Featured posts and the loop

Question

I'm trying to add a box in index.php where to show the latest 3 featured posts. According to this tutorial, I've added the following to functions.php:

add_theme_support( 'featured-content', array(
    'filter'     => 'magdeleine_get_featured_posts',
    'max_posts'  => 3,
) );

function magdeleine_get_featured_posts() {
    return apply_filters( 'magdeleine_get_featured_posts', array() );
}

function magdeleine_has_featured_posts( $minimum = 1 ) {
    if ( is_paged() )
        return false;

    $minimum = absint( $minimum );
    $featured_posts = apply_filters( 'magdeleine_get_featured_posts', array() );

    if ( ! is_array( $featured_posts ) )
        return false;

    if ( $minimum > count( $featured_posts ) )
        return false;

    return true;
}

Then I've created a featured.php template like this:

<?php
// Get our Featured Content posts
$featured = magdeleine_get_featured_posts();

// If we have no posts, our work is done here
if ( empty( $featured ) )
    return;

foreach ( $featured as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post );
?>

    [...post code...]

<?php endforeach; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>

Last, I've called the template inside index.php this way:

<!-- Editor's picks -->
<?php if ( magdeleine_has_featured_posts( 1 ) ) : ?>
    <?php get_template_part( 'featured' ); ?>
<?php endif; ?>                     

<?php /* Start the Loop */ ?>
<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
...

But... How to avoid repeating the same posts in the loop?

Answer 1

A simple approach could be to use a global array in which you will store posts that are selected in the featured query. You could set this array in your functions.php or index.php : $featured_post_array = array(); Then in your featured.php file first call the global array somewhere in the beginning:

global $featured_post_array;

and inside the foreach loop add :

$featured_post_array[] = $post->ID;

Last in the index.php in your query arguments use the post__not_in parameter:

$query = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'post', 'post__not_in' => $featured_post_array ) );

Another way would be to ignore posts with the tag (or taxonomy) "featured" by using the tag__not_in or category__not_in parameters