id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
9979	WP_Query orderby and order options not used as expected	beaulebens	ryan	"In WP_Query, ""orderby"" allows you to specify multiple columns, separated by spaces, to order your results by.

You can only specify a '''single''' ""order"" value (ASC or DESC).

If you specify multiple values in ""orderby"", ""order"" is applied to the end of the list, or effectively to the '''last''' ""orderby"" column.

e.g. If a custom query specifies:

'orderby' => 'title date', 'order' => 'DESC'

it probably meant ORDER BY post_title DESC, post_date DESC (or maybe ASC, it's ambiguous), but I'll actually get:

ORDER BY post_title, post_date DESC

With MySQL's implied ASC on ORDER BY statements, this is the opposite of what I really wanted.

We should either drop support for multiple-column ordering, allow for a way to specify a sort order per orderby/column, or at the very least apply the ""order"" to the '''first''' column specified, which seems like it'd be more likely to be intended outcome.

See Also: #9978 for a sticky post bug that will need to implement this ordering logic as well."	enhancement	closed	low		Query	2.8	minor	duplicate	has-patch needs-testing 3.3-early