changing order of displayed categories

Hi again @shrubbery!

Have you tried WP Tiles 1.0 beta? It will come out of beta this week, so it will show up in your WP plugins listing as an update soon. It is much more flexible for querying posts and sorting them. There are quite a few changes from the old version, so make sure to test that your site is compatible with it! (I know, not what you want to hear whet you’re almost finished with the assignment!)

However, I don’t think there is a way to sort posts by a fixed category order in a single query. Check out the codex documentation order_by here to see what the options are.

I think you have 2 options:

1. Sort by date and set the date for posts from category 5 to far in the past, so they always show up last. It’s a bit of a hack, but if it doesn’t have to be very dynamic, it may be your easiest way out

2. Query each category separately and create the posts array manually (this works in WP Tiles 1.0 only!). For example:

// Try to get all the top posts in a single query
$first_posts = get_posts( array( 'category' => array( 6, 7, 8 ) );

// Then get all the posts that should end up last
$last_posts = get_posts( array( 'category' => 5 );

// Merge the 2 arrays of posts, first posts first, last posts last
$posts = array_merge( $first_posts, $last_posts );

// Display the tiles! (WP Tiles 1.0 only!)
the_wp_tiles( $posts );

Let me know if it works out!

— Mike

Hi!
Thank you for your response!
I couldn’t use the first solution because I had to make it completely foolproof, so I decided to upgrade (I can’t give not actualized project anyway).
New version works great, and I changed my css back in no time, but, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit, I have poor php knowledge and I don’t really know how to properly apply the code in your response…
A little hit where to put it would be greatly appreciated, sorry about that ??

Good to hear the upgrade went fine.

For some more info on using the template tags, check out this page: https://wp-tiles.com/docs/template-tags/.

The trick is this: on the last line, the_wp_tiles is called. When that function is called, WP Tiles is outputted. You can compare it with the shortcode: where you put [wp-tiles], WP Tiles is outputted.

In the first lines, I made 2 collections of posts: $first_posts and $last_posts. Check out the documentation on get_posts to see how you can make custom queries.

Then, in the next line, the arrays of posts are merged, first one first, second one last:

$posts = array_merge( $first_posts, $last_posts );

Now, the place to put this is in your (child)theme on the location where you want to display the tiles. For example, if you want to show it on your home page, you would find front-page.php in your theme and add the code snippet right at the spot where you want to display the tiles. Make sure they are within between a <?php and ?>.

Good luck!

Mike

Thank you so much! ??

I did that before I posted and it failed, but apparently I missed some parentheses.
When I edited the code, it didn’t work properly though. $last_posts was displaying correctly, but $first_posts was showing one post of category 6 and two of 8 and that’s it (weird).
However I edited it like this and it’s flawless:

$first_posts = get_posts( array( 'category' =>  6 ));
$second_posts = get_posts( array('category' => 7));
$third_posts =  get_posts( array('category' => 8));

$last_posts = get_posts( array( 'category' => 5 ));

$posts = array_merge( $first_posts, $second_posts, $third_posts, $last_posts );

// Display the tiles! (WP Tiles 1.0 only!)
the_wp_tiles( $posts );

Thank you for help and this plugin, I’ll keep using it ??

Hi shrubberry,

I’m trying to solve similar issue I would like to show posts defined by two tags (TAG1 and TAG2) All posts with TAG1 should be always on the top and all posts with TAG2 should go after them. Both sorted by date.

I’m poor in php too, could you please give me a hint, where did you put your code and how did you displayed it in the page?

Thank you so much.