Order WP_Query by meta and post date

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I’m currently working on a small blog which has a sidebar that displays all “special projects”.

“Special projects” is just a category, the sidebar will only display 4 posts at a time which are filtered by post date, but I also have a custom meta box to allow the user to feature posts.
These featured post should show up on the top of the special projects.

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Right now my query is like this: 

new WP_Query("showposts=" . $instance['num'] . "&cat=" . $instance["cat"] . "&order=ASC&order_by=date")

And I can get the featured meta data like this: 

 $featured = get_post_meta($single_cat_post->ID, 'soy_featured_post', true);

But how could I integrate this inside the WP_Query?

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  1. First of all, ‘showposts’ has been replaced by ‘posts_per_page’ when using WP_Query. I’ve corrected that in your code. Also, within a loop you should just be able to use $post->ID instead of $single_cat_post->ID.

    I would use two loops. Set your paramaters, then in the first loop include a condition to check for the meta value, reset the query, then do another loop and include a condition that checks for the meta value and outputs nothing if it exists.

    In the first query, I added a check to see how many posts are returned by the first loop. Then using that value (subtracted by 4) I calculated a variable to use for posts_per_page in the second loop. Then I added a conditional to only run the loop if the result is greater then 0.

    This is untested, but it should work or at least put you on the right path! 

    <?php 
$args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => 4,
    'meta_key'  => 'soy_featured_post',
    'cat' => $instance["cat"],
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'order' => 'ASC'
);

$special_post_query = new WP_Query( $args );
$special_posts_found = $special_post_query->found_posts;

if ($special_post_query->have_posts()) :
    while( $special_post_query->have_posts() ) : $special_post_query->the_post(); 

    // POST WITH META VALUE OUTPUT
    the_title();

    endwhile;
endif;

wp_reset_query();

$second_loop_posts_per_page = 4 - $special_posts_found;

if ($second_loop_posts_per_page > 0) {
    $args = array(
        'posts_per_page' => $second_loop_posts_per_page,
        'cat' => $instance["cat"],
        'orderby' => 'date',
        'order' => 'ASC'
    );

    if ($special_post_query->have_posts() ) :
        while( $special_post_query->have_posts() ) : $special_post_query->the_post(); 

        // Condition to test for NO meta value
        if (get_post_meta($post->ID, 'soy_featured_post', true) == null) {
            // CODE
            the_title();
        } else {
            // Don't print anything because the meta value exists
        }

        endwhile;
    endif;

    wp_reset_query();
} ?>