reducing the amount of wp_query calls

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I’m working on a site where we’re introducing drop down panels from the menu which will display thumbnails from various tags on the site.

Each panel has a left column displaying a featured post, and a right column displaying 6 thumbnails; on each tab then I’m doing two wp_query loops, the first to display the featured post image, and the second to display the 6 thumbnails (with featured post excluded).

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I’m wondering though if this is the most efficient way of doing things, as there are 10 tabs, so that’s 20 uses of wp_query in the main menu.

Example code for one of the tabs below: 

    <div class="displaymenu"><div class="menucontent">

        <div class="leftdisplaymenu padding">

        <?php 
        global $quote_id;
        $quote_id=array(); // setup an array to store post ids to exclude from future queries
        $argsformainquotes=array(
        'posts_per_page' => '1',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'tag' => 'quotes',


        );


        $mainquotes = new WP_Query($argsformainquotes);
        while ($mainquotes->have_posts()) : $mainquotes ->the_post();
$idforquote=get_the_id(); $quote_id[]=$idforquote; // add the id of this post to exclusion array
        $post_thumbnail_id = get_post_thumbnail_id();
    $post_thumbnail_url = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $post_thumbnail_id,'bigfeature'); ?><div class="mainimg"><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>" target="_blank"><img src="<?php echo $post_thumbnail_url[0];?>" alt=" <?php the_title();?>"  class="thumblist"  height="240" width="240" /></a><div class="imgtitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>" title="<?php the_title();?>" class="tablinktitles"><?php the_title();?></a></div><br /><?php $small_excerpt=get_the_excerpt();echo substr($small_excerpt,0,100);?><br /><br /><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>" class="tablinktitles">read more...</a></div><?php endwhile;?>



        <div></div></div>

        <div class="rightdisplaymenu"><ul><?php $argsforquotes=array(
        'posts_per_page' => '6',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'tag' => 'quotes',
        'post__not_in' => $quote_id,



        );


        $quotes = new WP_Query($argsforquotes);
        while ($quotes->have_posts()) : $quotes ->the_post();?>
        <li><?php 



        $post_thumbnail_id = get_post_thumbnail_id();
    $post_thumbnail_url = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $post_thumbnail_id,'smallfeature' ); ?><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>" target="_blank"><img src="<?php echo $post_thumbnail_url[0];?>" alt=" <?php the_title();?>" height="140" width="140" class="thumblist" /></a><br /><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>"><?php $trunctitle=get_the_title();echo substr($trunctitle,0,20);?>...</a></li><?php endwhile;?> </ul><div class="furtherlink"><a href="http://www.aplacetolovedogs.com/tag/quotes/" title="More of Your Dog Quotes">More Quotes...</a></div></div>

        </div></div>
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  1. Rather than querying for a single item and then querying again for 6 more excluding the first, you can just do a single query for 7 items and selectively output markup by checking which post you’re currently outputting in the loop via $your_query_object->current_post. You can also combine that with $your_query_object->rewind_posts() to run through the same loop multiple times within a template.

    Beyond that, you can store your menu in a transient so you’re not doing all those queries on every request. I always recommend people use a caching plugin as well, like W3TC or similar.