Using WP-Sticky for an Announcement Post

[PhotoGal]

I'd like to add an "Announcement" feature to a site that uses the old Code Blue (30) theme. Since I'm currently not posting to that blog frequently, I don't want a noticeably old post to be at the top of the home/blog page. So I thought I'd add a Welcome notice at the top of the page, using the WP-Sticky plugin's "Announcement" feature.

I'm currently testing the plugin locally, so I can't direct you to a live example, but the site I want to apply the announcement to is Lewisville Photos.

My questions are threefold:

QUESTION #1
I only want a TITLE and BODY TEXT to be displayed in the announcement. How can I REMOVE the following info from the Announcement, while retaining that info for regular posts?

• "Date • Author • Comments Info" line below the title
• The "Share This Article" items
• The 3 lines below the "Share This Article" items that include the "Share Your Thoughts," "Read More Articles...," and "Keyword Search."

QUESTION #2
STYLING the Announcement: I read on one website that if I changed the following code in index.php:

<div class="postarea">

to...

<div class="postarea"<?php if (is_announcement()) {echo " id="announcement"";} ?>>

...that I'd be able to use an ID of "announcement" to retain the styling of "postarea," while also having the ability to add more styling for "announcement." So in my CSS, I inserted the following test code to see if I could change the background color:

#announcement .postarea{
    background-color:#FFFF99;
    }

However, the background color did not change. I also tried adding the above code to home.php, but the page went blank, so I removed the code.

What CSS code is needed in order to apply custom styling to the announcement?

QUESTION #3
Just curious, when I publish this "Announcement" post — or whenever I make changes to it — will the announcement show up in the site's RSS feed? Will my email subscribers receive an email with the contents of the announcement?

Sorry this is a bit long :smile:, but thanks for any assistance.

Deb