The “Useful WordPress Function of the Day” award goes to query_posts
. This function can be used to:
- Revise the query that WordPress forms from the URL, so you can change the sorting of posts, exclude certain categories, etc.
query_posts($query_string . "&order=ASC&category_name=Libraries");
This takes the current query and sorts it in ascending order, limiting the results to posts in the “Libraries” category.
- Create custom queries, either for public-facing pages or in administration plugins.
query_posts(array( "category__in" => array(1,3), "posts_per_page" => -1, "author" => 5 ));
This query grabs all the posts by author 5 in categories 1 or 3.
After calling query_posts
, you can use your standard WordPress loop, along with all the template tags it makes available, in your template or plugin.