How do I display only the latest post on my home page, while maintaining proper plugin hooks?

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What I’m trying to do is display the most recent post (a la my theme’s “single.php”) on my “home” page.

This is complicated by the fact that I have certain plugins (specifically, Scripts n Styles) that are hooking wp_head and wp_enqueue_scripts. In these hooks, they are checking is_singular() to see if my per-post javascript should be injected into the page or not. They then check attributes of the global $post variable to determine which scripts to inject. I want the per-post javascript to be properly injected on the home page if needed.

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For reference, the plugin in question’s source code is here and the specific function I’m concerned with running properly is called scripts_in_head(): 

static function scripts_in_head() {
    // Global
    $options = get_option( 'SnS_options' );
    if ( ! empty( $options ) && ! empty( $options[ 'scripts_in_head' ] ) ) {
        ?><script type="text/javascript" id="sns_global_scripts_in_head"><?php
        echo $options[ 'scripts_in_head' ];
        ?></script><?php
    }

    if ( ! is_singular() ) return;
    // Individual
    global $post;
    $SnS = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_SnS', true );
    $scripts = isset( $SnS['scripts'] ) ? $SnS[ 'scripts' ]: array();
    if ( ! empty( $scripts ) && ! empty( $scripts[ 'scripts_in_head' ] ) ) {
        ?><script type="text/javascript" id="sns_scripts_in_head"><?php
        echo $scripts[ 'scripts_in_head' ];
        ?></script><?php
    }
}

I’m pretty new to WordPress development, so I’ve probably made a boneheaded mistake here that is making my life overly difficult. Here are the various and sundry ways I’ve beaten my head against the wall:

From what I understand, I can’t just change my home.php template, since the template isn’t even executed until after all these hooks would have already run. Therefore, modifying the query at this point or creating a new one would be pointless.

I could use a HTTP header redirect, although I’m not sure that would work without manually updating the redirect every time the latest post changes.

I could change home.php to have a javascript redirect, but that seems like it would be a lot of time/effort wasted loading the “dead” home page just to get redirected to another page. If this is the only way, so be it, but it seems like I should be able to do better.

I’ve tried creating a plugin that hooks earlier than Scripts n Styles, and modifies $wp_query, but this doesn’t seem to work properly. Likely, I’m doing it wrong: 

function make_single_from_home()
    global $wp_query;
    if ( $wp_query->is_home() ) {
        $last = wp_get_recent_posts( '1');
        $last_id = $last['0']['ID'];
        $wp_query->set( 'p', $last_id )
        $wp_query->set( 'post_count', 1);
        $wp_query->set( 'is_home', false);
        $wp_query->set( 'is_single', true);
    }
}

I’ve tried attaching this to several events prior to Scripts n Styles’ hook, (send_header, template_redirect, etc), and it doesn’t seem to help. I don’t see the javascript blocks being added to my <head> tag. (It’s possible that this is a valid solution and I or the plugin are just Doing It Wrong)

It’s also possible that there’s a really easy way to make my homepage a singular page displaying my latest post, and I’m just too new to figure it out.

Is there some way to create a home page that displays just the latest post, while making the $post variable valid, and is_singular() == true early enough for my plugin dependencies?

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3 comments

  1. I’m not sure how plugin hooks would impact in any way the solution to your problem. The home.php template file gets included at the template_redirect action, which fires well-before wp_head.

    That said, what it sounds like you want to do is:

    1. Have 'posts_per_page' = 1 on the first page of the blog posts index
    2. Have 'posts_per_page' = 10 on subsequent pages of the blog posts index

    The simplest method is probably to use a static page as the site front page, and then use a custom query in front-page.php to retrieve the latest post.

    front-page.php:

    get_header();

$latest_post_args = array(
    'post_per_page' = 1;
);

$latest_post = new WP_Query( $latest_post_args );

if ( $latest_post->have_posts() ) : while ( $latest_post->have-posts() ) : $latest_post->the_post();

    // Loop markup goes here

endwhile; endif;

wp_reset_postdata();

get_footer();

    Since is_singular() returns true for static pages as the site front page, your plugin script enqueues should be unaffected.

  2. Chip’s answer helped me fix the error, but it took a bit more tweaking to get it fully solved.

    With a static front page, the front-page.php template will be called (as per the hierarchy) with $wp_query populated with page ID that corresponds to the page you’ve chosen to show as the “static page” in the reading options.

    Chip suggested creating a new query after the get_header() call, which can help change the posts that are displayed. He’s also correct that, owing to the settings parsed into $wp_query to the front-page.php template, the is_singular() call will return TRUE.

    However, this won’t solve the issue of the value of $post. As soon as get_header() is called, most themes will advance the action chain from template_redirect past wp_enqueue_scripts. Any hooks in between there will be called, and it will be too late to effect the value of $wp_query or $post for plugins that hook one of the events in that region.

    Therefore, the wp_head action was getting called with the $post information from the “static page” entry. Since I don’t want that to happen, I have to modify these values somehow prior to the call to get_header().

    There are probably multiple ways of doing this, but the one that worked for me was to add:

    global $wp_query;

$last = wp_get_recent_posts(array('numberposts'=>'1','post_status'=>'publish' ));
$last_id = $last['0']['ID'];

$wp_query = new WP_Query('p='.$last_id);

    to my front-page.php prior to the call to get_header(). This overwrites the query value generated from the static page, and replaces it with one that returns just the most recent post.

    It’s probably possible to do this with a plugin as well, so long as you hook early enough.

  3. You are trying to display a snippet of JavaScript on the homepage, which features a single post.

    The simplest way is to include the snippet of JS everywhere (Global Settings), then check in the JavaScipt whether you are on the homepage: if ( $('body').hasClass('home') ) { /* do_stuff() */ }

    This will simplify your maintenance of code.

    (Sorry I didn’t ever see this until now.)