Question

I’ve got a page that has a category list at the top, and should normally list posts below it. The category list is created using:

<?php $display_categories = array( 4, 7, 8, 9, 21, 1); $i = 1;     foreach ( $display_categories as $category ) { ?>         <div>             <?php single_cat_title(); ?> //etc         </div>     <?php }  ?> 

However, this seems to make the post loop order posts by category. I want it to ignore category ordering and order by date in descending order. I’ve created a new WP_Query since according to the docs you can’t use query_posts() twice, so just in case.

<?php $q = new WP_Query( 'cat=-1&showposts=15&orderby=date&order=DESC' );     if ( $q->have_posts() ) :          while ( $q->have_posts() ) : $q->the_post(); ?>             the_title(); // etc         endwhile;      endif;  ?> 

However, this still seems to be ordered by category (the same order as the list above) and then by date, as opposed to just by date.

Answer 1

I’ve had problems with this before as well.

Try this:

<?php     global $post;     $myposts = get_posts( 'numberposts=5' );     foreach( $myposts as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post ); ?>         <div <?php post_class(); ?>>             <div class='title'>                 <h2>                     <a href='<?php the_permalink(); ?>'><?php the_title(); ?></a>                 </h2>                 <p class='small'><?php the_time( 'F j, Y' ); ?> by <?php the_author(); ?></p>              </div>              <?php the_excerpt(); ?>          </div>      <?php endforeach;   ?>  

The important line is global $post;.

That should reset your global query. The setup_postdata($post) method is necessary to give you access to functions like the_author() or the_content().

-Chris