How to add a different style to the first 2 entries in a channel call

Question

I want to add a different class and fields to the 1st and 2nd entries produced from the channel entries call.

I then want the rest of the entries on the page to be the same style, that style should then continue in the pagination, the 1st and 2nd entries should not be styled differently on the pagination pages.

I have tried using {if count == '1'} and {if count == '2'}, and {if absolute_count == '1'} and {if absolute_count == '2'}, but the pagination also styled the first and second entry.

My scenario is the first entry will be large than the rest and contain different information, so different fields need to be outputted with this. Also the second entry will be slightly different too.

Any help on how i could get this working would be great.

Answer 1

absolute_count is the right variable to use, as it should give you the count of the entry relative to the total number of entries available within the entries loop, ignoring pagination (whereas count resets for each pagination). So I'm surprised that the second example you provided didn't work.

The way I ordinarily handle such a condition is with the switchee add-on - it early parses the outer conditional (using switch case) and therein avoids parsing the inside of the condition/case that isn't satisfied.

So in this way, the setup would look like this:

 {exp:channel:entries channel="whatever" orderby="date" sort="desc" dynamic="no" disable="whatever|not|needed"}
     {exp:switchee parse="inward" var="{absolute_count}"}
       {case value="1|2"}
         first and second entries
       {/case}
       {case default="yes"}
         all other entries
       {/case}
     {/exp:switchee}
 {/exp:channel:entries}

Given that the larger ones would contain different info, it may be a little more than just applying a different class to absolute 1 and 2 and instead your different content markup would be contained between the two cases - the first matching 1 and 2 in your absolute count and the second matching all others that do not satisfy the first case.

Hope this helps.