Order posts (across the whole site) by metadata date

Question

My custom 'Home' page is set to sort my custom posts via the custom date field with this (updated to be custom named) code in functions.php:

// sort order for home page
add_action('wp', 'wwgo_check_page');
function wwgo_check_page () {
if (is_page()) {
    add_filter('get_previous_post_sort', 'sort_it');
    add_filter('get_next_post_sort', 'sort_it');
    add_filter('posts_orderby', 'sort_it' );
    add_filter('posts_join', 'join_it' );
    add_filter('posts_where', 'where_it' );

    function sort_it () {
        global $wpdb;

        return " $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value ASC ";
    }

    function join_it( $join ) {
        global $wpdb;

        $join .= " LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ON($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id) ";

      return $join;
    }

    function where_it( $where ) {
        global $wpdb;
        $where .= "AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_key = 'deadline' ";

      return $where;
    }
}



}

Which is dandy and simple. Now. I want this to work across the whole site. I want posts on archive pages, categories etc to be sorted first by the custom date field.

Any ideas?

I have tried changing the 'if' to is_archive() but that had no effect. I tried <! is_single()> too.

I'm sure it should be something simple. But I'm new to php and thus clueless.

Here is the site, where you can see the home page is nicely sorted, but if you click 'poetry' (the only one with a few posts), sorting doesn't work.

Any suggestions will be met with much joy.

Thank You Kindly.

Answer 1

Use the query_vars or request filter to add orderby if orderby is not presented in the query string

Answer 2

Why don't you use query_posts()?

<?php
query_posts('meta_key=key_name&orderby=key_name&sort=ASC');
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

endwhile; else:

endif;

wp_reset_query();

You can also alter the query using pre_get_posts hook as well and do your conditional sorting there with is_archive(), is_page() etc...

Answer 3

I'm looking at your other question too.

If you wish to sort by the date meta-value they must naturally be in the same format - I'm guessing it's PHP's date('m-y') format as you specified in your code there?

If that's the case, you may find that if you change your meta_value in that code to meta_value_num you get a better result?

Not sure this will work, but might be worth a try.