Plugin Review: My Page Order
A few weeks ago Nick Ohrn suggested that I write about some of the plugins I use in my work for IRPA. The beginning of winter term sort of put a hold on that idea, but today I finally have a little time, so I’m going to start by writing about My Page Order.
WordPress gives users two tools for structuring pages. One is page parent, which allows you to create a tree structure with your pages, much like a folder system on a computer. I’ll touch on this a little later.
The other tool provided by WordPress is the ability to specify “Page Order”. What does this mean? Well, take my site for example. I have several pages that are listed at the top of every page. Their order can be decided by several things. Page ID is one option (though not really useful, since the ID is meaningless to anyone but WordPress itself). Another option is Alphabetical ordering based on title. This can be useful, but it still doesn’t give the kind of control that most would probably like. The final option is “Page Order”. This is based on a numeric value that can be set while editing a page. As WordPress says, this is a bit janky, because you have to go into every page and set some numeric value for its order. This is where My Page Order comes in.
Description
When activated, My Page Order adds an admin page in the “Pages” category called “My Page Order”. Clicking on it gives you a list of the pages you have on your site. You can drag the page names to order them just like WordPress Widgets. If you have a tree structure, you can select a page to order its child pages.
Likes
I love the ease with which you can order pages using this plugin. It’s a great tool to install for users who would feel uncomfortable using the default numbered ordering system.
Dislikes
The way this plugin handles the tree structure of pages feels a little awkward to me. Being able to view the whole structure at the same time would be incredibly useful, and being able to drag pages between parents would be immensely helpful.
I’ve still not decided whether this is a feature, or a bug, but unpublished pages are listed along with published pages. On one hand, this is good, because it means you can decide where a page will show up before you publish it. On the other hand, it can lead to a little confusion and clutter if many unpublished pages exist. Being able to hide unpublished pages would be a great improvement.
Overall Review
This plugin is really one of my favorite tools. Its function is so simple, yet it is integral to using WordPress as a content management system.
Author’s plugin page (a bit outdated).
I’d say the fact that unpublished pages show is a feature, not a bug. It makes sense to be able to order pages before they are published.
I agree that you should be able to move children between parents, but that would be a little more difficult to do, I would think. The best thing about this, though, is that you can modify it and release the result (the wonders of the GPL). I encourage you to take a stab and do it. All you need to do is add a little bit of JavaScript and make page parent changes wherever page order is being modified.
Yes, I think I now agree that it’s a feature, but I still think it should still allow you to hide drafts temporarily.
I don’t really want to branch the project since it’s still active, but perhaps I could work in the changes and submit them to the author. If he’s not willing incorporate the changes, then I might branch.
Yeah, just do an SVN checkout, make the changes, and then do a diff and submit to the project owner. If he likes your changes, he might just make you a committer on the plugin. I’ve done that before with people and their plugins.
Ah that’s right. I forgot that all the plugins were on SVN. Once again WordPress makes things infinitely simple
By the way, here is an example of what I had in mind for showing the whole page structure. The interface needs to be a LOT better, but the general idea is what I’m aiming for.
http://www.swartzfager.org/blog/dspNestedList.cfm
Hi Will, thanks for the review of my plugin. I’ll agree that it would be nice to be able to change the page structure in a nice drag and drop interface, but that wasn’t original intent of the plugin. I released this almost 3 years ago (still “janky”) and all I wanted was an interface to set the order of pages. It started off for WP 1.5 and used up and down arrows to move stuff around so it’s come a long way.
Along the way I had to make compromises like keeping unpublished pages in the list and subpage dropdown.
There’s actually a patch that has been submitted to the development trunk to allow drag and drop ordering/restructuring on the page list but it hasn’t been incorporated yet.
I’ll point you towards pageMash, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/, it does the restructuring as well as ordering. I’d be happy to let my plugin die if a better solution like pageMash becomes more popular, but I’ll keep supporting mine as long as people use it.
I’ll plug my 2 other plugins, My Link Order and My Category Order, that provide functionality missing from WP completely. It might be janky, but you can specify an order for pages, the same can’t be done for post categories and links and their categories.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-link-order/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-category-order/
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the comment (and for the plugins!).
I looked at the pageMash plugin, but while it does what I was talking about, it also seems less responsive than My Page Order, so definitely don’t let your plugin die yet
I’m actually also using My Link Order on the same website and I’m hoping to also do a review of it at some point soon (thanks for the reminder).
I’ve not used My Category Order yet because I’ve not had a need for it, but if I do ever need custom ordering of categories I’ll definitely check it out.