Bracket Post Order

Description

Bracket Post Order gives you complete control over how your content is sorted — directly from the native WordPress admin screens you already use. No new interfaces to learn, no separate reorder pages. Just drag and drop.

A key feature is per-term post ordering: the ability to define a different post order for each individual category, tag, or custom taxonomy term. Show your products in one order on « Summer Collection » and a completely different order on « Best Sellers » — each term maintains its own independent sort.

Three Types of Ordering

1. Global Post Ordering
Drag-and-drop to reorder posts, pages, and custom post types on the standard admin list table. The new order is saved to menu_order and automatically applied on the front end.

2. Per-Term Post Ordering
Filter your admin list by a category or taxonomy term, and the interface switches to per-term mode. Drag posts into the order you want for that specific term. Assign the same post to multiple categories — each one keeps its own sort. New posts added to a term automatically appear at the end of the custom order.

3. Taxonomy Term Ordering
Reorder categories, tags, and custom taxonomy terms themselves via drag-and-drop on the native edit-tags.php screen. The new term order is applied to get_terms() queries and navigation menus on the front end.

Key Features

• Reset Order — Reset post order by date or title with one click. Most requested feature across all ordering plugins.
• Undo — « Order saved. [Undo] » link appears for 8 seconds after every reorder. Click to revert instantly.
• Mobile/Touch Support — Full touch drag-and-drop on phones and tablets via jQuery UI Touch Punch.
• Keyboard Accessibility — Tab to a row, Enter to activate, Arrow keys to move, Enter to save, Escape to cancel. WCAG compliant.
• Order Column — « # » column shows each post’s position number at a glance.
• WPML & Polylang Support — Per-term ordering works correctly across languages.
• Admin Bar Indicator — Shows current ordering mode (Global or Per-Term) in the admin bar.
• Settings Link — Quick access from the Plugins page.

How It Works

1. Go to Settings > Bracket Post Order
2. Toggle on the post types you want to reorder
3. Toggle on taxonomies for per-term post ordering
4. Toggle on taxonomies for term reordering
5. Visit your admin list pages and start dragging

Changes save automatically via AJAX — no page refresh needed.

Built for WordPress, Not Against It

• Works directly inside native admin list tables (edit.php and edit-tags.php)
• Uses standard menu_order for global ordering — compatible with any theme
• Uses term_order for taxonomy terms — the same column WordPress defines
• Per-term order stored as term meta — clean, portable, conflict-free
• Front-end queries are modified transparently via pre_get_posts and posts_clauses
• Explicit orderby parameters (date, title, etc.) are never overridden

Works With

• Any public custom post type (portfolios, team members, testimonials, events, FAQs, services)
• WooCommerce products and product categories
• Any registered taxonomy with a UI
• Page builders that use standard WP_Query (Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder)
• Themes that follow WordPress template hierarchy
• WPML and Polylang multilingual plugins

For Developers

Bracket Post Order provides hooks so you can extend or control its behavior:

// Filter: skip per-term ordering for a specific query
add_filter( 'bracket_po_apply_term_post_order', function( $apply, $term_id, $query ) {
    // Return false to skip
    return $apply;
}, 10, 3 );

// Filter: modify the retrieved term post order
add_filter( 'bracket_po_get_term_post_order', function( $ordered_ids, $term_id ) {
    return $ordered_ids;
}, 10, 2 );

// Actions: fired after order is saved via drag-and-drop
do_action( 'bracket_po_global_order_updated', $post_ids );
do_action( 'bracket_po_term_post_order_updated', $term_id, $post_ids );
do_action( 'bracket_po_term_order_updated', $term_ids );

// Actions: fired after order is reset
do_action( 'bracket_po_global_order_reset', $post_type, $sort_by );
do_action( 'bracket_po_term_post_order_reset', $term_id );

To apply per-term order in custom queries, set orderby to menu_order and include a tax_query with a single term:

$query = new WP_Query( [
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'orderby'   => 'menu_order',
    'order'     => 'ASC',
    'tax_query' => [ [
        'taxonomy' => 'product-category',
        'field'    => 'term_id',
        'terms'    => 42,
    ] ],
] );

The plugin will automatically apply the saved per-term order via FIELD() SQL — posts not in the saved order appear at the end.