Adding different styling every 3rd post

I’d say there may be a lot of ways to do that..

Put a counter into loop and fetch style information from a “style pool” using that counter; be sure to use “cycling fetching”…

Let’s say:

$style_classes = array('first','second','third');
$style_index = 0;

// ...
// in a loop:
<span class="<?php echo "class=$style_classes[$style_index%3]"; $style_index++; ?>"> .... </span>

Does this make sense?

Hi Dor,

I can’t get this to work. Below is the code I have…

<?php
query_posts("cat=5&showposts=3&offset=0");
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$style_classes = array('first','second','third');
$style_index = 0;
 ?>
		<div class="<?php echo "class=$style_classes[$style_index3]"; $style_index++; ?>">
			<div class="indexreview"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="read the interview with <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php echo c2c_get_custom('Image URL', '<img src="', '" width="240" height="88" '); ?>alt="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" />
				</a>
			</div>
			<h3 class="interviewheader"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="read the interview with <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
			</h3>
<?php echo c2c_get_custom('Stand First', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
			<div class="postdate"><?php the_time('d.m.y') ?> </div>
			<div class="commentquote"><?php comments_popup_link('0', '1', '%'); ?></div>
			</p>
		</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
	</div>

I get the following error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '%', expecting ']' in [mydomain] on line 139

Can you shed any light on what I’m doing wrong?

First, this:

$style_classes = array('first','second','third');
$style_index = 0;

should be outside of the loop. Before query_posts, let’s say.

Next, right you are, that’s my fault, try to use one more variable, like this:

<div class="<?php $k = $style_index%3; echo "class=$style_classes[$k]"; $style_index++; ?>">

Mmm… should work.

Thanks! If you want more or less options do you just change the number of classes in that array and the number here $style_index%3;?

I’m not using code like this,
but you can try:

// outside the loop:
$style_classes = array('first','second','third', 'fourth');
$styles_count = count($style_classes);
$style_index = 0;

// inside the loop:
<div class="<?php $k = $style_index % $styles_count; echo "class=$style_classes[$k]"; $style_index++; ?>">

So, you can change “styles pool” (or, in general case, variables “pool”) and loop fetching over $styles_count.

Well, you can use also a variant with no extra variable (my fault again):

// inside the loop:
<div class="<?php echo $style_classes[$style_index++ % $styles_count]; ?>">

@dor, sorry i’m not well into programming thing, can you explain what does $style_index%3 mean? Or what i need google to know it ??

I didn’t understand what is % mean. I know it’s very simple, but i don’t know how to google it. :-[

upd. oh i get it

This is awesome, but I’m not sure how to implement a similar option using the wp_nav_menu tag. I’m not very familiar with PHP.

This is what I have. I get a parse error if I use another <?php ?> inside for the class of the span. Any ideas on how to make it work for this template tag?

<?php
$style_classes = array('first','second','third','fourth');
$style_index = 0;
?>

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'container_class' => 'menu-header', 'before' => '<span class="$k = $style_index%3; echo "class=$style_classes[$k]"; $style_index++;">', 'after' => '</span>' ) ); ?>