you can do it a few ways.
First is probably just to have a custom index.php.
Most usually have something like this:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!-- do some stuff for post formatting, comments, etc -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.
<?php endif; ?>
what you need to do to take out the “while” loop. So change to something like:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php the_post(); ?>
<!-- do some stuff for post formatting, comments, etc -->
<?php else : ?>
<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.
<?php endif; ?>
That should basically make only 1 post on the front page.
Another way to do it is to do something in a custom loop outside of the main loop – something like this:
<?php $my_query = new WP_Query('showposts=1'); ?>
<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<!-- Do your formatting... -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
Either way would work.
You can get more info on custom loops here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop
Thanks miloandrew for the info.
This helps in getting the single post, but not for one specific author. So, following the Loop link you provided and a subsequent link or two from there I found the http://codex.wordpress.org/Author_Templates. I tried the $curauth->ID variable, but got a blank page. I then opened the author-template.php file and found $authordata->ID and successfully used it with the code below.
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); if ($authordata->ID == '2') : ?>
<!-- Formatting -->
<?php break; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<H2 class="center">Not Found</H2>
<P class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</P>
<?php endif; ?>
