Ignore latest two posts

Question

I'm trying to exclude the latest two blog posts from a page. I know it's possible to do this with offset however doing that causes a bug in which some of the blog posts are repeated on the second page so not ideal. Currently I'm doing it manually using the post id so like this:

$paged = ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) ? get_query_var( 'paged' ) : '1';
$args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => 5,
    'post__not_in'   => array(827, 809),
    'post_status'    =>"publish",
    'post_type'      =>"post",
    'orderby'        =>"post_date",
    'cat'            =>'-1, -8, -9, -7, -6, -5, -4',
    'paged'          => $paged
);

$postslist = get_posts( $args );
echo '<div class="latest_new_posts main-news">';

Can anybody think of a better way of doing this where I don't have to adjust the post id constantly?

Answer 1

You could do this using two queries, which is a little bulky but not completely unreasonable.

Get two most recent posts

<?php

$most_recent_args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => 2,
    'paged'          => 1,
    'fields'         => 'ids',
    'orderby'        => 'post_modified',
    'order'          => 'DESC',
);

$most_recent = new WP_Query( $most_recent_args );

Then, you can use the results there to...

Modify your query with the two most recent posts

$paged = ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) ? get_query_var( 'paged' ) : '1';

$args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => 5,
    'post__not_in'   => $most_recent->posts,
    'post_status'    =>"publish",
    'post_type'      =>"post",
    'orderby'        =>"post_date",
    'cat'            =>'-1, -8, -9, -7, -6, -5, -4',
    'paged'          => $paged
);

$postslist = get_posts( $args );
echo '<div class="latest_new_posts main-news">';

Answer 2

You can use offset to exclude the latest posts. Your arguments can be like:

$args = array( 
    'posts_per_page' => 5, 
    'offset' => 2, 
    'post__not_in' => array(827, 809),
    'post_status'=>"publish",
    'post_type'=>"post",
    'orderby'=>"post_date",
    'cat'=>'-1, -8, -9, -7, -6, -5, -4',
    'paged'=> $paged
);

However as you mentioned, it will break the pagination. There is a workaround, as stated in the codex, and it offers a solution for this.

Using pre_get_posts

You can exclude 2 latest posts from your main query, by using pre_get_posts filter:

function exclude_latest_post( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'offset', '1' );
    }
}

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'exclude_latest_post', 1 );

You can check the codex page for the alternative, which I skipped since it's long, and well explained on the codex itself.