[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Checked in the backend and where it goes wrong is due to our own data entry.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Lol, probs for knowing many Dutch soccer players.

Well actually, the site I’m working on has 127 members and many of them have ‘van’, ‘de’, or ‘van der’ in their last name and the sorting is almost all fine. There are a few mis matches but that’s probably our own fault due to incorrect registration in the WordPress backend.

It also goes wrong when members have a double first name but I guess that also depends on the registration in the backend. But I still have to check this.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Jackpot! That did the trick, awesome!

Thanks so much.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Yes, only left u.display_name out of it but either way it retuns a ‘Members not found’ message in return.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Nope, it returns an error that there are no members to display. I guess that I could replace ‘Robin van Persie’ with something blank like this

substr( strstr( ' ', ' ' ), 1 )

Just to clarify, this is the full code in my functions.php to sort the members:

 function alphabetize_by_last_name( $bp_user_query ) {
    if ( 'alphabetical' == $bp_user_query->query_vars['type'] )
        $bp_user_query->uid_clauses['orderby'] = "ORDER BY substring_index(u.display_name, ' ', -1)";
}
add_action ( 'bp_pre_user_query', 'alphabetize_by_last_name' );
 
// To reflect the alphabetical sorting of the member directory, you
// could also format the names to show the last name first. Here is
// a helper function to format names as follows: Last, First Middle
// Etc.
//
// To use this function every time a user's name is shown or queried,
// simply add it as a filter:
//
// <code>add_filter ('bp_get_member_name', 'format_last_name_first' );</code>
//
// To only reformat the name in the member directory, change your
// members/members-loop.php file in your (child)theme. Look for
// <code>bp_member_name()</code>
// and replace it with
// <code>echo format_last_name_first ( bp_get_member_name() );</code>
 
/**
 * Helper function for formatting a name: Last, First Middle Etc.
 *
 * @param string $name
 * @return string Formatted name
**/

function format_last_name_first( $name ) {
    if ( $first_space = strrpos( $name, " ") )
        $name = substr( $name, $first_space + 1 ) . ", " . substr( $name, 0, $first_space );
    return $name;
}
 
// BONUS: To make alphabetical sorting the default sorting, use the
// function below. 
//
// In order for this to work properly, <code><option value=&quot;alphabetical&quot;></code>
// must be the first option for the members-order-select in
// members/index.php.
 
function sort_members_alphabetically( $qs = '', $object = false ) {
    if( $object != 'members' ) //for members only
        return $qs;
 
    if ( empty( $qs ) || ! strpos( $qs, "type=" ) ) {
        $args = wp_parse_args($qs);
        $args['type'] = 'alphabetical';
        $args['action'] = 'alphabetical';
 
        $qs = build_query( $args );
    }
 
    return $qs;
}
add_action( 'bp_ajax_querystring', 'sort_members_alphabetically', 11, 2 );

I guess that members are sorted by the default WordPress first and last name fields right? Just because we’ve added some custom fields to the member profile pages to split their names in first name, ‘surname prefix (it’s for words like ‘van’ ‘de’) and last name. Not all members have a surname prefix though.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for yourvreply but I already used that snippet. If I try to edit the -1 variable to 1 the members get sorted by their first name.

Setting it to 0 does nothing and -2 and beyond all sorts the members by their first name.

[@nielspilon Participant 10 years, 5 months ago]

Thanks Shanebp, just added it to my function.php, registered a new member and its instantly visible at the members page without ever logging in with the new member details 🙂