featured post same as post content

Question

I have a wordpress site I am creating. on the post pages, I have text widget with PHP allowed, where I have a custom loop:

<?php  $my_query2 = new WP_Query("showposts=1&cat=9,10,11,18,19&orderby=rand"); ?>
        <?php if (have_posts()) : ?><?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
         <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">
         <div class="home-widget-thumb">
               <?php 
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { // check if the post has a Post Thumbnail assigned to it.
the_post_thumbnail('home-thumb');
} 

?>
         </div>
            <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2></a>

            <div class="body">

                <?php echo get_the_excerpt(); ?>

            </div><!--body-->



             </br>
            <span class="more-link">
            <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">[more]</a>
            </span>

            <?php endwhile; ?>
            <?php else : ?>
            <p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
            <?php endif; ?>

For some reason, whatever blog post you are on is the same as in the loop I created. See an example here: http://counselingandtraining.com/play-therapy/

The loop for the post is not modified.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?

Let me know if I can provide further info.

Thanks in advance for your time. Chris

Answer 1

It looks to me like the problem is that you are still using the base query.

You can change this by adding your variable $my_query2 in the code like this:

    <?php if ($my_query2->have_posts()) : ?><?php while ($my_query2->have_posts()) : $my_query2->the_post(); ?>

This will make all the functions like the_title(), the_content(), etc work as intended since they will be set to $my_query2.