No premium is just a highlight kind of function, they do not get special ranking ordering.
What they get is possiblly extra daily/weekly/monthly hits in ( check admin settings )
highlighted ranking ( that yellow background )
Possibly promoted in the sitebar ( check admin settings )
Featured member is just a random member, nothing else
If you would like to have premium first, you would have to make a small plugin which modififies the mysql query ordering ( and adjust your mysql indexes for speed maybe, depending on the size of your list, but not to important )
Plugin code is regular PHP code, and should be written as if editing the VisioList scripts directly. When creating a plugin, you should bear in mind that your code will have access to all variables and classes that are exposed at the point where the hook is placed. You also need to ensure...
visiolist.com
If you check sources/rankings.php, there is
PHP:
// Make ORDER BY clause
$order_by = $this->rank_by($ranking_method)." DESC, unq_{$ranking_method}_overall DESC, join_date DESC";
This line says that the order should be highest "ranking method" first, and on tie breakers, latest members
You would have to edit this via a plugin, so it puts premium up front, followed by the default above
You could use the plugin hook rankings_order_by.php and place
PHP:
// Make ORDER BY clause
$order_by = "premium_flag DESC, ".$this->rank_by($ranking_method)." DESC, unq_{$ranking_method}_overall DESC, join_date DESC";
