Show one of the taxonomies always as default

Question

I have custom post type called staff that has custom taxonomy called departments. I wanted the frontpage of the staff (archive-staff.php) to not show ALL the staff members, but actually the first department (lets say there are 3 departments.)

My archive page starts like this:

global $wp_query;
$args = array_merge( $wp_query->query, array(
    'post_type' => 'staff',
) );
query_posts( $args );

while (have_posts()): the_post(); // ...

I have no clue how to go from here. I also need to display the current departments title.

Answer 1

$tax_slug = 'departments';
$tax_term = 'first-department';
// get taxonomy by slug and term
$tax_args = array( $tax_slug => $tax_term );
// merge your args, with the tax args
$args = array_merge( $args, $tax_args );

// Get term object
$term_title = get_term_by( $tax_term, '', $tax_slug );

// Display Title/Headline
echo "<h2>{$term_title->name}</h2>";

Answer 2

This is what worked for me:

// Custom taxonomy
$custom_taxonomy = 'department';

// Get the current department
if (!$current_department = $wp_query->query_vars[$custom_taxonomy]) {
    $get_all_departments = get_terms($custom_taxonomy, array(
        'number' => 1
    ));
    $current_department = $get_all_departments[0]->slug;
}

// Get the departments information
$department = get_term_by('slug', $current_department, $custom_taxonomy);

So the $current_department is the slug of the current taxonomy and $department is an array of the current taxonomy.