Page Navigation in WordPress – Using Sort Order
The following video provides an explanation on how to use sort order so that you get a scalable and organized approach to managing your navigation in WordPress. While geared at WordPress sites, this approach should work for any content management system that provides an automated or semi-automated way of creating navigation. This tutorial assumes that you are using a theme which supports multilevel navigation (i.e. drop down menus) and have a basic familiarity with using WordPress to edit and create content. You will also want to note this tutorial reference the function wp_list_pages(); and includes the parameter “sort_column=menu_order” (e.g. wp_list_pages(‘sort_column=menu_order’); ). For more on wp_list_pages and it’s parameters visit the WordPress Codex.
Thanks for the tips! One thing I am still not sure of is how you get the pages then to go into your top navigation like on your site???
thank you thank you!! The only place I could find this info!
Tez – You are welcome!
Well, I’m lost. I have many pages om my website and they all use numerical sorting.
Now I have created a new page and it is like a dictionary and uses alphabetical sorting. But I can’t figure out how to do that.
I only want to use the alpha sorting for certain pages that require it.
Look under MrGary’s Comments, at the Critical thinking terms page.
Any ideas that I can understand would be appreciated.
Thank you
Gary,
This approach is deprecated. Since the introduction of the menu builder in WordPress it hasn’t really been necessary. Just create your menu under Appearance > Menus and drag and drop the menu items into the order you want them.
Andy, That is a slightly more technical issue. You have to use the wp_list_pages() function. See the list of Template Tags on WordPress.org for more details but you’ll likely need to tell it what pages to include or which ones to ignore unless you want it to show every page in your site on your nav (not likely unless you only have a couple pages). Also, most WordPress themes are set up to support horizontal navigation (at least the themes I’ve built, used, delt with ..) but you’ll want to be sure yours has the css for that. If not you’ll get a vertical list of pages without the formatting you’re looking for since the wp_list_pages() tag will spit out an unordered list ul & li html tags respectively.
I like it! I had gotten to the point of db digits, don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier!! 🙂
Yeah, DB digits could get messy! Glad this helps!
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Thank you! Wonderful idea and it is very smart way to sort!
Carlos, Glad you found it useful! More to come…
I have a new web site–5 pages—I want to change the wording on the Purchasing page and also delete one line–have not figured out how to do that.
I did add two review to my Review page earlier with no problems, Thanks for any assistance, Ruby
Ruby, Sorry for the long delay. I assume you are on wordpress? From what you described can’t you just go to the Page and change the words? I tried to go to your site but it isn’t coming up. Let me know…
Using 4 digits to control sort order, good idea that works.
Thanks for sharing.
Ruby, You should just be able to login to the backend and go to Pages > Purchase and edit your content. If that doesn’t work we’ll have to login and take a look.
ecmuscle, glad you like. It’s a fairly “old school” idea but still works well!
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nice tips – 1000,2000 – good idea
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I see how you make a page the default home page and then how you add other pages and sub pages, but after doing that how do you create a menu item for your posts (the blog entries)?
Chris, you have to use the function wp_list_categories() and whatever parameters you want to go with that. Note: categories will not show up in the menu if there are no posts in that category.
Also, you’ll need to style the menu accordingly, depending on whether or not your theme supports it.
See more in the codex: wp_list_categories();
hello. I just soaked up your workpress video, content map, very helpful … my question, wanting your recommendation, using wordpress as a blog, I see the smart uses of ‘catagories’ and the use of ‘tags’ as you explained … but how best should I think about this if I want to set up a ‘portfolio’ section of graphic work, a page parent with sub pages, that remains separate from posts tagged with categories … do you recommend setting portfolio under a ‘static’ page so its available on my main nav? or as ‘catagory’ or as a ‘static’ page? Both a category and static page?
That said, how would my subs of: print, web, ID, for instance be best served? My goal is to set up a ‘portfolio’ that remains full of just my work, not pulling in other elements, say blog posts with the same tag or catagory… Is it correct to think if I do this I need to reserve specific ‘catagory’ and ‘tags’ just for my porfolio section? Hope that makes sense. Again, thanks for the video content map … it was very helpful.
Bran, I would probably set it up as a category called “Portfolio”. You could also create sub-categories for portfolio types (print portfolio, web portfolio, etc…). In WordPress you can create a specific category template so that that main category page will look different than the usual category page. This helps because if you wanted the main page for “Print Portfolio” to look slightly different than “Web Portfolio” it’s just a matter of creating different category templates. If you don’t know css and html and a little php you’ll need someone to create them for you. (Feel free to contact me if you need a quote).
