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WordPress

Posted by Josh King
Josh King
Courses Plus Student 43 Points

One-page Wordpress with conditional tags for different layouts?

I'm working through building a one-page Wordpress theme, and some of the way, followed the tutorial here on Treehouse.

The trouble I'm having is, while it works great from the tutorial, I'm trying to pass some conditional statements through and it doesn't seem to be working out for me.

I've tried it a couple different ways:

  • Running a conditional statement from the 'content-page.php' page

This seems to be a less flexible way to do it. While it keeps everything in one file, it seems to be a bit cumbersome.

  • Running the conditional statements on the one-page-site.php file

What I have going is I have the WP_Query statements, then the loop, then a series of conditional statements outputting different files for the templates that I want to use.

I'm trying to set a different template for the 'home' page (the first page in the one-page site) and a different template for the 'blog' page (which will display an abridged arrangement of the latest posts, with a link to the full blog).

I'm thinking I'm either doing it all wrong, or maybe there is something with the way I set it up (i.e. since the 'home' page is set to the 'one-page-site.php' template), or it has something to do with the loop (wrong code?).

Here is the way I've currently got it set up:

<?php
/**
 * Template Name: One Page Site
 */

get_header(); 

        $args = array(
        'post_type' => 'page',
        'order' => 'ASC'
        );

        $the_query = new WP_Query( $args );

        if ( have_posts() ) : while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post();

        if  ( is_front_page() ) {
            get_template_part( 'content', 'home' );
        }

        elseif ( is_page('blog') ) {
            get_template_part( 'content', 'blog' );
        }

        else {
            get_template_part( 'content', 'page' );
                }

        endwhile; endif;    

get_footer(); ?>

Basically, 'content-home.php' is an intro page, 'content-blog.php' will display the latest posts, and then 'content-page.php' will render normal page layout for this one-page site.

Right now it just repeats the content of the intro page in every section.

What do you guys think? Am I a complete idiot?

3 Answers

Zac Gordon
STAFF
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest Teacher

If you have separate pages on the site then you should rely on the default WordPress templates and naming conventions for controlling the different pages. You should not be including conditional statements in a single template and using that to display multiple pages, which it looks like you're doing here.

I would also suggest checking out this article on resetting the Loop: http://digwp.com/2011/09/3-ways-to-reset-the-wordpress-loop/

Josh King
Josh King
Courses Plus Student 43 Points

Yeah, you're right, I got rid of it. I did create another query to pull a custom home page template from, and I reset the post data.

Now I'm just working out how to display different sidebars in each section on the one page template.

I'm really just experimenting, seeing what I can do, delving deeper into what I can do with Wordpress.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

From what you've described, it's not a one page site you need. You in fact are requiring multiple pages and as such, should use the template hierarchy as Zac mentioned, and build the site in a conventional manner with links and a menu.

Josh King
PLUS
Josh King
Courses Plus Student 43 Points
Josh King
Josh King
Courses Plus Student 43 Points

Found somewhat of a solution.

All I did was create another WP_Query for just the home page, and excluded the home page from the rest of the loop. Like so:

get_header(); 

        $home_query = new WP_Query( 'pagename=home' );

        get_template_part( 'content', 'home' );

        $args = array(
        'post_type' => 'page',
        'order' => 'ASC',
        'post__not_in' => array(5)
        );

        $the_query = new WP_Query( $args );

        if ( have_posts() ) : while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post();

        get_template_part( 'content', 'page' ); 

        endwhile; endif;    

get_footer(); ?>

If you have any suggestions on making this code a bit cleaner, feel free to let me know.