I would like to feature a tip on the homepage

Question

I'm sorry if this question is explained somewhere, I couldn't find it. But it's also difficult to express this special thing in a second language..

I have a very simple homepage, and on that homepage I would like to display a "Tip". I've tried the Daily Tip plugin, as that does seem to do what I would like, but it's very buggy. So I thought, maybe I can single out a category and use posts to show that tip. The homepage is already with just 2 last posts: One from category Blog and one from category Column. On the right side I would like Tip, but with a special styling, so I have to separate it from the normal while loop.

So this would be the result:

article: BLOGPOST - article: COLUMN - custom: DAILY TIP (highlighted)

(I'm not allowed to post an image)

Does anyone have an idea how to achieve this?

Maybe good to know that the code I've entered for the first two posts is:

    $post_ids = array(0);
        foreach( array( 3, 4) as $cat_id ) {
          if ( $posts = get_posts(array('cat' => $cat_id, 'showposts' => 1)) ) {
                $first = array_shift($posts);
            $post_ids[] = $first->ID;
         }
    }
  query_posts(array('post__in' => $post_ids));
 if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); >

(and so on)

Thank you so much in advance!

Answer 1

You can place another loop on the template, for example below the first loop.
Multiple loops documentation: http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop#Multiple_Loops_Example_1

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
           <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>    
           <!-- your first loop ... -->
           <?php endwhile; ?>
 <?php endif; ?>

<?php
wp_reset_query();

$tips_query = new WP_Query( 'category_name=tips&posts_per_page=1' );
?>

<?php if ($tips_query->have_posts()) : ?>
           <?php while ($tips_query->have_posts()) : $tips_query->the_post(); ?>    
           <!-- do stuff ... -->
           <?php endwhile; ?>
 <?php endif; ?>

<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>