Multiple joins with ordered by count ignores where conditions - mysql

Question

I am trying to only get rows from video_index that belongs to a specific category from category_video_rel and order the result by COUNT of view count. This is the query I'm using:
SELECT
COUNT(DISTINCT view_count.id) AS count,
view_count.remove,
view_count.video_id,
video_index.id AS video_id,
video_index.active,
video_index.remove,
video_index.title AS title,
video_index.date_published AS date_published,
category_video_rel.active,
category_video_rel.remove,
category_video_rel.video_id AS cv_video_id,
category_video_rel.category_id AS category_id
FROM
view_count JOIN video_index
ON view_count.video_id = video_index.id,
category_video_rel JOIN video_index AS v
ON category_video_rel.video_id = v.id
WHERE
view_count.remove = '0' AND
video_index.active = '1' AND
video_index.remove = '0' AND
video_index.date_published <= '$current_time' AND
category_video_rel.category_id = '$category_id' AND
category_video_rel.active = '1' AND
category_video_rel.remove = '0'
GROUP BY
video_index.id
ORDER BY
count DESC
The problem is it outputs all the rows from video_index with a view count higher than 0 regardless of the category. Basically, it's ignoring "category_video_rel.category_id = '$category_id'" in the WHERE condition.
I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, please help.

Answer 1

Your FROM clause is mixing old style joins and new style joins
Instead try:
FROM
view_count JOIN video_index
ON view_count.video_id = video_index.id
JOIN category_video_rel
ON category_video_rel.video_id = video_index.id