Let’s say you slice a website and need a nicely looking block in a sidebar with one recent post from certain category. Like in case with this one below: Daily Style Quote.
Logically following you need to run “the loop” and ask WordPress for just one post from just this particular category.
Here we go:
<div id="dailyStyleQuote">
<div id="quoteText">
<?php query_posts('category_name=Daily Style Quote&posts_per_page=1'); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post();
the_content('');
?>
</div>
<div id="quoteBottom">
<?php the_time('l, F j, Y'); ?>
<?php
$category_id = get_cat_ID( 'Daily Style Quote' );
$category_link = get_category_link( $category_id );
?>
<a href="<?php echo $category_link; ?>">archive</a>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>