search page orderby – prevent ordering by dates

Hi – I see this issue has been flagged in other discussions, but the thread does not seem to provide a solution to prevent modifying core files. Its pretty simple what we need to accomplish – and is described clearly in this thread: https://wpgeodirectory.com/support/topic/sorting-all-organization-page-to-be-alphabetical/

Here is my page at:

https://www.intouch.green/?geodir_search=1&stype=gd_place&s=+&sgd_placecategory%5B%5D=378&snear=&sgeo_lat=&sgeo_lon=

It orders the results by date first, but all other pages order by title.

HERE IS the SQL:

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.*, wp_geodir_gd_place_detail.*
FROM wp_posts JOIN wp_icl_translations icl_t
ON icl_t.element_id = wp_posts.ID
INNER JOIN wp_geodir_gd_place_detail
ON (wp_geodir_gd_place_detail.post_id = wp_posts.ID)
WHERE 1=1
AND ( ( wp_posts.post_title LIKE “” )
OR ( wp_posts.ID IN(
SELECT wp_term_relationships.object_id as post_id
FROM wp_term_taxonomy, wp_terms, wp_term_relationships
WHERE wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id
AND wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
AND wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy in ( ‘gd_place_tags’,’gd_placecategory’ ) ) ) )
AND wp_posts.post_type in (‘gd_place’)
AND (wp_posts.post_status = ‘publish’)
AND icl_t.language_code = ‘fr’
AND icl_t.element_type IN(‘post_gd_place’)
AND ( FIND_IN_SET(‘378’, wp_geodir_gd_place_detail.gd_placecategory ) )
ORDER BY wp_geodir_gd_place_detail.is_featured asc, $wpdb->posts.post_date desc, wp_posts.post_title
LIMIT 0, 20

Solution
**************
modified wp-content/plugins/geodirectory/geodirectory-functions/listing_filters.php

// line 477

//$orderby .= $table . “.is_featured asc, $wpdb->posts.post_date desc, $wpdb->posts.post_title “;
$orderby .= $table . “.is_featured asc, $wpdb->posts.post_title “;

MY QUESTION – how can I make that modification using filters or hooks, preventing me to have to modify the actual plugin code?

I have tried with this code – why does this code dont seem to affect the geodirectory loop?

add_action( ‘pre_get_posts’, ‘custom_get_posts’ );

function custom_get_posts( $query ) {

if( $query->is_main_query() ) {

$query->set( ‘orderby’, ‘title’ );
$query->set( ‘order’, ‘DESC’ );

// $query->query_vars[‘orderby’] = ‘title’;
// $query->query_vars[‘order’] = ‘ASC’;

}

}

Thanks for providing a clear and simple answer to this issue that many people seem to have noticed.