I have a list of excerpts on my homepage, but I want to target the most recent post and display it in a different way.


I was hoping to do it without the use of a plugin but there doesn't appear to be any conditional tags for it to be possible.


Will I need to use a plugin for it or could I simply add something to functions.php?

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/

<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); ?>
<ul>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile;?>
</ul>

How do you mean target the first post in a different way?
Do you mean show a longer preview than the excerpt?
Show it somewhere else on the page?

You will most likely want to create two separate loops. The first querying 1 post, the second querying the normal posts but excluding the first. Similar to:
<?php query_posts('showposts=5&offset=1');?>

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop

Thanks for the tips. I've currently got my homepage so that it displays the whole content of the first post, and then excerpts of those that follow, using the following code:

PHP Code:

        <?php if(have_posts()) : ?><?php $first_post = ( $paged == 0 ) ? $posts[0]->ID : ''; ?>
            <?php while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
                <?php if ($first_post == $post->ID) : ?>
                    <div class="entry">
                        <div id="h1-wrapper">
                          <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> <span class="date"><?php the_date(); ?></span></h1>
                        </div>
                        <div class="detail">Filed under <?php the_category(', '); ?>, posted by <a href="#">Matt</a></div>
                        <div class="content">
                            <?php the_content(); ?>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                <?php endif; ?>
                <?php if ($first_post != $post->ID) : ?>
                    <div class="entry">
                        <div class="h2-wrapper">
                          <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> <span class="date"><?php the_date(); ?></span></h2>
                        </div>
                        <div class="detail">Filed under <?php the_category(', '); ?>, posted by <a href="#">Matt</a></div>
                        <div class="content">
                            <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                <?php endif; ?>        
            <?php endwhile; ?>
        <?php endif; ?>

Would it be better to achieve this using query_posts() ? Also, does anyone know how I could show say, 300 characters of the first post instead of all of it, then for the remaining posts to be excerpts of the default length?