreach ($matches[1] as $key =>$v0) {
					$catposts = get_posts('category='.$v0."&numberposts=".$limit);
						foreach($catposts as $single):
						$output .= "<li><a href='".get_permalink($single->ID)."'>".$single->post_title."</a></li>";
						endforeach;
					$search = $matches[0][$key];
					$replace= $output;
					$content= str_replace ($search, $replace, $content);					
				}
			$output .= "</ul>";
			}
		}
	}
return $content;
}

Change this:

					foreach($catposts as $single):
						$output .= "<li><a href='".get_permalink($single->ID)."'>".$single->post_title."</a></li>";
						endforeach;

To this:

						foreach($catposts as $single):
						$excerpt = $single->post_content;
						$output .= "<li><a href='".get_permalink($single->ID)."'>".$single->post_title."</a></li><p>".$excerpt."</p>";
						endforeach;

Thats it! I fiddled around a lot so if there was something else I changed and yours doesn't work, let me know.

glb9235: make sure to see what happens when you go to a second page (change teh number of posts per page to easily test it.) I tryed playing with page2cat at one point and it kept restarting the posts from the beginning on each new page.

Hmm, that did seem to cause problems. Mine didn't create pages at all, just cut off after a certain number of posts. Any ideas?

I had forgotten to mention I added this to the functions.php file:

function neat_trim($str, $n, $delim='...') {
$str = str_replace("\n","",$str);
$str = strip_tags($str);
  $len = strlen($str);
   if ($len > $n) {
       preg_match('/(.{' . $n . '}.*?)\b/', $str, $matches);
       return rtrim($matches[1]) . $delim;
   }
   else {
       return $str;
   }
}

Edit: Extending it to 25 posts is an option in the plugin settings.

Hmm. I really want to be have page links from page menu navigation correspond to some categories of posts: is the above the only way to do this??

That seems very complicated, but maybe I'm not understanding what glb9235 was actually accomplishing. Already, I have this:

http://endthelockout.org/

That second line is, of course, the categories. All I really want to do is integrate those into the page menu bar. Do I need to edit the code as glb9235 has done, or is there an easier solution?

<<crossing fingers>>

Thanks so much for any assistance!

Did you ever look at the List Category Posts plugin? This uses a shortcode with plenty of variables. One of which is to show entire post.

Did you ever look at the List Category Posts plugin? This uses a shortcode with plenty of variables. One of which is to show entire post.

Thats it! I can't believe I searched so hard and wasn't able to find a plugin that does exactly what I wanted.

Jeff: You can use the plugin mentioned above to do this, or use the Page Links To plugin to put links to your category pages on the page menu bar.

Edit:

I was able to tweak the List Category Posts plugin template to work with atahualpa. It now uses mostly the same formatting as you set for normal posts - with header, byline, and body. Thought it might be useful.

//Posts loop:
foreach($catposts as $single):
	$output .= '<div class="post"><div class="post-headline"><h2><a href="' . get_permalink($single->ID) . '">' . $single->post_title . '</a></h2></div>';
	//Style for date:
	if($atts['date']=='yes'){
		$output.= ' <div class="post-byline"> ' . get_the_time($atts['dateformat'], $single) .'</div>';
	}
	//Show author?
	if($atts['author']=='yes'){
		$lcp_userdata = get_userdata($single->post_author);
		$output.=' <div class="post-byline"> ' .$lcp_userdata->display_name .'</div>';
	}
	//Show content?
	if($atts['content']=='yes' && $single->post_content){
		$lcpcontent = apply_filters('the_content', $single->post_content); // added to parse shortcodes
		$lcpcontent = str_replace(']]>', ']]&gt', $lcpcontent); // added to parse shortcodes
		$output.= '<div class="post-bodycopy clearfix">' . $lcpcontent . '</div>'; // line tweaked to output filtered content
	}
	//Show excerpt?
	if($atts['excerpt']=='yes' && $single->post_excerpt && !($atts['content']=='yes' && $single->post_content) ){
		$output .= '<div class="post-bodycopy clearfix">' . $single->post_excerpt . '</div>';
	}
	$output.='</div>';
endforeach;
?>

Sometimes they are illusive and keyword searches don't always work. I find some plugins in unusual places and I spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME on the computer. But wait... That's what I do to make a living. Glad it worked for you.