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Post featured lead

Two Query Loops read as one section: the newest post opens at display size with its featured image, its byline and an excerpt, and the three behind it sit in a rail beside it as ruled date-and-title lines with no picture at all. It reads your own posts, so the lead changes the moment you publish; the preview on this page shows sample posts from our demo site, not yours. States no colour and no font of its own.

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Identical markup in every theme. Manrope typeface rgb(255, 255, 255) ground 1280px viewport

The newest post opens the section at display size with its picture; the three behind it sit in a rail beside it as ruled date-and-title lines with no picture at all. It is the only pattern in the posts section that ranks its entries.

The signature moment

One post at display scale against three at caption scale

post-grid weights six openings identically and post-list weights five rows identically. This one does not, and the hierarchy IS the composition: a 16:9 picture and a 48px headline on 62% of the measure, against three entries on the other 38% that are a tracked date and a 20px title and nothing else. There is no middle term. One rule runs across both halves at the top and another closes them at the bottom, so the two densities are held inside one plate and read as a ranking rather than as two sections that happen to be adjacent.

Every rule in it is currentColor: the plate's top and bottom edges and the hairline above each rail entry. Nothing states a colour, so the whole device survives an inversion or a recolour without a single value being restated.

What it inherits from your theme

  • The typeface. The pattern states no font family anywhere. The lead's headline is a clamp() and the ramp between it and the rail is the design.
  • Your colours. The ground asks for base and the type asks for contrast, the two slugs every stock block theme defines, each ending on a colour WordPress guarantees.
  • Your spacing scale. The plate's padding, the gap between the halves and the air inside a rail entry are spacing presets.
  • Your featured image, and whatever your theme does to it.

What it decides for itself

  • One and three. perPage 1 with no offset, then perPage 3 offset by 1. Change one and you must change the other, or a post shows up twice.
  • Full bleed with its own measure, held to 1240px.
  • 62/38. The lead needs a picture at a readable size and the rail needs a title to break at most twice. Below 782px core stacks them, and the lead is first, which is why the lead is the left column and not the right.
  • A meta line, not a trailing date. The lead's date and author sit on one flex row above the headline, in the same order as the rail's date-then-title, so the two halves scan the same way. An earlier draft put the lead's date last and it read as a fourth line of the excerpt.
  • The 16:9 crop on the lead, and no picture at all in the rail. The rail is the counterweight; give it thumbnails and the ranking disappears.
  • Titles carry their own explicit text colour, because a theme's heading element style beats a colour set on a wrapping group.
  • An empty state on each loop, so a site with one post or none still renders a section rather than a blank plate.

What to change first

  1. Which post leads. The loops are date-ordered. To pin a piece, set the lead loop to a category of one, and give the rail loop the same offset arithmetic.
  2. The rail's length. Three is what fits beside a 16:9 lead. Four fits if you drop the lead's excerpt.
  3. The section label. "From the journal" is a tracked paragraph above the plate; delete it and the plate's top rule still opens the section.
  4. The excerpt. 32 words on the lead, none in the rail. That gap is the hierarchy.
  5. The date format. Set on each Post Date block. Both ship as j M Y.
This one queries your posts101 words

This pattern is two core/query loops reading the same posts. The lead asks for one post; the rail asks for three with an offset of one, so it starts where the lead stopped and no post appears twice. Publish, and the lead becomes the new piece and the old lead drops to the top of the rail.

The preview on the product page is our sample content, not yours. A dynamic block renders the site it is in, so the four posts in the stage are the demo posts on our verification install. What you paste is the pair of queries.

Links, and why the title is not one232 words

The picture is the link; the title is not. A tap target has to be at least 44px in its smaller dimension at 390, which is the width a thumb actually works at, and an inline text link is only ever as tall as its line box: a one-line title at 24px is a 26px target and a tracked category line is a 19px one. No block attribute can make an inline link taller without leaving absurd space around the type, so this pattern ships the featured image as the tap target, where the box is the picture and there is nothing marginal about it.

The Post Title block carries a Make title a link toggle in its own panel, so turning the titles into links is one click and it is your decision rather than ours. Categories are not offered at all: core/post-terms always renders each term as a link, with no way to turn it off, so the meta slot carries the post's author instead, which is real post data and is not a target.

The section still sets its own link colour, once, at the top, to the same contrast chain as its body text. That is defensive: a theme's link colour can be an accent, an accent's luminance is unknowable, and if you do switch the titles on they will be the colour of the type around them.

The variation81 words

Stacked lead turns the same hierarchy through ninety degrees: the lead runs the full measure with a 21:9 picture and a larger headline, and the three behind it sit under it as a row of three ruled columns. It is a composition change rather than a colour one, and it is the right choice where the section has the page to itself rather than a column of it. It stacks to one column on a phone with the lead still first.

Notes82 words
  • Core blocks only: group, paragraph, columns, column, query, post-template, post-featured-image, post-author-name, post-title, post-excerpt, post-date, query-no-results. No plugin, no script.
  • core/query-total is deliberately absent. It does not exist in WordPress 6.6, which is this catalogue's floor.
  • Every colour is a fallback chain ending on a colour WordPress guarantees, and no rule in the pattern states a colour at all.
  • Text never sits on a photograph. The picture carries atmosphere and the headline sits on your page ground beneath it.
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