Question

I’m using the following code to pull articles up for display on my homepage, i’d like to limit it to only two or three categories – can anyone point me in the right direction?

<?php
  $i = 1;
  $my_categories = get_option('of_news_page');
  $wp_query = new WP_Query("cat=' . $my_categories . '&posts_per_page=14");
  while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post();
?>
<?php $image_id = get_post_thumbnail_id();  
   $image_url = wp_get_attachment_image_src($image_id,'large');  
$image_url = $image_url[0];?>
<?php if($i==1) { ?>
<div class="featured_single">
<div class="featured_single_image">
<?php if($image_url) { ?><a class="image_article" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><img src="<?php echo bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo $image_url; ?>&amp;h=170&amp;w=255&amp;zc=1" alt="" /></a><?php } ?>
<div class="clear"></div>
<span>Posted in : <?php the_category(', '); ?></span>
<span><?php comments_popup_link('No comments yet', '1 Comment &raquo;', '% Comments &raquo;'); ?></span>
</div>
<div class="featured_single_text">
<span><?php the_time('M j, Y') ?></span>
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php wpe_excerpt('wpe_featured_single'); ?> 
<p><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read More &raquo;</a></p>
</div>
</div>

<div class="clear"></div>

<div id="featured-posts-news">
<?php } elseif($i>1 && $i<6) { ?>
<div class="featured-post-news-container clearfix">
<?php if($image_url) { ?><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><img src="<?php echo bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo $image_url; ?>&amp;h=120&amp;w=209&amp;zc=1" alt="" /></a><?php } ?>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

<span><?php the_time('M j, Y') ?></span>

<?php wpe_excerpt('lotf_news_page'); ?><span class="news-morelink"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">[ Read More &rarr; ]</a></span>

</div>
<?php } ?><?php $i++; ?><?php endwhile; $i=0; ?>
</div>

Answer 1

You can use the query_posts() function for ease, here is an example of how to pull posts from category_ids 1,3 and 5, in ascending order and 5 posts per page:

query_posts('cat=1,3,5&order=ASC&posts_per_page=5');

You can find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts

Note, the WP_Query object you are using works in much the same way as query posts, in terms of arguments that is.