WP_Query

Get all pages that use a specific template We have a big site and a task to edit a page template. After the change we need to check all pages that use it, and a template may be used by many pages. So we need links to all of them. How can it be done?…

Get links to all posts that contain a specific phrase Hi all! Today we continue with SEO questions. Imagine a large website with thousands of pages. We have to find a word, or a part of a word, in the content of the posts, output links to all pages that contain it, and then be…

Customise WordPress search: post types, categories and order The built-in search looks for the words in the title, the excerpt and the content of all public post types and sorts the results by relevance of the title, then by date. That is fine for a blog, but on a site with products, documentation and landing…

Query the media library with WP_Query Every uploaded file is a post of the type attachment with the status inherit, the file’s MIME type in post_mime_type and the post it was uploaded to in post_parent. So the media library can be queried with WP_Query like any other content: all PDFs, the images of one post,…

get_posts(), WP_Query or query_posts(): which one to use WordPress has three ways to get posts: get_posts(), new WP_Query() and query_posts(). They accept the same arguments and end up in the same SQL, but they behave differently, and one of them should practically never be used. Choosing the right one avoids broken pagination and posts that…

Modify the WordPress main query with pre_get_posts: 5 common patterns WordPress builds and runs the main query (the one behind the Loop on the home page, archives and search) before the template is loaded. When archive.php starts, the posts are already fetched. The pre_get_posts action fires after the query object is created but before the…

Avoid N+1 queries in WordPress: prime the meta and term caches The N+1 problem: one query fetches a list of N items, and then every item in a loop makes one more query for its related data. With 50 posts that is 51 queries, with 200 posts it is 201. In WordPress it usually happens…

WP_User_Query: find users by role, meta, date and search WP_User_Query does for users what WP_Query does for posts: it turns an array of arguments into SQL on the users and usermeta tables. get_users() is a short wrapper around it that returns the results directly. For lists with pagination you need the query object itself, because…

wp_list_pluck(), wp_list_filter() and wp_list_sort(): array helpers in WordPress WordPress returns lists everywhere: get_posts() gives WP_Post objects, get_terms() gives WP_Term objects, get_users() gives WP_User objects. Getting one field from all of them, keeping some of them or sorting them by a field are everyday tasks, and core has three small functions for them that work with…