WP_Query – Why aren’t we counting rows?

[mouakter13]

As WordPress developers, we often need to retrieve posts, pages, and other content that match specific criteria from the WordPress database . We usually don't need to build SQL queries (and often we shouldn't) because the class WP_Queryand its methods provide us with a safe and efficient way to retrieve data from the database. We just need to declare a series of arguments, and the object $querywill build the actual SQL query.

In this post, I assume that you already know the basics of the class WP_Query, its methods and properties , and where to find a list of available variables .

I will focus on the parameters provided by the class WP_Queryspecifically to optimize SQL queries, reducing execution time and resource consumption.

When traffic and content are limited, we usually don't albania phone number data worry about the efficiency of our queries. WordPress builds well-optimized SQL queries and provides a caching system out of the box.

When site traffic and content grow significantly – up to thousands of posts – then we need to consider query execution time.

Our toolbox
WP_Query – Why we don’t count rows
Cache or no cache
Returned fields
Our toolbox
The code I'm going to show you has been tested with Query Monitor , a free plugin that provides essential information about query performance, triggered hooks, HTTP requests, rewrite rules, and much more.

As an alternative to a plugin, we can force WordPress to store the query information by declaring the following constant in wp-config.php :