The great and powerful WordPress Loop is what makes WordPress display its posts. Depending on what theme template file is being called on when navigating your website, WordPress queries the database and retrieves the posts that need to be returned to the end user and then loops through them.
Most correctly built WordPress themes usually have the following files that contain the WordPress loop:
- index.php
- category.php
- archieve.php
- single.php
- tag.php
- page.php
If you open up any of these files, will contain code that may look something like this:
<?php
if ( have_posts() ) {
while ( have_posts() ) {
the_post();
// show each post title, excerpt/content , featured image and more
the_title( '<h2>', '</h2>' );
the_content();
}
} else {
// show a message like sorry no posts!
}
?>
The have_posts() function checks to see if there are any posts that need to be looped, and if so, the while loop is initiated. The the_post() function called first in each iteration of the loop sets up the post with all of its global variables so post-specific data can be displayed to the end user.
