Title: Custom query for posts outside wp_posts table Last modified: August 21, 2016 --- # Custom query for posts outside wp_posts table * [JayKayBe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jaykaybe/) * (@jaykaybe) * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/) * Hey, * I am currently building a website which will display user submitted image posts. I have a voting system which stores likes and dislikes in a custom mysql table in the format: * `ID` (Auto Incrementing) `PostID` (ID of the liked/disliked post) `Key` (`like` or `dislike`) `Value` (Number of Likes/Dislikes) * This is working perfectly fine. However what I want to do now is display two different blog sections on the website. One in which all posts are initially shown and one where posts are moved to that reach for example 20 likes. I have searched for a way to do this but haven’t found any query I could use to realize this. I know it would probably be better if the likes/dislikes would be saved as `post_meta` but the like system wasn’t implemented by me and I am not sophisticated enough to change this by myself. Unfortunately the support I’ve gotten from the guy who did it was very poor, still I kind of want to keep it and get this working somehow as the liking/disliking process itself is very good. If anybody could help me out with how to query for the right posts to display in each section it would be awesome! Thank you guys for reading! Best Regards, Jay Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total) * [FriendlyWP](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mmcginnis/) * (@mmcginnis) * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/#post-4590782) * If the system isn’t currently using normal WordPress custom fields / post_meta, we’d need to see what code it is using & how the data is stored before being able to help. * Thread Starter [JayKayBe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jaykaybe/) * (@jaykaybe) * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/#post-4590814) * Hi Michelle, thank you for your response. I’m not quite sure what you mean by not using normal WordPress custom_fields / post_meta. The posts themselves are completely normal WordPress posts stored in the wp_posts table. It is just the likes which are stored in the custom table described below. The solution to my problem would probably be to do a query on the custom table to select every ID with 20+ likes and then query the wp_posts table to select just the posts with the IDs from the other query. However I am kind of scared to do so because I am not very sophisticated with MySQL queries and both of them would query for about 30.000 posts. Can this impact server performance? Again if I misunderstood your question for more information please accept my apologies. Best, Jay * [FriendlyWP](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mmcginnis/) * (@mmcginnis) * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/#post-4590829) * Hi again, You’d said in your original post: * > I know it would probably be better if the likes/dislikes would be saved as > post_meta * That’s why I assumed your setup wasn’t using the normal WordPress custom fields/ post meta to store the meta data (key/value) per post. * No matter what, I think you’ll need to post some of the current code and detailed information about how the data *is* currently stored in order to get some usable help. And given the advanced nature of the issue, this probably isn’t the right forum. You might want to try the WordPress [WP-Advanced forum](http://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced), or that and someplace like [http://wordpress.stackexchange.com](http://wordpress.stackexchange.com). * Best of luck! M * Thread Starter [JayKayBe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jaykaybe/) * (@jaykaybe) * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/#post-4590862) * Thank you for your answers Michelle! After looking into it I more and more realized this may be a little over the top for me to solve and after a brief search I found another solution, where I have the likes/dislikes stored as post_meta and it works like a charm now! Best, Jay Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total) The topic ‘Custom query for posts outside wp_posts table’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [likes](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/likes/) * [query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query/) * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 4 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [JayKayBe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jaykaybe/) * Last activity: [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-query-for-posts-outside-wp_posts-table/#post-4590862) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics