Post Pic How to display an incrementing number next to each published post

The first thing to do is to paste the function into your functions.php file:

function updateNumbers()
{    global $wpdb;
  $querystr = "SELECT $wpdb->posts.* FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish' AND $wpdb->posts.post_type = 'post' ";
$pageposts = $wpdb->get_results($querystr, OBJECT);
  $counts = 0 ;
  if ($pageposts):
    foreach ($pageposts as $post):
     setup_postdata($post);   
 $counts++;
  add_post_meta($post->ID, 'incr_number', $counts, true);
 update_post_meta($post->ID, 'incr_number', $counts);
endforeach;    endif;
}
add_action ( 'publish_post', 'updateNumbers' );
add_action ( 'deleted_post', 'updateNumbers' );
add_action ( 'edit_post', 'updateNumbers' );
Once done, you can display the post nimber by pasting the following on

your theme file, within the loop:

<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID,'incr_number',true); ?>