Question

Here is my query:

Does this look efficient? Is there an advantage of using JOIN? Or is this the same?

$query_Recordset2 = 
"SELECT cute_news.category, cute_news.id, cute_story.short, cute_story.post_id, cute_news.date, cute_news.url, cute_news.title 
FROM cute_news, cute_story 
WHERE cute_news.id = cute_story.post_id AND category LIKE '10%' 
ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 0,35";

Answer 1

This question might be a duplicate of that one.

Implicit JOINs do not carry the intent, and are thus less readable.

Your query will lead to strictly same results as:

SELECT cute_news.category, cute_news.id, cute_story.short, cute_story.post_id, cute_news.date, cute_news.url, cute_news.title 
FROM cute_news
 INNER JOIN cute_story ON cute_story.post = cute_news.id
WHERE category LIKE '10%' 
ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 0,35

but the latter query is far more readable because you separate JOIN predicates from filters and express the logic behind the query.