How do I get wordpress to override a previous posts query?

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) { ?>
<?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 ordering by category (the same order as the list above) and then by date, as opposed to just by date.

Answer 1

query_posts is finicky sometimes. Try something like this and see if it works:

query_posts(array('category__not_in'=>array(1),
                  'showposts'=>15,
                  'orderby'=>date,
                  'order'=>DESC));

Since that's not the issue, try adding update_post_caches($posts) to the second loop, like this:

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

Supposedly this solves some plugin problems.

Answer 2

I don't have any experience with wordpress, but a couple of possibilities:

1. You define the "order" parameter twice in the string you're calling query_posts() with, I don't know if that causes a problem or not.
2. As well, "show" is not a valid parameter, you may have been looking for "showposts".

Parameters and their effects are described here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts#Parameters

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

That worked - thanks Chris (and Pesto for trying, although I couldn't get it fixed with your solution).