

Show HN: The WordPress Query Generator, create WP loops in plain English - irunbackwards
http://wpquerygenerator.com/

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woah
It's unfortunate that this is necessary. Other frameworks have normal
iterators, the for loop, maybe a while loop as well. They just show items from
the db. Simple. WP has somehow fetishized this simple affair into "The Loop"-
3 different functions, all with slightly different behavior and syntax, with
about 40 arbitrary defaults each that must be overridden if you want basic,
bare bones behavior. It's no surprise that WP is the only framework that needs
an online generator for something that is usually so simple. I could get into
"The Post" as well, but I'll leave that for another time.

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meritt
While I agree that WP is an absolute mess, I want to remind you that this has
been how WP has operated for _long_ before the vast majority of today's
frameworks have existed.

WP isn't a framework. It's a CMS. A shitty one that needs to go away, but
criticizing it for not having the same feature-set as modern frameworks is
simply unfair and unnecessary.

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voyou
While WordPress is a bit of a shitty CMS, all the other CMSes I've tried are
even worse. Are there any actually good alternatives?

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blindhippo
Wordpress is a code architectural mess, but as a CMS it's one of the best I've
ever seen. (CMS's are deceptively complicated to build)

People saying it's shitty don't know what they are talking about (even you
point out others you've tried are worse).

Wordpress is best in class for what it is: open source content manager. It's
best use case is for a simple blog. It can be bashed into submission to be an
ok general CMS or even a community managment solution. Past that though, it's
architecture falls to pieces - but then, you wouldn't use a hammer to drill a
hole would you?

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coolsunglasses
The real difficulty in CMSs isn't in making the CMS, it's making a CMS that is
reasonably extensible and configurable by end-users as well as coders.

Too far into that extreme gets into Drupal-land.

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jwarren
Very cute! Love the sentence-based construction.

This would be really strong if it allowed you to generate more complex
queries. For instance, you can't select more than one post status, select a
custom post type, or use meta fields as part of the query.

I get that it's meant to provide a nice starting point, but value for _me_
(and I get that I might not be a target) would be a natural language
abstraction of the more complex queries.

~~~
irunbackwards
Hey jwarren, we're working on making it more complex -- we wanted to get the
MVP out for user feedback. We want to add things like support for multiples of
the current criteria we have, as well as more advanced queries like custom
fields and custom taxonomy.

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shloime
I could definitely see myself using something like this. It needs some more
complex loops, but it's a great MVP. Cheers.

~~~
irunbackwards
Thanks! We plan on adding support for things like custom fields and meta data
soon, so stay tuned!

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jonheller
I think this is awesome. Obviously it's not geared towards intermediate or
higher level WordPress developers, but for someone like my wife who is just
digging into WordPress looping it's a wonderful learning tool.

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Jake232
Great, however I can't help but think that 10minutes spent making the response
AJAX would make the app much more user-friendly/responsive and easier to
iterate through changes quickly.

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irunbackwards
This is definitely doable -- we've put this in our to-do, thanks for the
feedback!

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ChrisClark
On Chrome I can't delete 'anyone', 'all' or 'any' from the text fields. I can
only type new characters in front of the default text. On the initial load,
'anyone' is also cut off, looks like 'anyor'.

Other than that, this looks like a very nice site for a non-programmer or new
programmer who wants to customize a theme they found.

~~~
irunbackwards
Hey ChrisClark, these are placeholders, so you can type and they will clear
out. We'll take this into consideration and maybe change the text color so
it's a little more apparent. Dually noted about the cut off "anyone" -- thanks
for the feedback!

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ereckers
Not the greatest experience on iPad 2. Back on the desktop, it doesn't seem to
clear values, only adds them (I'm playing with chaning posts, page, etc..)

Here's a good WP Query resource I've been using to structure marginally
complex queries:

    
    
      https://gist.github.com/luetkemj/2023628

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ramen
Here is a library I wrote to make querying WordPress easier:
<https://github.com/ramen/wp-find>

It has a more conventional builder-style API that may answer the complaints of
those wishing for a more straightforward way to write loops.

~~~
irunbackwards
Neat, starred!

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cmwelsh
I wrote a WordPress plugin that allows you to use the WP_Query class as an
iterator:

<https://github.com/cmwelsh/zesty-wp-query>

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IgorPartola
'posts_per_page' => 'all' is not a valid value.

~~~
irunbackwards
Nice catch -- fixed and pushed!

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jjsz
I noticed the Wordpress theme Salient using this. It´s much easier for noobs.

~~~
irunbackwards
Hey! Just checked out Salient, are you referring to the shortcode generator?
I've never used the theme, just checking it out on Theme Forest.

~~~
jjsz
Hey, I'm talking about Salient's way of handling the portfolio arrays are the
same[0] as the one on this site.

[0] <http://themenectar.ticksy.com/ticket/46881>

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st3redstripe
Font is huge!

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gnaritas
As it should be for this kind of thing.

