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Question

I have a post part that is called into my single.php and looks like this:

<div class="main-content col-md-8" role="main">
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
        <?php get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() ); ?>
        <?php comments_template(); ?>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
</div> <!-- end .main-content -->
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> // col-md-4

Then my content.php looks like this:

<article id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
    <header class="entry-header">
        <?php if ( is_single() ) : ?>
            <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
        <?php else: ?>
             <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
        <?php endif; ?>

        <?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() && ! post_password_required() ) : ?>
            <figure class="entry-thumbnail">
                <?php the_post_thumbnail( 'post-large' ); ?>
            </figure>
        <?php endif; ?>

        <div class="entry-meta">
            <?php
                // Display the meta information
                my_theme_post_meta();
            ?>
        </div>
    </header> <!-- end entry-header -->

    <div class="entry-content">
        <?php
            if ( is_search() ) {
                the_excerpt();
            } else {
                the_content( __( 'Continue reading &rarr;', 'my_theme' ) );
                wp_link_pages();
            }
        ?>
    </div> <!-- end entry-content -->
</article>

Now, I want to create another part just like the first block of code(col-md-8 and sidebar col-md-4) where I would have my post content and sidebar but I want to have my post thumbnail and post meta full width(col-md-12) above that block.

In that case I am wondering how to tweak my code on content.php where the post thumbnail and post meta are called in order to have them displaying above my col-md-8 and sidebar(col-md-4) only for this specific situation.

A solution would be to have a col-md-12 div above my col-md-8 div and sidebar and add my post thumbnail and post meta code there but then these would be outside the loop and I wouldn't be able to use content.php for this situation and I would like to use content.php for all my post layout variations for easier maintenance. And having the post thumbnail and post meta code on their own on a div col-md-12 outside the loop would not be ideal as I need to access the post meta for each specific post.. So, just wondering what would be the ideal solution to achieve this.

Answer 1

What about calling another content part above the sidebar and the post content block with a col-md-12 class. Call the Loop inside there with only the thumbnail and meta / any information you want there.

Then you call the rest of the post in the other content part which has a col-md-8 class and is positioned next to the sidebar.