Display Recent Posts on Static Front Page

Hi,

What is the best practice for displaying recent blog posts on a static front page?

I found an example from 5 years back that seems to work when added to my front-page.php, however, I’m not sure this is the best way? And for the life of me I can’t figure out how to format the post date with this code. It just spits out something that looks like 2014-04-02 11:07:36. Any input would be awesome. Thank you!

<div class="row">
  <?php
      $args = array( 'numberposts' => '4' );
      $recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts( $args );
      foreach( $recent_posts as $recent ){
          echo '
            <div class="col-md-3"
              <h5>
                <small>
                  '.$recent["post_date"].'
                </small>
                <br>
                <a
                  href="'.get_permalink($recent["ID"]).'"
                  title="Look'.esc_attr($recent["post_title"]).'"
                >
                '.$recent["post_title"].'
                </a>
              </h5>
            </div>
          ';
      }
  ?>
</div>

Use WP_Query http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

Thanks! Works like a charm!

In case it helps anyone else:

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/13/define-your-own-wordpress-loop-using-wp_query/