multiple queries to get posts from same category?

Question

I am trying to make a so called featured category on my theme homepage. In that category I would like to display 6 posts from same category. The problem is that, I would like to devide these posts into three different html blocks. For example:

<div>first 2 posts goes here</div>
<div>second 2 posts goes here</div>
<div>last 2 posts goes here</div>

The three divs have different html structure (eg. post image size etc). So, does it mean that I have to run 3 separate queries to get the above posts from the same category? Or would that be too much of load and I should use only one post query? Thanks.

Answer 1

Just add a counter to the loop.

Just use $wp_query->current_post

while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
    if($wp_query->current_post <= 1) // 1 because counter starts at 0
        // <div>first 2 posts go here</div>

    if($wp_query->current_post > 1 <= 3)
        // <div>second 2 posts go here</div>

    if($wp_query->current_post > 3 <= 5)
        // <div>last 2 posts go here</div>
endwhile;

Answer 2

You don't need multiple queries. You don't even need to put them all in a loop. For your example

while(have_posts()) :
    the_post();

    //display post

    if(!have_posts())
        break;

    the_post();

    //display post
endwhile;