WordPress loop display 1 post for each author

Question

I have several authors on a blog, and on the home page (index.php) I want to query the posts so that it only shows the latest post from each author. So say I have 5 authors it will show 5 posts each being the most recent for each author.

Any ideas on how to do this? I don't want to create separate loops for each author, it has to be automatic and using the default loop. Thanks.

Answer 1

You could do something like this, using a custom query (as explained here) to get the initial IDs of the latest post from each author, then add those post ids to the regular Loop query:

<?php
$querystr = "
  SELECT wposts.id, max(wposts.post_date) latest_post
  FROM $wpdb->posts wposts
  GROUP BY wposts.post_date
";
$post_ids = array();
if($pageposts = $wpdb->get_results($querystr, OBJECT)( {
  foreach ($pageposts as $post) {
    $post_ids[] = $post->id;
  }
}
query_posts(array('post__in' => $post_ids));
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
  echo "your loop item output here";
endwhile; else:
endif;
wp_reset_query();
?>

It's not tested though, so YMMV, but something along these lines should get the job done :P. Good luck!