Catalog Sort Rules for WooCommerce — its own product sorting for every category, brand and tag

Catalog Sort Rules for WooCommerce gives every product category, brand and tag its own default sorting. WooCommerce has one for the whole catalogue: if the settings say “by popularity”, then “New arrivals”, “Sale” and every brand page all open by popularity. A shop usually wants something else — new arrivals starting with the newest products, a sale with the cheapest, a brand with its best sellers.

The plugin handles this at the level of the category itself: the edit screen of a category, brand or tag gets a “Product sorting on this page” field. A subcategory without a rule of its own takes the rule of the nearest parent, so one rule on “Clothing” covers all of its subcategories. Shoppers lose nothing: the “Sort by” list stays, shows the page rule as selected, and a shopper can pick another sorting.

There is a separate version for OpenCart — Catalog Sort Rules for OpenCart.

What the shopper sees

A shopper opens a category and sees the products in the order you chose for it: “New arrivals” starting with the newest, “Sale” with the cheapest, a brand page with its best sellers. The matching entry is already selected in the “Sort by” list, so nothing looks odd: if the rule is “by name”, the plugin adds a “Sort by name: A to Z” or “Z to A” entry, which WooCommerce does not have.

A shopper can pick another sorting in the list and gets exactly that. Pagination, the result count, filters and layered navigation work as before: only the order changes, not the set of products. The shop page, search and categories without a rule keep the sorting from the WooCommerce settings.

What the admin gets

• A field on the category, brand and tag screen — “Product sorting on this page”: the default WooCommerce order, newest, best sellers, highest rated, price low to high or high to low, name A–Z or Z–A. For a subcategory the empty value says which rule it inherits and from where.
• A “Sorting” column in the category, brand and tag lists — marked “(from the parent)” for inherited rules.
• WooCommerce → Catalog Sort Rules — all pages with their own sorting in one table, plus the settings: which taxonomies have rules and whether subcategories inherit them.
• Brands — the WooCommerce brand taxonomy (in core since 9.6); taxonomies of brand plugins and attributes with archive pages are switched on in the settings.
• Pro: the “Arrange and pin” tab — page search, the list of its products, drag and drop with the mouse, “Move up”, “Move down” and “To the top” buttons (handy on a phone), a “Pin” tick box.

How it works, step by step

1. Open Products → Categories (or Brands, Tags) and the category you want to set up.
2. In the “Product sorting on this page” field choose a rule, for example “Newest first”, and save.
3. Open the category on the site: the products are already in the new order and “Sort by” has sorting by latest selected. Subcategories without a rule of their own are sorted the same way.
4. Pro: “Arrange products” in the category row opens the list of its products. Drag the products into the order you want and choose the “Manual order” rule — or tick “Pin” on the products that must come first whatever the rule.
5. If the site runs a page caching plugin, there is nothing to clear: after a rule, an order or pins are saved, the plugin clears the page cache itself (WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, WP Fastest Cache, WP-Optimize, Cache Enabler, Breeze, SiteGround Speed Optimizer, Nginx Helper).

Under the hood

• A rule is WooCommerce’s own sorting. The plugin answers the woocommerce_default_catalog_orderby filter only on pages that have a rule, so the query, the “Sort by” list, themes and filters work the same as on the shop page.
• The manual order and pins (Pro) are added at the start of the ORDER BY of the main archive query; WHERE is not changed — pagination, the result count and filters see the same set of products, with no duplicates across pages.
• Out-of-stock products at the end (Pro) — through the WooCommerce wc_product_meta_lookup table, with no query per product.
• No custom tables: rules and order are stored in the meta of categories, brands and tags; the plugin does not change products.
• Deleting the plugin removes its settings, rules, order, pins and its cron job.

Installation

1. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin: choose the zip and activate it (WooCommerce must be active).
2. Products → Categories → pick a category → “Product sorting on this page” → Update.
3. WooCommerce → Catalog Sort Rules — the list of pages with rules and the settings.
4. For Pro: the “Pro licence” tab — paste the key from the e-mail or click “Try Pro for 7 days”.