Displaying posts by categories challenge

I produce a radio program and are using WP to build a site for it I am working with 2 basic categories: “Radio Broadcast” and “Featured Stories”. I want both of these categories to be selectable/visible on the front page. However, I want only recent posts (probably 3 total) from the “Radio Broadcast” category to initially be visible to the user on the front page… instead of all posts regardless of categories – which is the WP default. I want the user to be able to select on the front page between “All”, and the “Radio broadcast” and “Featured Stories” categories.

The reason for this is because our front page content needs to reflect the current radio episodes and not be intermingled with feature stories that we may post. Otherwise, it could be visually confusing for our visitors who are looking for the current radio episode. At the same time, we want to keep featured stories accessible right there next to the radio broadcasts.

Using a plugin to exclude categories on the front page doesn’t work for us because it prevents the other category – when selected – from displaying the featured stories on the front page. Haven’t come across any plugins that seem to what we’re looking for yet.

For clarity, I am wondering if:
It’s possible to change the default front page display from showing all posts to showing posts from just one particular category… without making the other category unable to display content on the front page if selected. If this is possible, can you help me figure out how to do this?

If not, could a possible workaround be to sort/display all posts on front page by first by category and then date? So, on the front page, “Radio Broadcast” posts by date would show first, then “Featured Stories” posts by date would display next? If that were possible, the post limit would prevent the “Featured Stories” category from being viewable… until that category was selected by user. That would work just as well for us and might be the easier way to go. If this is possible, can you share with me how it could be done?

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Any help and direction you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
Tosok

• This topic was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress as this is not a Developing with WordPress topic