Myujth

I want to have my whole WooCommerce catalog ordered by popularity (just the standard setting) but I also want to have my specials category ordered by date as we post new deals at set days throughout the week.

I found this piece of code on here but it does not seem to change the specials category ordering at all:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_catalog_ordering_args', 'custom_catalog_ordering_args', 20, 1 );
function custom_catalog_ordering_args( $args ) 
 $product_category = 'specials'; // <== HERE define your product category

 // Only for defined product category archive page
 if( ! is_product_category($product_category) ) return $args;

 // Set default ordering to 'date ID', so "Newness"
 $args['orderby'] = 'date ID';

 if( $args['orderby'] == 'date ID' )
 $args['order'] = 'DESC'; // Set order by DESC

 return $args;

How do I get the order I want?

you are using wrong hooks the woocommerce_get_catalog_ordering_args is used to add new sorting options which you don't need as WooCommerce already have sortby latest option.

so in order to modify the default sorting option for specific category you need to use woocommerce_default_catalog_orderby hook as follow:

add_filter('woocommerce_default_catalog_orderby', 'custom_catalog_ordering_args', 20, 1);
function custom_catalog_ordering_args($sortby)

 $product_category = 'specials'; // <== HERE define your product category slug 

 // Only for defined product category archive page
 if (! is_product_category($product_category)) 
 return;
 
 return 'date';

Code above has been tested and working as expected, just add the code in your functions.php and you should ready to go