Display Posts on Custom Page

Question

I have a custom page template created for my homepage. I have this set to the Static Homepage under the Reading settings. I want to be able to show the last three news posts from my Blog page which is titled News.

I have tried the following loop but it is pulling the content from the custom page content:

<?php
        if ( have_posts() ) :

            if ( is_home() && ! is_front_page() ) : ?>
                <header>
                    <h1 class="page-title screen-reader-text"><?php single_post_title(); ?></h1>
                </header>

            <?php
            endif;

            /* Start the Loop */
            while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();


                get_template_part( 'template-parts/content', get_post_format() );


            endwhile;

            the_posts_navigation();

        else :

            get_template_part( 'template-parts/content', 'none' );

        endif; ?>

I need to show the post title, date, excerpt, and read more link.

I'm also building this off the current version of underscores theme, if that helps you understand why it's calling for the template parts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

If News is a category of posts, then:

1. First, find out the category ID, login to wp-admin, go Posts->Categories, mouse over the 'News' category, and cat id should be shown under the left corner of the browser (for chrome this works, not sure about other browsers).

2. Add the following code into your function.php

   function my_news_category( $query ) {
     if ( $query->is_frontpage() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
       $query->set( 'cat', '18');     //remember change this to the actual cat id
     }
   }
   add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_news_category' );
   

For this solution, you don't have to change the underscore template at all.

Alternate solution would be adding query_posts() before displaying the main loop on your frontage template as I suggested on my comment. See official documentation for more details on how to implement it.