Bug in Series Order

Anytime you are selecting books or grouping books by series, it will order the books by the order of the series. It should be hiding the Order By drop down in those cases. I will take a look at that.

Each book has a setting for Series Order. That’s the order the books will sort by.

Thank you for your response. But it does show the option when Selecting Books by Series, if you leave the Group by as None. And it makes sense that it should be there because you should be able to order your series just by newest or oldest without having to get into any custom ordering.

Could you tell me the file that controls that? That way I can get in and adjust it in the code if nothing else. I have spent some time looking through the code, but haven’t been successful in where that is controlled on that specific piece. Thanks for your assistance.

Correct, it still shows the option, but it shouldn’t because it overrides whatever you put there.

So, can you explain to me what you are trying to do that you want books in a series not displayed in order of the series?

If you select, let’s say, 2 series, and they have publication dates like the following:
Series 1, Book 1 – 1/1/2016
Series 1, Book 2 – 1/1/2017
Series 1, Book 3 – 1/1/2018

Series 2, Book 1 – 5/1/2016
Series 2, Book 2 – 5/1/2017
Series 2, Book 3 – 5/1/2018

Then if you choose to order them by publication date, the order will be like this:
Series 1 Book 1, Series 2 Book 1, Series 1 Book 2, Series 2 Book 2, Series 1 Book 3, Series 2 Book 3

That doesn’t make sense to me, but maybe there is some sort of use case where you’d want that?

As for the code, you shouldn’t edit the plugin code directly because your changes will get overwritten when the plugin updates.

But if you can tell me more about what you are trying to do, and why, I can see about making the changes in the code to not override the ordering.

We are not using the series as one would traditionally, but the theory should still apply as you have stated, but I want it to show in reverse. Series is used to group them by the year of which they are highlighted in our Book list because we deal with books from all types of authors, so we want the latest to show at the top. Everything from 2020 (Current List), should show based upon the latest one we put into the book list.

Before we had to update the plugin it was working that way without having to change anything, but that version was from a couple years old ago. I understand about when it updates it will get overwritten, but I keep a note of the change and can reapply when updated. It isn’t something we do real often. If there is a way to control the change in functions.php instead great, otherwise if you can direct me to the spot in the code that would be just as good. Thanks for your time!

I see.

Would it simply be easier to use a different field than series, if there is one you won’t be using? Such as genre?

Series is the only one that has special sorting overrides.

Or use the custom selection of books?

/includes/class-mbm-db-books.php around line 519 is what you are looking for, I think, if you are set on changing the code.

The reluctance was there is over 800 books to reassign. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. It has been helpful. I wasn’t able to get it to reorder where you mentioned in the code, but I changed everything using the Publisher option instead. At least with that one I could do it in bulk for 40 pages instead of doing each individually.