Wordpress: how to list latest posts with different formatting

If you'd like to create a theme that's 'nifty' and interesting, then the way your listing your articles should be worked on too. What if you could have the latest 3 posts displayed in a manner and the other 4 to have a separate formatting? Such as on www.dojoblog.net: you can see there is a big 'latest post', and then 4 other posts with a smaller thumbnail and no excerpt.

Here is the 'core' code for this. Please don't forget you'll need to style these, of course.

FIRST POST(S)

PHP:


<?php query_posts('showposts=1'); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_excerpt('Read more »'); ?>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

If you'd want to show more posts than 1 as I have you can change showpost='your chosen number'. Feel free to add a nice div for these posts, change the elements (maybe you add a thumbnail, or don't display the excerpt). You're free to 'create'.

THE REST OF THE LATEST POSTS (EXCLUDING THE ONES YOU ALREADY HAVE)

It's no fun having 2-3 posts show two times on your design. So with this code our latest posts (that come after the ones we already styled) can be placed like this:

PHP:

<?php query_posts('showposts=4&offset=1'); ?>
<ul>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

In my example I have chosen to just list the titles, you can add excerpts, thumbails of a different size, whatever you feel like, and change the showposts and the offset with the according numbers.

Enjoy

It's a cool trick and can actually help, especially if you're not posting more articles/day. If you do so, just change the number in the offset setting and you can show more posts with the same formatting.

There you have their 'official' explanation in the Wordpress Codex. I'm more of a 'script monkey', so can't explain it well.

PS: welcome to TC. Nice having you here

Wherever you want the posts to appear like this: www.dojoblog.net - here is an example of various listings (latest posts in the left, the 'money' area, the 'forum/blog' areas. The codes are in INDEX.PHP (the theme files, not wordpress's index). All these draw posts from the specific categories, even the travel listing is the same, it's just that I used only the thumbnails and titles and not excerpt.