The Loop and query in Wordpress - Mini Project: Build & Apply

The Loop and query

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple WordPress theme template that shows a list of blog posts. You want to display only posts from the category "News".

🎯 Goal: Create a WordPress Loop that queries posts from the category "News" and displays their titles in an unordered list.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a query to get posts from the category "News"

Use The Loop to display the post titles

Wrap the titles in an unordered list

Reset the post data after the loop

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

WordPress themes often need to show posts from specific categories or with custom filters. This project teaches how to do that safely and clearly.

💼 Career

Understanding The Loop and WP_Query is essential for WordPress developers to customize themes and build dynamic content displays.

1

Create the initial query

Create a variable called $news_query that uses new WP_Query to get posts from the category slug 'news'.

Wordpress

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use new WP_Query(array('category_name' => 'news')) to get posts from the "News" category.

2

Check if the query has posts

Add an if statement that checks $news_query->have_posts() to see if there are posts to show.

Wordpress

$news_query = new WP_Query(array('category_name' => 'news'));
# Add an if statement to check if there are posts
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use if ($news_query->have_posts()) to check if posts exist.

3

Create The Loop to display post titles

Inside the if block, start an unordered list with <ul>. Then use a while loop with $news_query->have_posts() and inside it call $news_query->the_post(). For each post, add a list item <li> with the post title using get_the_title(). Close the unordered list after the loop.

Wordpress

$news_query = new WP_Query(array('category_name' => 'news'));
if ($news_query->have_posts()) {
    # Start unordered list
    # Use while loop with $news_query->have_posts()
    # Call $news_query->the_post() inside loop
    # Display post title inside 
    # Close unordered list
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use while ($news_query->have_posts()) { $news_query->the_post(); } and inside echo list items with get_the_title().

4

Reset post data after the loop

After the if block, call wp_reset_postdata() to restore the original post data.

Wordpress

$news_query = new WP_Query(array('category_name' => 'news'));
if ($news_query->have_posts()) {
    echo '';
    while ($news_query->have_posts()) {
        $news_query->the_post();
        echo '' . get_the_title() . '';
    }
    echo '';
}
# Call wp_reset_postdata() here
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Call wp_reset_postdata() after the loop to clean up.