Showing Wordpress posts on two pages

Question

I have three pages on my site. Let's call them home, page2, and page3. My 'home' page is set as a static front page. My 'page2' is set up as the blog page.

What I want is the following:

I want page2 to display blog posts with a certain category (of which ID is known).

AND

I want page3 to display blog posts with a certain category (of which ID is known).

The PHP code to only show posts with a certain category (or actually in my case, show posts excluding two categories) is the following:

<?php query_posts($query_string . '&cat=-3,-8'); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
        <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
        <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 the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
        </div><!-- /.post-->

Now, in my page.php, I have the following code to display posts with one category:

<?php
    // BEGIN IF PAGE is newspaper articles page
    if ( is_page('newspaper') ) {

        //BEGIN POST REGION

        query_posts($query_string . '&cat=8'); ?>
        <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
            <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
                <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
                <h3><?php the_title(); ?></h3>

                <?php the_content('Read more &raquo;'); ?>


                </div><!-- /.post-->

            <?php endwhile; ?>

        <?php else : ?>

        <?php endif; ?>

        <?php

    } //end if is_page
?>

But it doesn't show the proper posts on the newspaper page (or page3 in this question). It does, however, work for the articles page (main index.php blog page).

EDIT: I've also tried the following (but it doesn't work). I put this in the index.php file:

<?php
if ( is_page('newspaper') || is_home() ) { // START if is home

?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
        <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
            <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
                title="Permanent Link to
                <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
                <?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

            <!--<p><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <?php //the_author() ?></p>-->

            <?php the_excerpt('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>


        </div><!-- /.post-->

    <?php endwhile; ?>

<?php else : ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php
} //end if is_home() or is_page()
?>

Again, this shows the posts on the main blog page, but doesn't show any posts on the newspaper page...

The question is therefore simple (I think). How do I show posts on another page OTHER than the main blog page?

Thanks! Amit

markratledge markratledge · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-02T13:26:12

Rather than exclude categories and exclude pages and change the standard Wordpress loop, use a new query, like this:

<?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=mycategory&showposts=1'); ?>
<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">
<?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_excerpt('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

This can be used inside the standard WP loop and be used mutiple times in a page/post or page template without conflicting. (Enable php execution to use it in the page/post editor). Function Reference/WP Query « WordPress Codex

This also works well to use page templates to create different pages with blog posts: Page Templates « WordPress Codex, but don't forget that WP also uses category pages, too, depending on your theme: Category Templates « WordPress Codex.

Showing Wordpress posts on two pages

4 Answers