Hello!
The query-alterations are not permanent; they’re “JIT” (Just in Time). When you disable the plugin, or when you disable the query-alteration settings, it’ll be turned off, and everything is as if it was never touched.
For each post and page, the setting is stored in the post-meta database.
When you alter the query “in the database”, whenever you update a post, all post IDs with the query-altering setting enabled are collected and stored in a new database entry. This entry is called once an archive-query or search-query is detected, it’s then stored in memory, and TSF uses it to filter the posts from the query dynamically.
When you alter the query “on the site”, each post is checked for the query-altering entry as they (try) to be displayed on your website during an archive-query or search-query loop, without a pagination bias. It is why you may experience 404-errors using this setting, but it may be the preferred method for some corner-cases (e.g. large news websites).
Thanks to my numinous focus on performance, you shouldn’t notice any slowdown because of these settings, whichever way you configure them. ??
I hope this clarification brings you peace of mind! Cheers!
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This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: typo