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Smart Category Ordering

Over the many deployments of Wordpress and Wordpress MU, we have found that our clients are constantly requesting the ability to sort content at the category level without editing the core of their templates.

Today, we present our latest plugin titled, “Smart Category Ordering.” The plugin that we are releasing is a modified version of a plugin we developed for WNET.org and their various Wordpress platforms.

This plugin extends the built in content sorting that you can control via your templates by allowing you to control it via the Wordpress admin. The plugin works strictly at the category level, and does NOT work with the home page, as that is not a category.

The “Smart Title” option strips the leading “a”, “an” or “the” from the post title when setting the ordering. Additionally, per sorting definition, you’ll define the number of posts per page (default is 10) and whether your category sorting is confined to a single category or the category + all children.

*Note* You should set a (catch-all) sorting option which acts as the default sorting method for the rest of your site. By default, Wordpress sorts by post date in descending order.

How To Install

First, you’ll need the plugin. You can download it here. After you have completed the download, follow these short steps:

1. Upload ’smart-category-ordering’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Set your sorting options

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the “Smart Title” option and how is it used?

When sorting by “Smart Title”, that option is there to the leading ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ from a post title when sorting. This is the only difference between “Smart Title” and “Title.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.