Modifying how Wordpress posts are displayed

CMS & WordPress
1

Is there a way to display the last 5 most recent posts and show only a set number of words from the beginning of each? The reason for this is because I have a “main” content panel / div and I also have a secondary content panel / div and what I would like to do is keep the very last post within the main while placing about 5 other posts in the secondary as excerpts or teasers.

How would I do this exactly? I know that Wordpress has some functions that allow you to control things like which specific posts are displayed, but 1.) can they control ranges, 2.) can they control the number of words that are displayed from the posts, and 3.) am I crazy for thinking this is possible?

2

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts

The first example shows how to skip the first post, and to show an excerpt, use the_excerpt(), or write your own function to return part of the text from get_the_content().

3

Excellent! Thanks Dan!