Have a second single.php file for different single post look?

Ummm, you could do something like the following (I think this will work).

-copy single.php to single1.php and single2.php. leave single1.php alone, modify the crap out of single2.php…
-edit single.php so that all it basically does is:

<?php
$thisdir = dirname(__FILE__).'/';
if ($post->post_category==17)
include($thisdir.'single2.php');
else
include($thisdir.'single1.php');
?>


I >think< that’ll do what you are looking for.
-d

You replace the content of single.php with that code. single.php would consist only of that code. It would have no loop. single1.php and single2.php would have a loop (although techinically single post templates don’t need a loop since there’s just a single post).

Per post templates can easily be done with a plugin that hooks onto the ‘single_template’ filter. The plugin could lookup a key in the database like we do with the page templates or load singleX.php (where X is a post number) like we do with the category templates.

Don’t think of these these template loading questions in terms of the loop. Templating decisions that affect an entire page should be made outside of the loop.

P.S. post_category is deprecated now that we do multiple categories per post. You can use in_category(17) instead.

<?php
if ( in_category('17') ) {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single2.php');
} else {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single1.php');
}
?>

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/in_category
http://codex.wordpress.org/Include_Tags#Including_Any_Template

EDIT: I put in some curly braces for clarity.
EDIT2: Arg – can’t follow my own docs – I think it will work now.

Try it again? I just re-edited (I put in those slashes). Sorry.

Huh – ok let me go poke at something.

Ok: The problem. in_category() cannot be used outside the loop, which is where you want to use it.

The solution: trick it.

<?php
$post = $wp_query->post;
if ( in_category('17') ) {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single2.php');
} else {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single1.php');
}
?>

It’s $post that in_category() needs to work. Normally, the loop takes care of $post, but since there’s no loop, we have to do it manually.

Does that work?