Move sticky posts down in main loop

Question

Currently I am working for a site which runs on WordPress, and using twenty thirteen theme which already has a sticky post function built in and working reasonably well.

But I do not like how a sticky post is always displayed on absolute top. I would rather be able to display the latest one or two or three posts, then the featured/sticky posts. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You have to change the order in $wp_query->posts. Compare it to the values from get_option( 'sticky_posts' ).

Example:

function move_stickies_down( $num = 1 )
{
    global $wp_query;

    if ( empty ( $wp_query->posts ) )
        return;

    $stickies = get_option( 'sticky_posts' );

    if ( empty ( $stickies ) )
        return;

    $sticky_posts = $top = $after = array();

    foreach ( $wp_query->posts as $p )
    {
        if ( in_array( $p->ID, $stickies ) )
        {
            $sticky_posts[] = $p;
        }
        elseif ( $num > 0 )
        {
            $top[] = $p;
            $num -= 1;
        }
        else
        {
            $after[] = $p;
        }

    }

    $wp_query->posts = array_merge( $top, $sticky_posts, $after );
}

Add this function to your functions.php and call it before the loop like this:

move_stickies_down( 2 );

if ( have_posts() )
{
    while ( have_posts() )
    {
        the_post();
        // show post
    }
}