How to place a loop within another loop?

I have two loops setup using WP_Query: $latest and $popular that I’m working to setup in this example layout:

Latest                                     Popular

Example HTML Output

<div class="content">

    <div class="posts latest">
        <post1>    
        <post2>
    </div>

    <div class="posts popular">
        <post10>    
        <post9>
        <post8>    
        <post7>
    </div>

    <div class="ad-block">
        <ad>
    </div>

</div>

<div class="content">

    <div class="posts latest">
        <post3>    
        <post4>
    </div>

    <div class="posts popular">
        <post6>    
        <post5>
        <post4>    
        <post3>
    </div>

    <div class="ad-block">
        <ad>
    </div>

</div>

[...]

Simply put: the Latests and Popular post divs are floated next to eachother and broken apart every few posts to accommodate an full width ad block.

My Loop

<div class="content">

    <div class="posts latest">

        <?php

        $args1 = array (
            'posts_per_page'    => 1000000,
            'order'             => 'DESC',
            'orderby'           => 'date'

        );

        $latest = new WP_Query( $args1 );

        if ( $latest -> have_posts() ) :

            $count = 0;

            while ( $latest -> have_posts() ) : $latest -> the_post();

                $count++;

                if ( $count % 5 == 0 ) :

                        get_template_part( 'template', 'post' ); ?>

                        </div> <!--/posts-latest-->

                        <div class="posts popular">

                            <?php

                            $args2 = array (
                                'posts_per_page'    => 10,
                                'order'             => 'ASC',
                                'orderby'           => 'date',
                            );

                            $popular = new WP_Query( $args2 );

                            if ( $popular -> have_posts() ) :

                                while ( $popular -> have_posts() ) : $popular -> the_post();

                                    get_template_part( 'template', 'post' );

                                endwhile;

                            endif;

                            ?>

                        </div> <!--/posts-popular-->

                        <div class="ad-block">
                            <?php get_template_part( 'template', 'ad' ); ?>
                        </div>

                    </div><!--/content-->    

                    <div class="content">

                        <div class="posts latest">

                <?php

                else :

                    get_template_part( 'template', 'post' );

                endif;

            endwhile;

        endif; wp_reset_postdata();

        ?>

    </div> <!--/posts-latest-->    

</div>

Right now this is setup so that every 5th posts in the $latest loop the $popular loop and a ad-block are added.

I understand why this doesn’t work… Because every 5th post when the $popular loop is called it’s starting again instead of continuing in order.

Any ideas on how I can make this work?

Try this: We declare an incrementer at the top of our outter loop called $popularLoop to keep track of how many popular loops we’ve been through, we assume we’re going to at least hit 1.

Inside our Inner Loop (popular) we need to set how many posts per page we’re going to load, multiple that by how many popular loops we’ve been through and that is going to give us our offset. At the end of our Inner Loop we increment $popularLoop so our offset stays consistent:

<div class="content">

    <div class="posts latest">

        <?php

        $args1 = array (
            'posts_per_page'    => 1000000,
            'order'             => 'DESC',
            'orderby'           => 'date'

        );

        $latest = new WP_Query( $args1 );
        $popularLoop = 0;

        if ( $latest -> have_posts() ) :

            $count = 0;

            while ( $latest -> have_posts() ) : $latest -> the_post();

                $count++;

                if ( $count % 5 == 0 ) :

                        get_template_part( 'template', 'post' ); ?>

                        </div> <!--/posts-latest-->

                        <div class="posts popular">

                            <?php
                            $popular_ppp = 10;
                            $popularOffset = $popular_ppp * $popularLoop;
                            $args2 = array (
                                'posts_per_page'    => $popular_ppp,
                                'offset'            => $popularOffset,
                                'order'             => 'ASC',
                                'orderby'           => 'date',
                            );

                            $popular = new WP_Query( $args2 );

                            if ( $popular -> have_posts() ) :

                                while ( $popular -> have_posts() ) : $popular -> the_post();

                                    get_template_part( 'template', 'post' );

                                endwhile;

                              $popularLoop++;
                            endif;

                            ?>

                        </div> <!--/posts-popular-->

                        <div class="ad-block">
                            <?php get_template_part( 'template', 'ad' ); ?>
                        </div>

                    </div><!--/content-->    

                    <div class="content">

                        <div class="posts latest">

                <?php

                else :

                    get_template_part( 'template', 'post' );

                endif;

            endwhile;

        endif; wp_reset_postdata();

        ?>

    </div> <!--/posts-latest-->    

</div>