[Resolved] WooCommerce archive page ordering by custom field

[Author]

Posts

[jesseW-3]

I am trying to:
Order WooCommerce archive pages (product categories), by a custom field. Specifically I've set up a "Last Name" field so that I can order my products by "Last Name" as opposed to Product title.

Link to a page where the issue can be seen:
hidden link

I expected to see:
I was expecting so see the archive, ordered by my custom field, "Last Name" ASC

Instead, I got:
An archive which was ordered by the default output from WordPress.... aka post title ASC

PS. the duplicator file is a .daf not a .zip as I put in the ticket.

[Minesh]

Hello. Thank you for contacting the Toolset support.

It looks like the issue is due to the different slug you are using for product_cat taxonomy which is original slug.

I've added the following code to Toolset's "Custom Code" section:
=> hidden link

// change order of event_category pages to date based
function func_change_product_archive_order( $query ) {

  // Make sure this only fires when we want it too
  if( !is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() && $query->is_tax('product_cat')) {
    
    // If so, modify the order variables
    $query->set('meta_key', 'wpcf-last-name-ordering' );
    $query->set('orderby', 'meta_value'  );
    $query->set( 'order', 'ASC' );
  
  }
  
}
add_action('pre_get_posts', 'func_change_product_archive_order', 9999);

I can see now the taxonomy archive ordering is working as expected:
=> hidden link

[jesseW-3]

My issue is resolved now. Thank you for the quick and excellent support!

I'd like to know more about 'meta_value' in the following part of the code
$query->set('orderby', 'meta_value' );

I just don't understand where its coming from.... but I'm happy it works!