Order by ranking / reviews

Hi,
the plugin for site reviews uses a private custom post type named “site-review” and currently my plugin Posts in Sidebar does not support private custom post types.

Starting from the next version I’ve added support for this types of posts, so that you will be able to get these posts and sort them by ratings.

Please, give me some days, so that I can test my last modifications. After having published the new version, I’ll tell you how to do this.

Thanks for your appreciated request.

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by Aldo Latino.

Hi,
I just released the 4.7.3 version which addresses this particular request.

In order to display the custom post types created by the plugin “Site Reviews” (the plugin you’re using) and sort them by the rating value, follow these steps:

1) Create a new Post in Sidebar widget;
2) In Getting posts > Post type, choose Review;
3) In Getting posts > Get posts with this meta key, enter rating;
4) In Getting posts > Order posts by, choose Meta value number;
5) In Displaying posts > The custom fields > Display a single custom field, activate the option Display the custom field of the post;
6) In Displaying posts > The custom fields > Display a single custom field > Display this custom field, choose rating;
7) In Displaying posts > The custom fields > Display a single custom field > Use this text before the custom field, enter Rating (stars): or whatever you like.

Let me know, please.

@aldolat Hi, this is the author of the Site Reviews plugin.

Here is some additional information of how to display (and sort by rank) pages which have reviews assigned to them:

1. Create a new Post in Sidebar widget
2. Choose the post type that has reviews assigned to them (i.e. Page)
3. In Getting posts > Get posts with this meta key: _glsr_ranking
4. In Getting posts > Order posts: Meta value number
5. In Getting posts > The order will be: DESC

This will display the pages that have reviews assigned to them and sort them by ranking. The algorithm that determines ranking is the same as that used by IMDB to rank rated films.

However, this will only show pages that have reviews assigned to them.

In order to show ALL pages (regardless of whether or not they have reviews assigned to them) and sort them by rank, you would need to perform the following WP_Query:

$pageQuery = new WP_Query([
    'meta_query' => [
        'relation' => 'OR',
        ['key' => '_glsr_ranking', 'compare' => 'EXISTS'],
        ['key' => '_glsr_ranking', 'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'],
    ],
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'post_type' => 'page',
    'posts_per_page' => 10,
]);

How can this be done with the “Post in Sidebar” widget?

I have tried using the “Custom fields query” but it doesn’t seem to work (the custom fields query does not appear to be used in the SQL query).

Hi @geminilabs,
please give me some time, because I am currently very busy.
Thank you for your patience. ??

Sure, no problem.

To help speed things up, here is the reason why it is impossible to do the query shown above with “Posts in Sidebar”:

The meta query that is required (as shown above) does not care about a specific meta_value, it just needs to check the existence and non-existence of a meta_key.

However, “Posts in Sidebar” requires that a meta query includes both the meta_key and the meta_value, otherwise it will not use the meta query.

This is the code excerpt in pis-functions-queries.php:223 that is preventing the meta query:

if ( '' === $args['mq_key_aa'] || '' === $args['mq_value_aa'] ) {
    $meta_query = '';
}

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Gemini Labs.

Hi @geminilabs,

In Getting posts > Get posts with this meta key: _glsr_ranking

I haven’t this meta key on my test sites. I noticed this when I wrote my first post; for this reason I suggested to use the meta key rating.

Let me know, please.

This is the code excerpt in pis-functions-queries.php:223 that is preventing the meta query […]

You’re right. Thank you for this. I am thinking to change this to:

if ( '' === $args['mq_key_aa'] ) {

The _glsr_ranking meta_key only exists on posts or pages that have reviews assigned to them. It does not appear on the reviews themselves.

For example, [site_review_form assign_to=123] will assign all reviews submitted in the review form to the page or post with the ID of 123.

Since a page can have multiple reviews assigned to them, the _glsr_ranking meta_key allows to query the pages with assigned reviews and sort them by rank.

The difference between the two examples is that your example sorts reviews by rating, and my example sorts pages by their rank based on the reviews that have been assigned to them.

Since only pages that have reviews assigned to them will have the _glsr_ranking meta_key, this is why the meta query in my example first looks to see if the meta_key exists, and then looks to see if it does not exist. This allows the query to return all pages, showing the ones that have reviews assigned to them first and sorted by rank.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Gemini Labs.

@geminilabs I updated the development version of this plugin. Now, only the meta_key is required for the meta query.

Now Posts in Sidebar can get posts/pages with the meta key _glsr_ranking without specifying the value.

Can you try installing this development version in a test environment? Let me know, please.

@aldolat Yes it works.

The only thing to be aware of (that I just realised) is that in order to sort pages that have ranking BEFORE pages that do not, you need to use the “NOT EXISTS” before the “EXISTS”. Otherwise WordPress will not sort the order correctly.

The reason for this is because WordPress uses the meta_value of the last “LEFT JOIN” statement in the “ORDER BY” clause.

For example, this is how the query should be:

$pageQuery = new WP_Query([
    'meta_query' => [
        'relation' => 'OR',
        ['key' => '_glsr_ranking', 'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'], // this comes first!
        ['key' => '_glsr_ranking', 'compare' => 'EXISTS'],
    ],
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'post_type' => 'page',
    'posts_per_page' => 10,
]);

And using your plugin, the widget settings should be the following:

Getting Posts
Post type: Page (change this as needed)
Order posts: Meta value number

Custom fields query
Relation between Column A and Column B: OR
Custom field key A1: _glsr_ranking
Operator: NOT EXISTS
Custom field key B1: _glsr_ranking
Operator: EXISTS

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Gemini Labs.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Gemini Labs.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Gemini Labs.

Very clever solution! ??

Thank you so much.