These are WooCommerce 3.x instructions only.
That thread on GitHub (https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/14914#issuecomment-299714488) was updated by one of the Woo devs and he provided an example loop and explained what is happening:
Featured was meta in 2.6, but is a taxonomy (for performance!) in 3.0
– so adjust queries to use tax_query instead of meta_query accordingly.
To apply the new args to your Artificer theme by WooThemes (too bad they didn’t update the theme too), do the following:
For Non-developers:
Use FTP to login to your host. There are many ftp client apps, type in “ftp clients” into Google w/o quotes. Then pick one for your OS. Login with your credentials that you got when you purchased your hosting. Generally, these are the same as your cPanel login username and password. You would enter ftp.yourdomain.com. You will be in to your public_html directory. Then locate your wp_content directory, in that directory you’ll see more sub-directories, one of which is themes inside that you’ll see the directory name artificer. The file that is the home page is index.php. That is the file that you swap with the one in this gist.
https://gist.github.com/carasmo/03cbbd2f70c30d0649de4ada7095a3dd
Click on the button “raw” then save (to a directory you create for this on your computer) as index.php. Don’t open it unless you have a code editor. Then drag it from your computer to the ../wp-content/themes/artificer directory.
For devs:
Replace two locations where the loop $args are:
loop 1 for three images:
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'product',
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => 'product_visibility',
'field' => 'name',
'terms' => 'featured',
),
),
);
loop 2 for the single image
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'product',
'posts_per_page' => 1,
'offset' => 3,
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => 'product_visibility',
'field' => 'name',
'terms' => 'featured',
),
),
);