Tom McFarlin

Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

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Programmatically Search WordPress Posts By Date Range

TL;DR: The code shared in this post shows how you can modify the query that runs on the All Posts page so you can limit how you search posts to a specified date range.

It’s been a little while since I last wrote about using the post_where filter for modifying the search query that runs on a given page, such as the All Posts area of WordPress. But given the fact that there are a variety of uses for retrieving posts – and custom post types – in different ways, there’s a variety of ways to use this single filter.

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Add Custom Link to All Posts Screen Based on Post Meta Data

TL;DR: This article outlines the code needed to add a custom link on the All Posts screen that uses a custom piece of post metadata.

Note: A few months ago, I wrote an article on how to add a custom view to the All Posts screen. This article is not all together the same, but not all together different. Think of it as a more detailed and perhaps for more practical implementation of the concept.


Assume that you have a standard post type or a custom post type and you’re going to simply filter by a headline that you define using a mechanism that allows you to save data to the post_metadata table.

For example, let’s say that you have a post and it as a piece of meta data with:

  • a meta_key with the value of article_attribute
  • a meta_value with the value of headline

And you want to use this information to add a new Headlines link that automatically filters everything out except articles with that metadata.

Here’s how to do it.

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Resources, Week of 24 May 2021

Years ago (maybe a decade – or more, yikes 😬) I used to post links to resources that I found online that I found interesting or useful for other people that were designers, developers, or anyone who was interested in doing something on the web in-general. Case in point, here’s a post from 2010.

A broad umbrella, I know.

And then I started sharing stuff on Twitter pretty regularly. But I don’t that much more either. So, given that I’ve started keeping a list of things in Apple Notes that I find useful, I thought I might as well return to form and share them here.

They will probably have a much longer shelf-life and maybe reach more people between subscribers and tweeting out a link to the post.

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Sort WordPress Posts By Date

TL;DR: If you’re looking for an easy way to sort WordPress posts by date (be it descending or ascending) in the administration area without having users click on the Date column header, you can do so through the use of the pre_get_posts filter that provides a reference to the instance WP_Query running on the page.

For examples in code on how to do that, check out the rest of the article.

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Building Backcast, Part 4

TL;DR: The private podcast account is set up but not yet recorded; I’m looking to do that sooner rather than later. I’m looking to possibly abandon exclusive Overcast support which I’ll briefly talk about. This article walks through the process of defining the conditions for unit testing and how I’ve decided to go about writing the first set of unit tests.

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