Is there another way to output Categories and all respective entries other than category_archive?

Question

I'm trying to output a category group and its respective entry listing titles (in this case the titles are names of people) in alphabetical order by last name in a menu navigation like so. To do this, I've created a custom field called last_name thinking I could use this tag orderby="last_name, but because category_archive doesn't support this parameter, I'm not able to accomplish this way.

• Category 1
  • Jon Doe
  • Jane Doe
  • Janet Doe
• Category 2
  • Jon Doe
  • Jane Doe

Here's the code I have:

<ul class="list-unstyled main-list">
    {exp:channel:category_archive channel="speakers" style="linear" backspace="7" show="not 28}
        <li>
            {categories}
                <a class="btn-open" href="#">{category_name}</a>
            {/categories} 
            <ul class="list-unstyled"> 
                {entry_titles}  
                    <li><a href="{path='site/speaker'}">{title}</a></li>
                {/entry_titles}     
            </ul> 
        </li>   
    {/exp:channel:category_archive}     
</ul>

Is there any other way to accomplish so I can get a bit more flexibility. Perhaps playa or some other plugin or native code? Any help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

Sure, something like this:

{exp:channel:category_archive channel="my_channel" style="linear"}
    {categories}
            <h3>{category_name}</h3>

        {exp:channel:entries channel="my_channel" category="{category_id}"}
            <a href="{comment_url_title_path}">{title}</a>
        {/exp:channel:entries}

    {/categories}
{/exp:channel:category_archive}