Custom Order
What it helps you do
Choose the order things appear in on your site: staff in a people directory, services, portfolio pieces, pages, categories. You set the order by dragging items in the list in wp-admin, and the site shows them that way.
It's built into the Dirigible theme, so you don't need an ordering plugin.
Turn it on for a list
- Open the list in wp-admin, for example People, Pages or Posts → Categories.
- Next to the page title, turn on Sort by dragging.
- Confirm. Nothing moves yet: the list keeps the order it had until you change it (newest first for posts; pages by their Order number, then alphabetical; categories alphabetical). For Posts, this also sets the order of your blog and its RSS feed.
Only administrators see the switch, because it changes the order visitors see. Turning it off puts that list back in WordPress's usual order. Your custom order is kept, so turning it on again brings it back.
Change the order
Each row in a sorted list has a grip at its left, and three small buttons at its right: #, down and up. On a phone, tap the arrow at the right of a row to show them, as with the list's other columns.
- Drag the grip to move an item. Only the grip starts a drag, so clicking a title or checkbox still works as usual. Press Esc to cancel a drag.
- Click an arrow to move an item up or down one place. At the top or bottom of a page of the list, the arrow moves the item onto the next or previous page. In a filtered list (one category, author or month), the arrows swap the item with its neighbour on screen.
- Click # to move an item a long way. Type its new position (1 is first) and click Move, or click Move to top or Move to bottom. The items in between move along one place, and the list opens at the page the item is on now. This works only in the full list, not a filtered one.
Every change saves straight away. Editors can reorder lists too.
In lists with sub-items, such as Pages or Categories, an item moves together with its sub-items, and only among the items that share its parent. Its position counts only those items. To give an item a different parent, edit the item.
What visitors see
Anywhere the site lists a sorted type in its default order: archive pages, blocks that list posts, people or work, and category lists. Previous and Next links on single items follow the order too.
A list that asks for its own order keeps it. For example, a block set to sort by title, or search results, which stay sorted by relevance.
Things to know
- Changes show after the cache clears. Pages your host has already cached keep their old order until the cache clears; purge the site cache to see the change straight away.
- The grips show only while the list is in your order. They're hidden after you sort the list by clicking a column title, while you search, and in the Drafts and Pending views (WordPress lists those by last edit). Click Back to your order next to the switch to return.
- New items go to the top of a sorted list (or the bottom, on sites where Simple Custom Post Order was set that way).
- Sites that used Simple Custom Post Order or Intuitive Custom Post Order switched over on their own. The theme kept every list those plugins sorted, in the same order, and deactivated the plugin. About a week later the theme deletes the plugin. On sites that came from Intuitive Custom Post Order, Previous and Next keep pointing the way they did with that plugin, and search results are now sorted by relevance.
- To undo the switch within that week, reactivate the old plugin under Plugins. While it's active, the plugin is in charge again, and the theme never deletes it. After it's deleted, you'd need to install it again first.
- Going back to an older Dirigible version after the switch returns lists to WordPress's usual order until the old plugin is active again.