Title: [Plugin: Query Posts] orderby meta_value and meta_compare problems
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# [Plugin: Query Posts] orderby meta_value and meta_compare problems

 *  [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-query-posts-orderby-meta_value-and-meta_compare-problems/)
 * Hi Justin,
 * Thank you for the great plugin Query Posts. It is extremely versatile.
 * I am trying to use it in combination with the plugins Widget Logic and WP Post
   Views to show a list of most viewed posts belonging to a certain category and
   only visible when on that category page. Now Widget Logic lets me control the
   category page visibility part. WP Page Views counts page visits and keeps that
   score in a meta_value with meta_key **views**. So I expected to be able to use
   Query Posts to do the rest of the math by giving it the following settings (apart
   from the obvious title and stuff):
 * > showposts: 5
   >  order: DESC orderby: meta_value meta_key: views category_name:
   > jazz wp_reset_query: checked
   > Widget Logic: is_category(‘jazz’)
 * Now when viewing the ‘jazz’ category page, I see a list of 5 posts that are all
   from that category. So far so good. But when I check the meta values for key ‘
   views’ in those posts, they are not in descending meta value order. They appear
   not even ordered at all.
 * When I select orderby: date , the order is indeed by date. Further, caller_get_posts:
   checked does not seem to make any difference (sticky post do not go on top, even
   when not checked)
 * I also tested by setting meta_compare (larger than) and meta_value (some average
   number) to see if I could at least filter out the lesser viewed posts but this
   did not seem to work either.
 * Note: I am using the Hybrid News child theme.
 * Thanks!
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/query-posts/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/query-posts/)

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Thread Starter [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-query-posts-orderby-meta_value-and-meta_compare-problems/#post-1408436)
 * I also noticed that meta_compare option does not always get saved.
 * When setting != , = or > there is no problem (except > seems to behave like <)
   with saving but when trying one of the other options, after saving the widget,
   that option comes up blank again…
 * Weird stuff happening here!
 *  [diablodale](https://wordpress.org/support/users/diablodale/)
 * (@diablodale)
 * [16 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-query-posts-orderby-meta_value-and-meta_compare-problems/#post-1408466)
 * its due to a bug on the code. he’s trying to strip tags from the settings when
   they are passed back to save. The less than sign in ‘<‘ and ‘<=’ is being stripped
   out.
 * You can change line 261 in query-posts.php to the following to resolve the immediate
   issue:
 * $instance[‘meta_compare’] = $new_instance[‘meta_compare’];

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘[Plugin: Query Posts] orderby meta_value and meta_compare problems’ is
closed to new replies.

 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [diablodale](https://wordpress.org/support/users/diablodale/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-query-posts-orderby-meta_value-and-meta_compare-problems/#post-1408466)
 * Status: not resolved

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