Freemius

plgnplay

Smart Product Sort is a WooCommerce plugin that gives store owners full control over how products appear in shop and category pages. Instead of relying on default WooCommerce sorting, you can create custom sorting rules and apply them globally or to specific categories — all without writing a single line of code.
The Problem
WooCommerce’s built-in sorting is limited. Store owners often need to:
<ul>
<li>Show newest products first in one category</li>
<li>Show best sellers first in another</li>
<li>Prioritize higher-priced items in premium collections</li>
<li>Apply a consistent default sort across the entire shop</li>
<li>Change sorting quickly without editing theme files</li>
</ul>
Smart Product Sort solves all of this through a straightforward admin interface.
Features
<ul>
<li>Unlimited sorting rules — Sort by name, price, popularity, rating, date, random, or menu order.</li>
<li>Global or per-category — Apply a rule to the whole shop or assign it to a specific product category. Category rules override global ones automatically.</li>
<li>Priority system — Lower number means higher importance. When multiple rules exist, the priority system determines which one wins — no conflicts.</li>
<li>On/off toggle — Activate or deactivate any rule instantly. Test changes or handle seasonal sorting without deleting anything.</li>
<li>Customer choice preserved — When a customer manually selects a sort option from the WooCommerce dropdown, their choice always takes priority.</li>
<li>Lightweight — Runs a single database query per page load. No heavy operations, no performance impact.</li>
<li>HPOS compatible — Fully compatible with WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage.</li>
</ul>
How It Works
<ol>
<li>Navigate to WooCommerce > Smart Product Sort in your admin dashboard.</li>
<li>Click Add Sort Rule.</li>
<li>Choose the sort criteria (price, name, date, popularity, rating, random, or menu order).</li>
<li>Optionally assign the rule to a specific product category.</li>
<li>Set a priority number and activate the rule.</li>
</ol>
Sorting applies automatically on the frontend from that point on. Category-specific rules take precedence over global rules. When a customer visits a category with its own rule, that rule applies. Otherwise, the global rule is used as a fallback.
Use Cases
<ul>
<li>Fashion stores showing premium items first</li>
<li>Electronics stores prioritizing best sellers</li>
<li>Seasonal stores highlighting new arrivals</li>
<li>Large catalogs with many categories needing different sort orders</li>
<li>Stores that frequently update product positioning</li>
</ul>

Smart Product Sort

Define custom product sorting rules for your WooCommerce catalog — per-category, priority-based, toggle on/off instantly.

rjl20

Most people don’t need this plugin. Most wouldn’t notice a difference if they had it. All it does is change the default sort order of a WP_Query from posts.post_date to posts.post_date_gmt — that is, sort on the GMT timestamp of a post rather than the local time zone.
Who needs this? People who switch time zones frequently. People running a network installation of WordPress where they want to be able to aggregate posts from all their network blogs easily, and in the right order. I don’t know. I wrote it for FreeThoughtBlogs.com, so their “most recent posts” sidebar would stop showing only posts from a few blogs in early time zones. If it works for you, great.
I have every hope that this plugin will be made obsolete by the default sort order being changed in the WordPress core. I can think of no good reason why comments are sorted by GMT but posts by local time.
For all I know, this plugin works with older versions than 3.0. I’ve only tested it with 3.2.1.

Posts by GMT

Changes the default sort order for posts from post_date to post_date_gmt.

Smart Product Sort vs Posts by GMT