Changing the order of sub-categories in the drop-down menu in the sidebar

[xelle]

Hi,
I'm new to WordPress - migrating my site from html. I'm using the Daily Dish Pro theme.

I have a category which covers events by month. It has 12 sub-categories, as you would guess, being January, February etc. But they show up as April, December, February, January and so on, alphabetically. That's not natural for visitors and makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

Is there a way to re-arrange these sub categories? I've looked at earlier forum posts but haven't been able to find the answer, although I'm sure I can't be the first to have this problem. So apologies in advance if I'm repeating a regular question. I'd appreciate pointers on how to make these months show up in their expected order.

http://scu.nateol.com

[marybaum]

Intuitively, I think you might want to start by connecting each month to its corresponding number. (Maybe in the slug?)

Then, if you're building this feature (the search-by-whatever list in the sidebar) in code, it's fairly easy to get WP and Genesis to make that number more important than the name of the month.

If you're not building in code but doing it in the Admin, it would be good if you told us how, so we can help you figure out how to get that numerical ordering in the mix. That's because there are several ways you might be doing that - with a plugin; with a custom menu; with the Genesis Featured Posts widget or even the Recent Posts widget. I bet folks can think of several more, and there's no way for us to tell from the front end which one you're actually using.

So, if you'd be willing to tell us how you're building that list, we can tell you how to arrange your months in their chronological order.

Cheers!

I hope it's as lovely in Sydney when you see this as it is now in California.

---

Sharing the good news about the wonders of modern CSS and the split-step. Either one should get you moving fast. 😀

[xelle]

Thank you for your reply - and yes, it's pretty good in Sydney right now - we're moving into summer!

I'm happy to share what I've tried on my site.

The slug is the name of the month with another word added for seo. So, for example it will be january-holidays, february-holidays etc. I’m thinking that if I put a number in it would have to be at the front to work, so that it would read 01-january-holidays, 02-february-holidays and so on. But that would create the problem that search engines would see that as an actual date (it may not be a real problem, I’m guessing here).

At this stage I’m not building in code. I find php rather daunting - haven’t got to grips with it yet and would prefer not to have to spend the time if I don’t need to. I’m very comfortable with html and css but find php rather challenging at this stage.

In the Admin, I’ve created categories for my main topics and I’ve nested sub-categories under them. The categories and subcategories show up on a ‘Search by Category’ widget in the sidebar.

The relevant overall category in this case is “What’s On". It has a sub-category for each month. Under each month’s subcategory there are individual posts detailing whatever events fit into that month.

Here’s an example:

What’s on (category) >>

December (sub-category) >>

Carols in the Domain (post)
Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race (post)
New Years Eve Sydney (post)

January (sub-category) >>

Australia Day events (post)
Sydney Festival (post)

and so on for each month. (I haven’t finished doing them all yet, but these ones are up if you want to check out how it all fits together (http://scu.nateol.com).

I’ve added archive intro text and a photo to the category archive settings so that each subcategory heading has a good seo foundation as well as providing a reader-friendly introduction to the posts.

The ‘What’s On’ category is also a Nav Bar menu item. If you click 'What's On' in the nav bar the subcategories drop down - January, February etc., each with its included posts. I can put these in order through the admin by moving them up and down the menu order. So the Nav Bar menu isn’t an issue - it’s really only the widget in the sidebar that I think will confuse people. And I'm happy to attempt php if that will solve the problem - yikes!

[Author]

Posts