WP_Query<\/a><\/code>, and often use it on client sites and my own site to create advanced and custom queries.<\/p>\nHowever, it does have its downsides if you overdo things. One reader rightly commented on my recent post on using the loop to style your first post differently<\/a>, that the technique I demonstrated could be made more efficient.<\/p>\nSo in this post, I’m going to show you how to use WP_Query<\/code> to create multiple loops but in the most efficient way possible – and that is by running just one query but then using it to create multiple loops.<\/p>\nThe benefit of doing this is that you’re only hitting up the database once. You can then use all the data that WP_Query<\/code> fetches for you to run as many loops as you need.<\/p>\nSo let’s dive in and see how it works.<\/p>\n
What We’ll Be Doing<\/h3>\n
In this post, I’m going to create a section at the top of my site’s home page that displays recent and specific content from a number of post types. Specifically, it’s going to display:<\/p>\n
\n- My latest post from a custom post type<\/li>\n
- Two posts from the post<\/em> post type: one from each of two categories.<\/li>\n
- A specific page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The obvious way to do this would be to write four (or maybe three if you can just use one for both posts) instances of WP_Query<\/code>, each of which returns one post. But instead I’m going to run WP_Query<\/code> once to fetch all of the posts I need, and then run the loop four times to output the required posts. Each time I run the loop, I’ll use a variable called $count and I’ll increase its value by 1 so I can check on that in the next loop.<\/p>\nWhat You’ll Need<\/h3>\n
To follow along with this post, you’ll need a few things:<\/p>\n
\n- A development installation of WordPress<\/a><\/li>\n
- A code editor<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Setting Up The Query<\/h3>\n
The first thing to do is run the query. I’m putting this post in my theme template file for the home page, front-page.php<\/em>. But you could put it anywhere in your theme that you wanted to run multiple loops.<\/p>\nNote: If you’re working with a third party theme, put all this in a child theme, not in the third party theme. If you don’t know how to set up a child theme, see our guide<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nHere’s my query:<\/p>\n
![\"posts](\"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/posts-no-styling.png\")
<\/div>\n![\"posts](\"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/posts-with-styling.png\")
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