append display:none to subsequent li on loop - php

Question

We have a slider, we want to use. Dead simple stuff. But I need it to become a little more dynamic.
We have a blog roll, which runs and displays on a php loop, basically.. if we set the loop to 6.. it generates 6 sets of divs.
Now my thought is, put the DIV which displays the blog post within a slider, then we can display subsequent posts as each div refreshes.. kinda thing.. I am sure you know what I mean.
I have made a simple fiddle...
http://jsfiddle.net/ozzy/yEB4V/
Essentially, we only need ONE <li> to </li>
Reason is, we can plonk our php around the LI tags so that the loop works, and the slides get updated accordingly..
The issue I have is, the first time the LI is fired, it must not have display:none , for obvious reasons.. all the otehr subsequent occurences of the LI tags are hidden.
As you can see from the fiddle, all the LI tags have display none, apart from the first LI tag, so it shows that first, then loops to next and each one is updated.
script here;
var slider = function() {
$('#testimonials .slide').filter(':visible').fadeOut(1000,function(){
if($(this).next('li.slide').size()){
$(this).next().fadeIn(2000);
}
else{
$('#testimonials .slide').eq(0).fadeIn(1000);
}
});
};
var interval = setInterval(slider, 2000);
$('#testimonials .slide').hover(function() {
clearInterval(interval);
}, function() {
interval = setInterval(slider, 2000);
});
I wonder if anyone knows how to get around this... As our php code will be something like:
<ul id="testimonials">
<!-- OUR PHP LOOP-->
<li class="slide">
<div>
<h1><?php echo $title; ?></h1>
<p><?php echo $stuff; ?>
</div>
</li>
<!-- // PHP LOOP -->
</ul>

Answer 1

You could use jquery to make the first child visible.
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#testimonials :first-child.slide').show(0);
//.. rest of the stuff
});
And in the php, set all the divs to display:none

Answer 2

use:
<ul id="testimonials">
<?php foreach($lis as $li) { ?>
<li class="slide"<?php if($li == $lis[0]) echo ' style="display:list-item;"' ?>>
<div>
<h1><?php echo $title; ?></h1>
<p><?php echo $stuff; ?>
</div>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>