Underneath each category you would create a post for the particular “work” you are showing off. So if you create a portfolio of website’s you’ve built then each site would be a post.. make sense?
The top level portfolio page (category page, not static page) could show various works from all of the sub-categories of “Portfolio” or the most recent example from each… however you want it to work. Again, this kind of templating takes some coding but can definitely be done.
I would then think about tags for the individual category types. For example under the “Print Portfolio” category what are the logical tags (think of search terms) that people would want to see work based on.
Ideas might be:
Magazine Ad
Brochure
Poster
Postcards
Business Cards
…
[…] Creating Scalable Page Based Navigation […]
Just wanted to say this is a very smart idea! In addition, I have started using a plugin “My Page Order” which is a very small plugin that lets you sort your pages and drill down to sort sub pages as well using an easy drag and drop. The URL is http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-page-order/ and it’s very handy! It’s not yet updated for 2.9 yet since WordPress added the trash feature for pages but the author has said he’s working on an update since 2.9 does not include a better way to sort pages.
Andrew, thank you, I appreciate that. My Page Order is a good plugin. My personal preference is that I tend to prefer to not use plugins for what I can do with core WordPress functionality. 1) For the reason you mentioned, it’s a pain sometimes waiting for a plugin that has to get worked when a new version of WordPress is released. 2) It keeps everything lighter (fewer moving parts mean fewer points of failure where things can go wrong). That said, I use a lot of plugins, just not where it isn’t necessary. Still, I know that plugin makes things easier for a lot of people so enjoy and upgraded to 2.9 as soon as you can. Always a good idea to stay up to date on that.
above video is not working… it shows the message ” Sorry, the video is currently not available”…..
Sorry for the delay but I was traveling when you sent this. I checked it and it seems to be working. Thanks for letting me know though.
[…] Check out https://vsellis.com/wordpress-how-to/page-navigation-in-wordpress-using-sort-order/ […]
Thanks for the tips
Kaka, you bet.
Thanks for the EASY guide! Much appreciated.
Thanks. You just saved me a ton of (future) time.
Alex! You bet… that is the idea!
I am very new at blogs / blogging. I have been trying to make use of Categories and have put the posts in and they are not showing when I open up the site to look at Categories.
I know I'm missing something very simple. Keep in mind my newness at this.
I did do my own website using a template, so I can't figure out what my problem is.
Also. How do you choose the size of your text?
Gail, That could be any number of things but the odds are you are putting your posts into categories that aren't set to display as you would expect in your theme. I don't provide technical support/changes (for free) so I'd start with getting an explanation from whomever set up your blog. If you can't get anywhere there send me an email and we'll chat.
Choosing the size of your font is part of an art called typography and I am definitely no expert in that field. It also depends on what you are applying it to. Google “learn typography” and you'll get a lot of good hits to look at.
Hi Scott,
I'm setting up my own blog just as I did my own website, using templates.
I used American Authors.com for the templates and they were available on the phone and were very helpful.
It shouldn't be that difficult. I am a determined person, so I will finally get it. I will keep trying.
I just hoped you could help me. Can you tell me how to set the categories up for display? Or does that cost extra?
Thank you,
GailsSerenity
Gails – I really do do any support through here. You're best bet would be to reach out to the WordPress Pro mailing list (if you have budget, it's for paid projects). Otherwise I'd hit the support forum/website for the template you used. If they don't have one you can try the WordPress.org support form to see if someone can help you.
thank you. Maybe that will help.
Gail
What an excellent video. I have read the information, but it didn't make sense to me. You elegant numbering solution really works well. Thanks for sharing this idea.
Richard, thanks for that. I really appreciate and glad you found it useful. Mission accomplished!
Thanks a lot Scott for your video. You've explained it very well and I was able to reorder the pages on my site.
Achintamitra, thanks! Glad it helped make it easier for you!
Thanks for the video Scott. I'm having some trouble though. After sorting different pages in the correct order (I also used the 1000, 2000… technique), the pages are sorted properly in the Admin section, but not on the site.
I thought perhaps it was a cache thing, so I opened a different browser but the same order appeared.
How can I correct this?
Don – You might make sure the function that generates those pages (wp_list_pages()) includes an attribute for sorting them or isn't being over-ridden by a plugin or something else. It's a little hard to say without seeing the back end. You can learn more about wp_list_pages() at http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_lis…
WordPress features includes a plugin architecture and a templating system. Used by over 2% of the 10,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today. Thanks for providing related articles. Keep posting!
