You can use the post_status parameter: * ‘publish’ – a published post or page * ‘pending’ – post is pending review * ‘draft’ – a post in draft status * ‘auto-draft’ – a newly created post, with no content * ‘future’ – a post to publish in the future * ‘private’ – not visible to … Read more
No, it is not possible to order by taxonomy, because from a certain type of standpoint, that doesn’t actually make much sense. Taxonomies are ways to group things together. So the point of having a taxonomy on posts would really be to have terms in that taxonomy that are shared between posts. If a taxonomy … Read more
I did some more testing with this, and honestly can’t find a reason it wouldn’t work (unless the code above is just a snippet and the real code fits on my examples below). I did, however, discover a couple of things that might lead you in the right direction. 1) By itself, this meta query … Read more
orderby should be meta_value_num, or meta_value, not the name of the key. See WP_Query orderby parameters.
You are right to say: Never use query_posts anymore pre_get_posts pre_get_posts is a filter, for altering any query. It is most often used to alter only the ‘main query’: add_action(‘pre_get_posts’,’wpse50761_alter_query’); function wpse50761_alter_query($query){ if( $query->is_main_query() ){ //Do something to main query } } (I would also check that is_admin() returns false – though this may be … Read more
query_posts() is overly simplistic and a problematic way to modify the main query of a page by replacing it with new instance of the query. It is inefficient (re-runs SQL queries) and will outright fail in some circumstances (especially often when dealing with posts pagination). Any modern WP code should use more reliable methods, like … Read more