Tips to Organize WordPress Pages with Drag & Drop
November 30. 2021
Do you have a WordPress site? Are you struggling with arranging your pages to make everything look and work as you imagine it should? Luckily for you, today is the day when it becomes easy, as you’ve found our tips to organize WordPress pages with drag & drop.
You probably figured out by now that WordPress has its own way of arranging the pages. It looks either at the published date or sorts them out in alphabetical order. However, you have every right not to like this way of doing it. It’s good that you feel your site deserves more, and with the right plugin, you can take it in any direction you want.
So make a plan for managing your website, and get ready to start making it happen. Here’s what you’ll need to know.
Why Would You Want to Change the Order of WordPress Posts?
For lots of businesses out there, arranging the posts on a site by published date isn’t the best solution. It makes sense for the news and magazines to show the latest information, but in lots of other niches, this tactic doesn’t yield as many benefits.
For example, let’s say you created a whole series of ”how to” pieces. It’s only logical that the first part appears at the top of your blog page and that the latter ones follow it. With the default setting, you can’t even showcase a specific piece of your content you like. Of course, if you put it on the pedestal, you’ll boost the traffic that page gets.
Another great trick is repurposing some of your old content if it comes into the trend once again. It’ll happen eventually, so why wouldn’t you get ready for it right away? And if you have some content that you feel is good but doesn’t get as much traction, you can help it a bit by showing it first.
As you can see, there are numerous reasons why you might want to change the order of pages on your WordPress site, and a drag and drop system makes it a breeze. So, let’s take a look at how to install it.
How to Add a Drag & Drop Post System to Your WordPress site
1. Install Post Types Order
The Post Types Order plugin is only one of many that can allow you to reorder your pages by dragging them around. So, it’s not the only solution, but we find it easy to use, and thus, suitable for every beginner out there. It will do what it says on the box, but it won’t slow down your site or cause you any other inconveniences.
Still, if you don’t find it your cup of tea, we’ll give out a few alternative choices at the end. But for now, let’s see how to add this one to your site.
- Start by clicking on the Plugins tab and selecting the Add New option from the drop-down menu.
- The search box will appear, and you can simply type in Post Types Order to find the one you’re looking for.
- When you locate the plugin, click the Install Now button to activate it.
2. Configure the Settings
The plugin you have just installed will display a red warning right away. Don’t worry, this is normal. To make it work properly, you need to configure the settings. And although this might sound scary if you’re doing it for the first time, you’re already in the clear. The default values are great for what you need it to do. Hence, you can just hop into the settings and save everything as it already is.
- Find the Settings tab on your left-hand admin panel and click on the Post Types Order.
- The first option is whether to show or hide the re-order interface for your Posts, Media, and Reusable Blocks. You want to leave it on.
- Below it, you get to choose what user roles can use the plugin. Set this to your preference.
- Read through all the rest of the options, but don’t change any of them. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with what the plugin can do.
And now that warning message is out of the way — we can dive right into the tips to organize WordPress pages with drag & drop.
3. Start Dragging and Dropping Your Pages Around
And just like that, you’re ready to organize your pages and posts however you like. As you can assume, it’s a fairly simple process, but if you’ve read our tips to make your website popular, you’re probably planning to move lots of things around. And in that case, you should brace yourself for spending quite a bit of time on it.
In essence, there are two ways to do it.
The first is through the Re-Order section, and we recommend using this one. All of your posts will be listed on your screen, thus making your job a lot easier. The second way to do it is through the Posts section. It does the same thing, but the view is limited, so it’s better to avoid it to save yourself from frustration.
Here’s the whole process step-by-step:
- Click on Posts in your admin panel and choose the Re-Order option.
- A new screen will open, and you’ll see each piece of content that’s on your site at the moment (including drafts).
- All you have to do is click on the article you want to move, hold the button down, and drag it to its new place.
- And when you’re done rearranging, simply click the Update button on the bottom left side of your screen. That’s all there is to it.
Alternative Solutions
To finish it off, we’ll list a few other plugins that experts at the WP Full Care approve of using for this purpose.
- Simple Custom Post Order. A very popular plugin with over 200,000 active installs. It works the same as the one we featured, but it lacks the re-order option that we love so much.
- GNA Post Order. Although it hasn’t been updated in a while, it still works well. It differentiates from the one we did a tutorial on in not having the ability to rearrange posts from the Post section.
- Chronological Posts. Do you know how WordPress orders posts from the newest to the oldest? Well, this plugin does exactly the opposite. If you need it, there it is.
The Bottom Line
There are all kinds of reasons why people would like to change the order of posts on their site, and we hope that we got at least some of them closer to you through tips to organize WordPress pages with drag & drop. Show trending posts first, or drive the traffic towards the less-visited ones — the choice is yours.