Looping more than once with the WordPress loop
When I decided to write my own WordPress theme, I thought a good approach would be to duplicate the default theme and go from there. Since that day I have rewritten much of the code. The loop in the index.php file, however, remains unchanged. The loop looks like this:
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); // code endwhile; endif;
As well as displaying the three most recent posts on the home page, I wanted to display links to slightly older posts on the sidebar. I discovered a WpRecipes post on using two different WordPress loops which suggests adding the following line of code just before the loop:
query_posts('showposts=5&offset=3');
The offset ensures that posts do not appear in both places.