How to show full post on home page

Question

I am using the Yoko theme and would like to show the most recent full post in category 1 on the home page. I am a Wordpress newbie, but my approach was going to be to provide my own index.php in a child theme. The parent theme has relevant code that looks like this:

<?php /* Start the Loop */ ?>
  <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
    <?php get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() ); ?>
  <?php endwhile; ?>
<?php /* Display navigation to next/previous pages when applicable */ ?>

I had thought I needed to place a line like this prior to the while loop:

<?php query_posts('cat=1&posts_per_page=1'); ?>

However, I see the partial post only. I have also tried to do the same sort of thing with single.php. I am sure I am missing something simple. Can someone school me on the loop?

Answer 1

You can alter query_posts - see http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop - but maybe the best thing to do is use a page template with a new query. WP will default to home.php instead of index.php if one exists, so you can leave index.php alone for other page to use. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

Sample query; remove the permalink and/or title, if needed:

<?php $my_query = new WP_Query('cat=1&showposts=1'); ?>

<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">

<?php the_title(); ?></a>

<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>