Thread

This may be more appropriate in the How-To section, but is the determining factor for me to purchase.

After installing and being a new user to EE, I was unable to find any way to reorder the items on a section or weblog or page.

Is there no native way to do this? It is probably basic blogging etiquette to order by date but what if I wanted to have more control over the ordering of the entries?

Is this possible?

Thanks!

😉  That’s pretty close to a ‘How to’- but if it’s a deciding factor for a purchase, it makes sense here.  Yes, you have control over the ordering of entries via the weblog tag orderby parameter- you can order by title, custom fields, dates- not everything, but quite a few options.  You can even ‘pipe’ the order, so first it orders by author and within author by date- or what have you.

If you haven’t already given EE a spin, I’d definitely suggest trying it out- there are some good options that allow you to kick the tires before deciding to purchase.  Once you’ve got a feel for how things work, you’ll be in a better position to make the final decision.  And while you’re trying it out- the forums will help you work through all the little details of how to get things working like you want.

Hiya,

Just thought I would chime in as well. If the standard weblog tag orderby parameters don’t give you the exact results that you want then I know of a couple of users on the forums here that have made a couple of modules or extensions that can order items with even more control. There is one called Selected Items and another that I can’t quite think of at the moment. These allow you to place entries in an exact order which can be very very helpful.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark,

I looked into the Selected Items hack - That is definitely one way around it if you know what you’re doing, however I was not able to get it working right away. I’m sure it’s just something I need to learn as a I find time to get my head around the common EE tags and terminology. Who knows, I may be able to come up with something myself in the next few weeks.

I went ahead and purchased EE because I think it has huge potential for my needs, and the community seems to be tightly knit and very helpful. I’d really like to see it grow and look forward to contributing.

—-

I would like to make a note to the devs of this project, though. Manual ordering overrides would be a very useful feature to be added to the core of EE, and would allow them to market it as a CMS and not just a blog engine on steroids. One of the main selling points about any commercial software is to give the user a feeling of control right off the bat. This was one of the only things I saw that was immediately lacking (other than an installer API). Cheers.

The other one is called Reeorder.  Neither Reeorder not Select and Order are hacks - they’re modules. =)

The ability to re-order entries, and even on up to the category and weblog level is really important.  I would think this should be done directly in the Edit window. Unfortunately this is not the case yet with EE, and gives me a sad face.  :(  <—see?

Before This gets pushed into the feature requests area (I plan on making one), I would just like to say that with the kind of clients I have, I almost NEVER need to order by the options that EE gives (Date, Title, etc.) but instead need to have custom order. Unless you are blogging, it becomes very important to have order ability.

Additionally, and this is not to harp on the tons of work and fabulous launch of 1.6 by the folks at EllisLab, but the Edit area needs some work to improve usability. I only have very few entries, and I find it very cumbersome to manage content. I had to find plug-ins for quick sorting and copying (cloning) articles, and the Edit list still does not remember my last filter setting, so that each time I return to edit a particular weblog/category I must re-filter out all the other stuff. Ouch this is painful!

I’m quite sure this is coming in a future release and look forward to this, but I am stopping oh-so-short of using this as a client hand-off tool. It’s still too tricky for them. I will make my more detailed suggestions in the feature request area.

I found REEorder to be a very good solution. It gets the job done.

In regards to your editor woes, I found integration of WYSIWYGPro (www.wysiwygpro.com) to be a very straightforward installation process. It actually generates XHTML valid code, too.

Thanks mrlee,

I am using Reeorder, thanks for the tip. I find this usable for small numbers of entries, but not a good solution for lots of content.  A for effort on it, however.

Thanks for the tip on WYSIWYGpro.  I was referring to the EDIT menu in EE, which is for selecting which content to edit, not the EDTIOR.  I have tried TinyMCE as an editor, but it seemed to get in the way of the standard method that EE uses to handle files and insert links, etc.  I’ll give your suggested editor a try.

Joel.

Hi Joel,

I think if you use EE then you won’t be disappointed at all. I personally have only been using EE for about half a year now but will never ever look back. It has always done at least 98% of what I need out of the box and then the other 2% which has usually been for such things such as e-commerce and the likes I have ‘hacked’ in myself with my limited knowledge! 😊

I think what I always say to myself is that you will never ever find a system that can do 100% of what you want 100% of the time as that would just be impossible to keep everybody fully equipped at all times. Having said that EE comes exceptionally close and my hat is most definitely off to the developers for creating what is in my mind the most easiest to use and most easily extensible system ever!

Keep at it and I’m sure you will see just how great it is to use.

Wish you all the best with your future projects and hopefully use of EE!! 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark,

Thanks for the advice! I’m already using it and have built 3 sites so far (still in local production). I’m really still getting to know “how it likes to work” and the limits of it, but yes, EE seems to land squarely in the brilliant camp and I look forward to working with and sharing in the community here.

I have determined that this is indeed the most flexible system out, combining simplicity with extensibilty. It makes for a powerful combination.

I have to say though, that the most powerful feature EE has is it’s phenomenal tech support, assistance, response time, and….here’s an original idea…a MANUAL!  😊

Thanks again.