How to make the first post in the loop be styled like a "new / featured" post?

Question

I hope i can explain this right , what im trying to do is use the default word press loop to show all my posts etc.. but for the first post I would like it to be styled completely different depending on what parent category it was published in, so there would be a lot going on in that first post.

Right now I'm some what achieving this by using 2 loops that both pull from the default, the first loop is my "new / Featured" post area and is set to posts_per_page=1 , then the second loop is your standard loop, but the issue I'm having is obviously it shows duplicate posts, now i tried offset=1 on the second loop but then my pagination does not work, any help or direction would be awesome, I know its a lot sorry. below is my code for both loops and a link to my testing site thanks!

1st (new / featured) loop :

<?php $custom_query = new WP_Query('posts_per_page=1'); 
while($custom_query->have_posts()) : $custom_query->the_post(); ?>
<?php
$parent_cat = array();
$post_cats = get_the_category($post->ID);
foreach( $post_cats as $post_cat ) {
if( $post_cat->parent ) $parent_cat[] = get_category( $post_cat->parent )->slug;
}
?>

<!--CONTENT HERE-->


<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); // reset the query ?>
<?php } else { ?>

2nd (Standard) loop:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<!--CONTENT HERE-->


<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Here is a link to the dev site were you can see what im talking about http://themes.thefragilemachine.com/gone/

thanks for any help!

Answer 1

one loop with a conditional statement to catch the first post should work; example:

<?php if( $wp_query->current_post == 0 && !is_paged() ) : ?>
/*the output of the first post*?
<?php else : ?>
/*the output of all other posts*/
<?php endif; ?>

Answer 2

Just add a variable that will work just once with PHP like this for example:

<?php $custom_query = new WP_Query('posts_per_page=1'); 
$i = 0; while($custom_query->have_posts()) : $custom_query->the_post(); ?>

<?php if($i==0){ 

// do - echo whatever you want 

$i++; 

} else { 

// rest of the posts

} ?>  

<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); // reset the query ?>

Answer 3

Just check the current_post value

if(0 == $custom_query->current_post){ /**is the first post**/ }