[Blake Miller]

I just bought the Custom Entry Order plugin as it seems to make more sense than doing it the old way of id=’3,1,31,13,2,50,41,56,96,113′ order_by=’id|SPECIFIED’

But in the top level “Manage” view it does not work with “Simple Page Ordering” or presumably similar drag and drop plugins (which offers drag & drop ordering of pages or posts or other list view mode)

The fact that there is also no “Quick Edit” mode in list view, doesn’t help as we still have to go in an edit every entry individually, and then remember whos in what order by number/memory. Makes it hard when there are dozens of entries within a category. I found myself still hand writing who’s in what order only to hand-enter each number. With a Quick edit mode, you could at lease visually see all of the entries in their current order.

Am I missing something?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Blake

re: But in the top level “Manage” view it does not work with “Simple Page Ordering” or presumably similar drag and drop plugins (which offers drag & drop ordering of pages or posts or other list view mode)

Right, this is because Connections does not use a WordPress Custom Post Type (CPT) because the database schema is not optimized for directory content. CPT’s are optimized for post/page content.

Providing drop and drag really is only feasible with a small directory. It really does not work well when dealing with hundreds and thousand of entries split across many pages.

re: The fact that there is also no “Quick Edit” mode in list view

Adding this has been long on my list of to do. The manage page is very old code and long overdue for a complete revamp. Honestly, not sure when I’ll get to it but when I do adding a quick edit like feature will be part of the revamp.

re: I found myself still hand writing who’s in what order only to hand-enter each number. With a Quick edit mode, you could at lease visually see all of the entries in their current order.

The entries should still be shown/listed in the order that was set on the manage page so you should be able to visually so who is in what order even though you can not see the actual order number assigned to the entry.

When the manag page revamp is done, it’ll be possible to add columns, perhaps adding a column to display the order number will be helpful. I’ve added that to my feature request list.

[Blake Miller]

Thanks Steven for the thorough response. It helps understand some of the limitations and issues you’re faced with.

The entries should still be shown/listed in the order that was set on
the manage page so you should be able to visually so who is in what
order even though you can not see the actual order number assigned to
the entry.

Yes, you can see them in list view, but if your hundreds or thousands deep (like you mentioned above) then there is no feasible way to count. you can only visually see the approximation of where one listing is compared to another. And since you can only edit by drilling into each entry, you lose track of the order. “Was it 225 or 226 . . . or shoot, was that 325 and 326?” You have to have a very good memory, or jot it down on a list to the side.

It’s definitely alot better than the old way of defining ID in short code.

Having quick edit in list view would certainly help as you noted.

Thanks again for your plugin and support, even listing to folk like us :) – it’s why I’m still using it after years.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Blake

Thanks for the feedback!

When I rewrite the manage page it’ll definitely be “pluggable” so I can add a column for the order.

Thinking about this a bit more, I think I will do this sooner than later because the up coming featured entry extension would benefit from a column and quick edit too. Making these bits of data instantly visible and quickly editable will be great assets.

[Author]

Posts