With a little resaearch I learned that we can manually build RSS feed links if we have the show id like this:

And the final RSS feed!

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to set a custom post type page as my wordpress homepage. I wanted the CPT pages to show in my dropdown menu and the CPT page to keep the homepage URL rather than automatically redirecting to the full URL.

I used these resources below to help learn about the issue and form a first draft in which I was able to select the CPT page and it would load, but I could not get it to load with the homepage as the URL in the address bar. Somewhere a redirect was happening.

The solution was to add a filter to pre_get_posts  that would detect if the first call originated from the homepage and tamper the query to look only for our set homepage id. We used this to programatically determine what the set homepage id was:

$frontpage_id = get_option('page_on_front');

//landing page plugin extension - http://www.store.inboundnow.com/

//add custom post type posts to static page options
add_filter( 'get_pages',  'lp_select_homepage_filter' );
function lp_select_homepage_filter( $pages )
{
	if(is_admin()){
		 $my_pages = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'landing-page' ) );

		 if ( $my_pages->post_count > 0 )
		 {
			 $pages = array_merge( $pages, $my_pages->posts );
		 }
	}
    return $pages;
}

//tamper with homepage query to call custom post type post if set
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'lp_enable_front_page' );
function lp_enable_front_page( $query ){
	$current_url = "http://".$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]."";
	$wordpress_url = get_bloginfo('wpurl' );

	$frontpage_id = get_option('page_on_front');
	if (($current_url==$wordpress_url)&& $frontpage_id!=0)
	{
		$query->query_vars['post_type'] = array( 'page','landing-page' );
		$query->query_vars['ID'] = $frontpage_id;
	}

}

//make sure the correct template is called
add_action("template_redirect", 'lp_template_redirect_frontpage');
function lp_template_redirect_frontpage() {
	global $post;

	$frontpage_id = get_option('page_on_front');
	$this_id =  $post->ID;

	if ($this_id == $frontpage_id && is_singular('landing-page') && $frontpage_id!=0)
	{
		$template = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'lp-selected-template', true);
		$template = str_replace('_','-',$template);

		if ($post->post_type == "landing-page")
		{
			if ($template!='default')
			{
				include(LANDINGPAGES_PATH.'templates/'.$template.'/index.php');
				die();
			}
		}
	}
}

Resources Studied

• http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/48704/custom-post-type-as-home-page-problem
• http://wpquestions.com/question/show/id/4112

global $table_prefix;
$query = "
	SELECT {$table_prefix}posts.post_title, {$table_prefix}posts.ID
	FROM {$table_prefix}posts, {$table_prefix}postmeta, {$table_prefix}postmeta AS pm1, {$table_prefix}postmeta AS pm2
	WHERE {$table_prefix}posts.ID = {$table_prefix}postmeta.post_id 					
		AND {$table_prefix}posts.post_type = 'advertisement'
		
		AND {$table_prefix}postmeta.meta_key = 'inline-placement-include-ids' 
		AND ({$table_prefix}postmeta.meta_value LIKE '%,{$pid},%' OR {$table_prefix}postmeta.meta_value = '' )
		
		AND pm1.meta_key = 'inline-placement-exclude-ids' 
		AND ( pm1.meta_value NOT LIKE '%,{$pid},%' OR pm1.meta_value = '' )
		
		AND pm2.meta_key = 'inline-placement-categories' 
		AND ( pm2.meta_value LIKE '%,{$cat_id},%' OR  pm2.meta_value LIKE '%,{$parent_cat_id},%' )
		
		";

$result = mysql_query($query);
if (!$result){echo $query;echo mysql_error(); exit;}				
				
// The Loop
while ($array = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
 $post_id = $array['ID'];
 //etc....

You may ask why I would want to do this.

For some reason Google is creating tag archives on sites that have no posts for those tags. These tag archives pull in keyword targeted traffic but does not serve the traffic any related posts!

In order to solve this issue the same technology used to power our Smart 404 module is used to redirect visitors landing on tag archives (if the option is enable. It comes disabled by default).

It WILL NOT redirect visitors that click on tag archive links. It will only redirect traffic arriving from an external source.

It will not redirect spiders.

So if this is something you're interested in the feature can be found in the ‘Smart 404′ module of WP Traffic Tools.

Cheers!

Did you know that some people say they are looking for a cloaking plugin when they really are simply wanting a link masking plugin .

What's the difference between masking and cloaking ? It's simple! Masking changes the URL structure and leverages redirect technologies to send the user elsewhere. Like a shortened link! Goog.gl and Bit.ly and T.co for twitter all employ link masking techniques.

So did you think this was considered cloaking? Well the internet is a place where there are many talking heads and many voices that mimic each other. It's a bird sanctuary! To many people Cloaking and Masking are the same thing and they educate people to believe the same, but for others cloaking involves a little more than simply masking the URL structure. Cloaking becomes a practice where the true redirect location is dynamic, and spiders or certain humans are shown one location while other visitors are shown another.

You may be wondering why in the world people would do that, and believe that there is nothing good that could come from such a technique, I thought this too until I was approached by people who wanted to protect their destination from both search engines and from people they are selling for. The world is an imperfect place where justice and good hearted nature are often circumvented by injustice and selfish sentiment. Developers with good intention  have been burned by their employer stealing their marketing ideas and dropping them and sometimes not even paying them. And other times developers have to worry about the heartless algorithms of search engines not being favorable to their site if their site is an affiliate-sales effort.

There are more reasons. Often times a reason for cloaking is very unique to circumstance. That's why WP Traffic Tools , an awesomely powerful and variable traffic management plugin, provides a link cloaking module within their link masking module!

For example, if we wanted to redirect all traffic that arrives outside of google and keep google traffic arriving at the original destination we would use ‘!google' as our keyword: