Only show specific category in wordpress loop? - php

Question

How Can I only show a specific category in my wordpress index page? Below is my theme code...
Also, when looking at the URL for my category (how I usually get the ID) it seems a strange format..
http://oil.wpengine.com/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?action=edit&taxonomy=category&tag_ID=1179&post_type=post
<?php query_posts( array ( 'Event_News' => 'event-news' ) ); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<ul class="posts">
<li id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<?php
get_the_image( array( 'size' => 'loop-main', 'width' => 160, 'height' => 120, 'before' => '<div class="cover">', 'after' => '</div>' ) );
?>
<div class="postcontent">
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="postmetadata">
<ul>
<?php if (option::get('display_date') == 'on') { ?><li class="calendar"><time datetime="<?php the_time("Y-m-d"); ?>" pubdate><?php the_time("j F Y"); ?></time></li><?php } ?>
<?php if (option::get('display_author') == 'on') { ?><li class="author"><?php _e('By', 'wpzoom');?> <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></li><?php } ?>
<?php if (option::get('display_category') == 'on') { ?><li class="category"><?php the_category(', '); ?></li><?php } ?>
<?php if (option::get('display_comments') == 'on') { ?><li class="comments"><?php comments_popup_link( __('0 comments', 'wpzoom'), __('1 comment', 'wpzoom'), __('% comments', 'wpzoom'), '', ''); ?></li><?php } ?>
</ul>
</div><!-- end .postmetadata -->
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<p class="more"><?php _e('continue reading »', 'wpzoom');?> <?php edit_post_link( __('Edit this post', 'wpzoom'), ' | ', ''); ?></p>
</div><!-- end .postcontent -->
<div class="cleaner"> </div>
<div class="sep"> </div>
</li><!-- end #post-<?php the_ID(); ?> -->
<?php endwhile; // ?>
</ul>
<div class="cleaner"> </div>
<?php else : ?>
<p class="title"><?php _e('There are no posts in this category', 'wpzoom');?></p>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'pagination'); ?>
</div><!-- end .box -->

Answer 1

You can do query_post just before the loop
query_posts( array ( 'category_name' => 'my-category-slug' ) );
If you want posts from more than one category then you can use
query_posts('cat=8,4,3');
8,4,3 are the id for the 3 categories
and after the loop use
wp_reset_query();
For more details view this link
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts#All_Posts_in_a_Category