Category Template: Need to display different content on first page of archives

Question

So my issue is that I need to create two versions of a category.php template. Now, I know very well that if I want to display posts from just one category, I duplicate category.php and call it category-xx.php for the slug or ID number. Great. Got that.

The problem is the client wants it where on the first page of posts, only 4 posts appear. 6 on all subsequent pages. Worse, she wants a div with additional content to appear above the posts but only on the first page. So http://www.yoursite.com/category/whatever/page/2/ and /page/3/ look different than http://www.yoursite.com/category/whatever/.

Now I know I could use conditional comments like is_page() to specify a certain page to display let's say, a certain div. But how would I do it in this sense? Can I do it? There must be some kind of if...else statement that'll make this work.

Answer 1

get_query_var('paged') will show you pagination information. The code below will show only on first page of archive

if(get_query_var('paged') == 1){
    //run extra code    
}