Hi Graham,

I am not sure if I am understanding all the details of what you are trying to achieve for the sorting.

1. if you wish to have the "sort by , then by another column" solution;

1. Regarding the "first, default" column -

 Each column has a “Default sorting column” switch in our Column settings/Sorting. 

If you enable this switch for one of the columns, a selectbox will appear with options –

 “Ascending” and “Descending”, where you can choose the sorting direction . More about sorting with our plugin features you can read in our docs here - https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/table-features/sorting/

2. - The only way users can sort the table by multiple columns with plugin's built-in functionality would be, 

on the front-end, if you hold down SHIFT and click on the header of 2(or more) columns. ( for example column B, then C)

Basically, this means that, after the table loads, a page visitor has to do this, 

click on the C column whilst holding SHIFT(added the clicked column as a secondary, tertiary etc ordering column)."

But, in case you need this to be "already done before the page loads",

 there is a custom workaround, with an SQL Query;

we are not suggesting to use ORDER BY at all in queries, 

because wpDataTables plugin is adding it dynamically based on what is set to be default sorting column.

but if you disable the Sorting option for wpDataTable 

and create wpDataTable from SQL query e.g:

SELECT * FROM `my_table` ORDER BY ColumnB ASC, ColumnC ASC

It will create and show wpDataTable with multi column sorting, but you will not be able to use Sorting anymore for this table.

Let me know if that solves the sorting issue?

In case if you have HTML in some String Column and try to sort on it, as mentioned here;

if you use HTML inside of string columns, sorting and filtering by this column can in some cases yield strange results, since it will also apply the sorting rules to the HTML itself.

2. When it comes to exporting links :

The “Include HTML” option will allow you to export columns that contain HTML (such as link, image, email, attachment, or HTML). They will be rendered as HTML in the exported files of the CSV, Excel, Print, and Copy options.

This option is currently not available for the PDF export option.

Please note that you should check this functionality on the front-end since if you use this option in the back-end the buttons in headers will be rendered as HTML as well.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hi Graham,

Yes - That can be a bit tedious if you have a lot of Headers when the “Include HTML” option is enabled;

after exporting, we need to clear the HTML before importing the data again in the Plugin;

For the time being, we can't change that, but we will do our best to make improvements in the future.

I am glad to see you found a working solution for your use-case.

If anything else comes up, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.