[Plugin: CataBlog] How to change order of items?

This is actually a really good question. Currently each catalog item has an order value, just like a WordPress Page, which is used to give your catalog order. If you reorder the items to how you want in the ‘All Categories’ view and then save, your new order should translate to individual categories.

The problem with letting people order while viewing only a specific category is that it created duplicate order values and unexpected results. I want to block people from setting the order manually in a form field of any sort. This means order is set, updated and modified as you create, edit and delete your catalog items. This also means that trying to shuffle and reorder a subset of a list, without the rest of the list, is technically impossible. *note below*

The ways I am thinking of fixing this is are:

1. Each category gets its own order, so multiple catalog items could have the same order value of zero, but they would be in different categories and never displayed together. Potentials issues are you would loose the ability to order the entire list (all categories) and if an item is in two categories it can only have one order value. Meaning if you reorder category A with item C in it and then go to category B with item C in it and reorder again, category A could now have a different order because item C has had its order value changed when category B was modified.

2. Add an order by parameter to the plugin ShortCode so you could do something like, [catablog category="fish" orderby="title"]. This is the only option that lets you display your catalog in different orders on different pages. This option is great, unless someone wants to use an arbitrary order that is completely unpredictable. Coupling this with the current ordering capabilities of CataBlog and you might cover most use cases (scenarios). One downfall with setting the order in the ShortCode will be that the catalog could be displayed with a different order then the Admin Panel.

3. Much like the previous option, you let people order by a field value, but you run it as a process in admin instead of making it a ShortCode parameter. This would work by letting someone choose a new calculated order while reordering their catalog. This will make sure the catalog it displayed with the same order in the Admin Panel and the front end. The caveat with this method is that you can only order your catalog in one particular way and the option to order by title with one ShortCode and order by price with another ShortCode is lost.

*NOTE*
Yes I could fetch the entire list, loop through it looking for the reordered item ids and noting their current order and then processing the old and new orders and some how come up with a new array of catalog items in a somewhat expected order, but the database queries and complexity of this method has steered me away.

Thanks for your detailed comment here macguru2000.

I was only aware of the limitations of the reordering after I updated the plugin to 1.2

Currently my catalogue is reasonably small with about 40 items, but when it grows, Ordering by category content will eventually become crucial, as DRag drop on one list will become difficult.

Although I like the drag-drop idea, however, if we have to have one long list, it would be easier to use the check box against each item, then select a category, then ‘with selected items’ transfer to selected category to reorder.

Thanks for your continued development on this plugin.

I think you might be misunderstanding me. You do not need to organize your catalog items by category. When you filter your category in the ShortCode the order is maintained. So you do not need to keep your catalog ordered by category. But if you want your category items to be displayed in a specific order then you need to make sure to order your catalog item in the admin view.

Just imagine if you pulled out every item that wasn’t in the selected category, that will be the display order.

Yeah, I get that part, but if I have 200 items plus in the whole catalogue it’s going to be real pain to reorder these if we have to view them all in a list to make the ordering. That’s when you want to be able to chunk it down into smaller groups (categories) and work with a smaller sub set of items.

Do you think that I should disabled the ‘Change Order’ button in the ‘All Categories’ view and let users change the order only when viewing a single category? This could technically work as long as the results are ordered by category and then order number when viewing the entire catalog. I believe that most people would see that as the “perceived order” of the catalog, no?

HI macuru2000. First thansk for that solution to the ‘checkout’ question. I’ll incorporate that into paypal.htm

Do you think that I should disabled the ‘Change Order’ button in the ‘All Categories’ view and let users change the order only when viewing a single category? This could technically work as long as the results are ordered by category and then order number when viewing the entire catalog. I believe that most people would see that as the “perceived order” of the catalog, no?

My opinion is yes to changing order in the single category view, because this is more granular. Also if people don’t create a category except the default, they have a global sort order anyway.

I am going to set this topic as resolved as I think a solution to the reordering issue has been discovered. Thanks for your input and I hope I can make this change in the upcoming small bug fixes release, 1.2.1.

Thanks macguru2000, I’ll look forward to 1.2.1. I think your solution will be well suited.