New Plugin: Set Sort Order

While working on a client project, I added a few custom post types and a custom taxonomy to each. Once the client started adding content to the site, he asked, “How do I sort the order of the items on the page?” This should have been a simple request. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

After installing multiple plugins to solve the issue, I posted about it on social media and somebody offered a solution. The willingness to freely share solutions is one of my favorite parts of the WordPress community.

From solution to plugin

This wasn't the first time I've run into this issue. But, it was the first time where I had numerous post types that all needed different sort options. And, I couldn't be sure the client wouldn't want to make changes to the order in the future. Hard coding the sort order where the client wouldn't have easy access to change it didn't feel like the best solution. Instead, I wanted to provide the client with an option page where they could set the sort order for each post type and each taxonomy individually. And that turned into a plugin called Set Sort Order.

The plugin finds all of the post types and taxonomies on the WordPress install and lists them on the options page. For each item, you can choose to sort them by menu order, post date, or post title in either ascending or descending order.

As you can probably tell, this plugin solves a pretty specific issue. But if it's an issue you've run into, I hope you find it useful.