Magento tip: How to change default grid / list sort order and what is Best Value anyway?
In versions of magento pre 1.4 in order to change the sort order of the grid / list layouts you had to resort to editing files. However, in 1.4 this is some what easier. The default is Best Value… though I have noticed that in some templates it shows up as ‘position’. What does this even mean?
We it turns out that there is nothing really clever about how Magento decides what is best value or not.. how clever would it be if it could? Instead you need to tell your store what you think is best value.. ie another selling tool.. this is after all why you are using Magento..
To do this select a category and chose Category products. you will see a final row probably numbered as 1 if you have not made any changes. Alter these to apply a best value order. See fig 1.
Best Value
If you wish to change the default search option you can make these changes in Catalog>Manage Categories>choose your category>Display settings> default product listing sort by and choose from available list. See fig 2.
Changing Sort By
You can also set the global preference in System>Settings>Catalog>Frontend>Product listing sort by
If you want to create your own sort by list you can do this using attributes.. When creating an attributes look for “Used for sorting in product listing” and set to yes. This will allow users to sort by this option.
Be careful…There seems to be a bug at present that makes these attributes available even after they have been deleted..
Bug or no bug, that’s the question! If you have two different attribute codes (ex. Sub-Categories and Sub-Categories-accessories) but twice the same name in attribute description (ex. Sub-Categories) and one of these is still on “Used for sorting in product listing – yes”, then it will always be displayed in “Sort by”.