[…] to the bottom page within the same branch of the hierarchy. You may also want to employ specific WordPress Page sort order to your page to have everything organized the way you want […]
Thank you SO much for this!! I'm just at the beginning end of getting my website going, and this DEFINITELY helped me! I've bookmarked you so I can come back and make sure I'm getting this right. Michael – http://www.goofyfitnessdad.com
Michael, you bet. Love the site name!
I often working with WP – thank you for this post
Hi Scott,
Thanks so much for this tutorial, it made the process very clear and easy to implement. Great tip about the numbering too. I would have done the 1. 2. 3. thing without having seen the video.
Kim
Kim, Thanks for letting me know, does me good to hear I've saved some people some work and headache!!!
[…] is something of a black art and carries its own traps for the unwary, but Scott Ellis has created a video tutorial that includes some useful guidelines about how to achieve this in a simple and robust […]
I am a coding novice, so please forgive this: I’m trying to enable this function so I can implement your numbering system. I looked up the reference for how to change the parameters for ‘wp_list’ and found this is edited in wp-includes/post-template.php (?)
I found this string in the file, but the syntax is different than in the examples they show:
function wp_list_pages($args = ”) {
$defaults = array(
‘depth’ => 0, ‘show_date’ => ”,
‘date_format’ => get_option(‘date_format’),
‘child_of’ => 0, ‘exclude’ => ”,
‘title_li’ => __(‘Pages’), ‘echo’ => 1,
‘authors’ => ”, ‘sort_column’ => ‘menu_order, post_title’,
‘link_before’ => ”, ‘link_after’ => ”, ‘walker’ => ”,
);
Thanks!
~TPS
Tom, if you are modifying the core WordPress code stop now! In your template file (in your theme) where you want the content to show up you need to use the wp_list_page() function and pass in the appropriate parameters.
Example:
Read More:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_list_pages
After digging around the theme itself, I realized that it had the option right in it’s own control panel to order the pages by number, not alphabetically. Nonetheless, this was a good lesson in code.
Thanks for your help!
~TPS
Thank you! This was a huge help to me today. It worked perfectly. thanks again.
Video is not working , just wana know how to configure WordPress Navigation Management
This video (loading fine for me) was for sort-order page strategies. Still works well but was also before the new WordPress navigation manager was in place. This article will tell you how to enable the menu manager: http://www.wpthemesplugin.com/enable-navigation-menu-editor-for-easy-menu-management/
[…] en la web encontré un blog en donde explican con un video de una manera bastante sencilla como estos enlaces pueden aparecer […]
Thank you so much for this. I’m such a rookie at this stuff and you made it so easy to understand. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
You are more than welcome!
This helped thanks !
You bet Marco, glad it was helpful!
This video is wicked — thanks a lot bro, I struggled with this for an hour before I stumbled across this.
Cheers,
Nicky
Nicky,
Thanks for that! Always good to know I was able to help someone out! That is why I do this….
Thank you for this post! I could not find this information anywhere else! Your video was perfect in explaining how to change page order. Love the advice on starting with 1000. Even if I had known how to do this, I probably would have started with 1 and then made a lot of extra work for myself. Thanks again!
Kiersten,
You are very welcome. Glad it was so helpful.
Excellent video. Thanks for the help.
A couple years after you’ve posted this, and it still helped me immensely! Thanks!
Alyssa – Makes me happy to hear that! It’s an “old school” technique I learned many MANY years ago! 🙂 Somethings age well… but you should definitely try the new(er) menu system in WordPress too…
That was so easy. I thought I had searched everything to figure out how to switch the order of pages across the top bar, but there it was right in front of me. Thanks for the clear instructions!
Thank you! This tute is so clear and easy to follow. My pages are now beautifully reordered!
Just thank you!!!!
Scott, Thanks for this video – is was extremely helpful.
Best Wishes,
C
Simple solution that did just what I wanted. Thank you!
This is a good idea, but I just wish WordPress would allow you to create a custom WP_Query and sort by the navigation order under appearance in the wp admin.
[…] See the original article here: Page Navigation in WordPress – Using Sort Order – Scott Ellis […]
Thanks for doing this video. I looked for days for something that would tell me how to sort my pages. I never thought to look in Quick Edit (or I should say I looked at Quick Edit and totally missed the Sort dialog). I’ve numbered based on your suggestion. Really helpful. Thanks again!
Vincent, You bet! Glad you found it useful.