islast for content loop and the more tag

I have since found this link which works for me:

http://www.texto.de/how-to-pages-that-display-all-posts-from-x-category-522/

which uses this query:

<?php rewind_posts();
$my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=articles&showposts=2');
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
$do_not_duplicate = $post->ID;
global $more;
$more = 0; ?>

.. which appears to be the old way when I would rather use this way:

$posts=get_posts('category_name=articles&showposts=2');
foreach($posts as $post) {
setup_postdata($post);

thanks esmi — well I am new at all this.. I have managed to get things working thanks to your advice. One of my main issues was that I was trying to make all this happen on a static page, so I read up on that stuff and it helped. Finally, I played around and poked and got things to work the way I wanted. Here is what I came up with – this is for a static homepage which displays categorized posts in different places on the page, with the more tag working and your ‘islast’ type test to help with display.

First, set the global $more variable at the top of the page, under the header include:
<?php global $more;?>

Then this will display the first looped content for my blog category, straight-forward enough, I just want to display the latest blog post here. Note how the ‘$more’ variable is referenced – this will be the same for all instances:

<?php query_posts('category_name=blog&showposts=1'); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
	<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
	<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></small>
	<?php
		$more = 0;
		the_content("<b>Read More &raquo;</b>");
	?>
<?php endwhile; else: endif; ?>

…And then to display may articles I did this:

<?php rewind_posts(); $c = 0; $toshow = 4; query_posts('category_name=articles'); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
	<?php if ( !in_category('6') && ($c < $toshow) ): ?>
		<?php $c++; ?>
		<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
		<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></small>
		<?php
			$more = 0;
			the_content("<b>Read More &raquo;</b>");
		?>
		<?php if($c < $toshow):?><hr /><?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; endwhile; else: endif; ?>

This has the “islast” logic (sorry I keep calling it that). I call a rewind_loop function before the query. I also had to reconstruct the logic of ‘showposts’ and ‘category_name’ so I could not display one category, but keep the counters working the way I wanted. I then have the one category I omitted here to display in yet another loop further down on the page, like so:

<?php rewind_posts(); $c = 1; query_posts('category_name=legislative&showposts=2'); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
	<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
	<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></small>
	<?php
		$more = 0;
		the_content("<b>Read More &raquo;</b>");
	?>
	<?php if($c<3):?><hr /><?php endif;?>
	<?php $c++; ?>
<?php endwhile; else: endif; ?>

Here I use the category_name and showposts normally, since I don’t have the constraints I needed for the previous loop.

I hope this is helpful to someone out there – took me a while to figure it out 😉 If you have any improvements on syntax or logic, I’d be happy to hear.

thanks again esmi!

Hi Esmi – hate to be a bother but do you have any other suggestions? Otherwise, I’ll have to find a work-around and move on.. thanks again for your help.