Is it possible to sort a [pass taxonomy_loop]?

Ah, thank you for pointing this out – by default, taxonomy terms should be sorted by name but the parameter wasn’t getting through. I corrected this in the latest update, and noted in the documentation.

Still not working. Even tried ASC and DESC with lowercase and uppercase letters. Also tried orderby=”name” which is default.

Here’s my code so you can check to make sure I didn’t mess up anything.

<h3>US Government Units</h3>
[pass taxonomy_loop="unit_title" order="ASC"]
<strong>{TERM_NAME}</strong><br>
[loop type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="us-government" compare="and" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" taxonomy_3="unit_title" value_3="{TERM}" list="true" orderby="title"]
  <ul><li>– <a href="[field url]" target="_blank">[field title]</a></li></ul>
[/loop]
<br>
[/pass]

Hmm, strange.. On my end, it’s sorted by term name without order/orderby. But I see from the link you provided, that the terms are not sorted there.

I thought maybe the loop inside could be affecting this somehow – but, on my test site a loop inside doesn’t make a difference to the sorting.

Does changing ASC/DESC reverse the sort as it should? I wonder if the page or the query is being cached.. Or could it be a theme/plugin that’s manually changing the taxonomy order..?

The plugin Category Order and Taxonomy Terms Order was causing the problem. Not sure if there’s another plugin out there that can reorder taxonomy terms without causing the issue. I sometimes like to rearrange my post categories.

I have another question. Is it possible to filter by another taxonomy in a Pass? The reason I ask is I added more values to the Unit Title taxonomy for World History (different subject) and the new values display on the US Government page.

Could something like this work…

[pass taxonomy_loop="unit_title" compare="and" taxonomy="content_area" value="us-government" order="ASC"]

That makes sense that another plugin was changing the taxonomy order – I had a similar issue with post order.

As for filtering by another taxonomy.. Could you give me more details on the result you’re looking for? The taxonomy loop goes through all terms that exist in that taxonomy – so, I’m not sure how they would be filtered by another taxonomy? I can’t quite visualize the content structure.

I have a custom post type called Lessons & Bundles. When creating a LB post, one of the custom fields asks the user to select a lesson type (Lesson Plan, Digital Books, Professional Development, Unit Lesson,…) and if they select Unit Lesson, they are instructed to give a Unit Name in a category panel so if other Unit Lessons are created, they can all be connected together in a loop.

Another taxonomy that comes into play is Content Area (Algebra, US Government, Fine Arts,…). Each content area will have their own page. In one column on the page will be a list of the units listed dynamically with their unit name and the associated posts listed beneath.

Here’s an example for a column on the World History page. (content area taxonomy) The column is only going to contain posts that are Unit Lessons (lesson type taxonomy).

Ancient Civilizations (unit title taxonomy)

• AC – Lesson 1 (posts)
• AC – Lesson 2 (posts)
• AC – Lesson 3 (posts)

Greece and Rome (unit title taxonomy)

• GR – Lesson 1 (posts)
• GR – Lesson 2 (posts)

Renaissance and Reformation (unit title taxonomy)

• R&R – Lesson 1 (posts)
• R&R – Lesson 2 (posts)
• R&R – Lesson 3 (posts)
• R&R – Lesson 4 (posts)

If there’s a better way to do this, I’m open to suggestions. Thanks so much for your help.

Jerrad

(posts) should be (post)

Didn’t want you to think that the link goes to posts. The link goes to a post. Sorry.

OK, I just made an update with an experimental feature to see if it can achieve what you want.

<h3>World History</h3>
[pass taxonomy_loop="unit_title" order="ASC"]
  [if exists type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="world-history" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" taxonomy_3="unit_title" value_3="{TERM}"]
    <strong>{TERM_NAME}</strong><br>
    [loop type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="world-history" compare="and" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" taxonomy_3="unit_title" value_3="{TERM}" list="true" orderby="title"]
      <ul><li>– <a href="[field url]" target="_blank">[field title]</a></li></ul>
    [/loop]
    <br>
  [/if]
[/pass]

Not the most elegant solution though, even if it works. [if exists] will run what’s inside only if any posts match the query. However, you’ll be making an extra database query for each Unit Title taxonomy – and, querying by taxonomy term can be heavy on site performance.

I wonder if this can be solved better by organizing the content structure differently – although that might not be practical if you already have a lot of content.

We haven’t developed a lot of content yet so changes can still be made to the structure. Thanks for letting me know how this could affect site performance.

Would it be less strain on my site to do it like this? (took out the pass, just doing a loop based on the content area and lesson type, ordering the list by the unit title taxonomy and listing the taxonomy in the loop)

<h3>World History Units</h3>
[loop type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="world-history" compare="and" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" list="true" orderby="unit_title" order="ASC"]
  <ul><li><a href="[field url]" target="_blank">[field title]</a> - <em>[taxonomy unit_title]</em></li></ul>
[/loop]
</div>

If you have another suggestion, please let me know.

Thanks – Jerrad

I mentioned query performance, because [if exists] just uses [loop] to check for result, so in my code above you’d be making the same query twice – once to check existence of any post in that taxonomy, and second to loop through them. It would be simple to solve with PHP but with shortcodes, I think there isn’t a good solution yet.

One reason I mentioned content structure is because of this line: “I added more values to the Unit Title taxonomy for World History (different subject) and the new values display on the US Government page.” It seems that each subject should have its own group of Unit Titles, separate from other subjects – or do some subjects share the same unit titles? I wonder how that could be achieved – nested taxonomies – if unit title was a child taxonomy of content area..

A plugin that’s been useful to me before is: CPT-onomies. It creates taxonomies based on custom post types. Perhaps you could make use of it somehow, to manage content relationships.

What if..Content Area could be a custom post type as well as taxonomy, a “CPT-onomy”. Then, each content area can have Unit Titles associated with them, as well as description and other fields.

By the way, [for each] has almost the same functionality as pass taxonomy_loop, and I’ve been thinking of consolidating them.

OK, so..

<h3>World History</h3>

[for each="unit_title" order="ASC" current="true"]
  <strong>{TERM_NAME}</strong><br>
    [loop type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="world-history" compare="and" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" taxonomy_3="unit_title" value_3="{TERM}" list="true" orderby="title"]
      <a href="[field url]" target="_blank">[field title]</a>
    [/loop]
    <br>
  [/if]
[/for]

Then [for each] will only list Unit Titles that are assigned to this specific Content Area.

Oops, there was an extra [if].

[for each="unit_title" order="ASC" current="true"]
  <strong>{TERM_NAME}</strong><br>
  [loop type="lessons_bundles" taxonomy="content_area" value="world-history" compare="and" taxonomy_2="lesson_type" value_2="unit-lessons" taxonomy_3="unit_title" value_3="{TERM}" list="true" orderby="title"]
    <a href="[field url]" target="_blank">[field title]</a>
  [/loop]
  <br>
[/for]