Question

I’m using the following to create a slide for a slideshow out of every two posts.

<?php $i = 0; $slideshow_query = new WP_Query("showposts=6&cat=10"); ?>
    <div id="slideshow-posts">
    <div class="newslide">
    <?php while ($slideshow_query->have_posts()) : $slideshow_query->the_post();      $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; $i++;  ?>
    //my content
    <?php if ($i == 2) { ?></div>  <div class="newslide"><?php $i = 0; } ?>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

Problem is it creates a blank slide at the end – how would I get it to carry out creation of a news slide every two posts (or every even post) except for the last time an even post occurs?

thanks

Answer 1

The operator you’re likely looking for is called modulus or modulo and returns your the remainder of a division:

$foo = 5 % 3;           //  5 = 1*3 + a remainder of 2
$bar = 17 % 5;          // 17 = 2*5 + a remainder of 2
$baz = 42 % 6;          // 42 = 7*6 + a remainder of 0

This operator comes in handy to identify even/odd rows in a loop when used with a divisor of 2:

0 % 2 => 0
1 % 2 => 1
2 % 2 => 0
3 % 2 => 1
4 % 2 => 0
…

Or in your case something like this:

<?php $i = 0; $slideshow_query = new WP_Query("showposts=6&cat=10"); ?>
<div id="slideshow-posts">
    <div class="newslide">
        <?php while ($slideshow_query->have_posts()) : $slideshow_query->the_post(); ?>   
            //my content
            <?php if ($i % 2 == 0): /* even: */ ?>
                </div><div class="newslide">
            <?php elseif ($i+1 == $slideshow_query->post_count): /* last: */ ?>
                </div>
            <?php endif; ?>
    <?php $i++; /* iterate in the end */ ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

In order to find out of you have reached the last post, you could compare $i + 1 (since we start counting from 0) with the full amount of items returned by your query (max 6 in your example). And then close the <div> if they match.

UPDATE

I’ve extended the example above according to my comment. This isn’t tested, but I believe that’s how I remember it to work (the post count that is).