Exclude content from loop

Question

I feel like I have seen a solution to my issue in the EE docs before, but now I can't find what I'm looking for. I would like to exclude some information from repeating inside of a channel entries loop, i.e. the header of the section. the reason for this is because i would like to display a different header-type depending on the amount of information that's returned (therefore, I can't just put the header outside of the loop).

In this example, I'd like Upcoming Events to appear only once, but i'd like the ul div to repeat:

{exp:channel:entries  site="default_site" channel="events" sort="asc" limit="8"}
    {if total_results == "7"}
        <h2>UPCOMING EVENTS</h2>
    {if:else}
        <h4>UPCOMING EVENTS</h4>
    {/if}
    <ul class="list">
        <li>{event_short_name}</li>
    </ul>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Answer 1

If you have 7 results, with your code above, then total_results will be 7 every time it goes around the loop, which is why you see UPCOMING EVENTS more than once.

Instead, try using

{if count==1}
    <h2>UPCOMING EVENTS</h2>
{/if}

To output something just at the start of the loop. You could put your conditional inside that one if you want to display a different heading depending on how many results there are.

{if count==1}
    {if total_results == "7"}
        <h2>UPCOMING EVENTS</h2>
    {if:else}
        <h4>UPCOMING EVENTS</h4>
    {/if}
{/if}