Listings in Menus > Pages dialog not ordered

  • I work on a site that has a 600+ static pages as well as sections that are dynamically generated.

    When I create a new menu using the WordPress built in tool to create a new menu I find that the Pages dialog seems to list things out of order.

    The first tab “Most Recent” displays the most recent items but they are not in alphabetical order and as far as I can tell from looking at page timestamps they are not ordered by last updated either.
    Most Recent Tab

    —
    The second tab is “View All”. I can see that these are not in alphabetical or hierarchical-alphabetical order exactly either. It is like the list does not re-index or something?
    Search Tab

    —
    The third tab “Search” is the worst for me. I can type in a word that is completely unique to the one page out of the 600. In fact I created a page called XXYYXX. The title of the page was XXYYXX. The body of the page had XXYYXX in it multiple times. This new page never showed up in my search box when looking for XXYYXX. I waited 24 hours thinking hmm does it re-index at 1:00 am or something. It still didn’t show up.

    Another instance is when I search for a page that has the word Court in it. I have ~20 pages with COURT in the title but I rarely get those as results. Instead I tend to get pages that do not seem to have anything to do with the word court.
    View All Tab

    I would appreciate any guidance, reading suggestions or thoughts. Thank you!

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Battlecat.
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  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Pages in the menu meta box are listed either by title or by date, depending on the tab. All pages listed are limited to the first x number found, x being different for each tab. Recent, 15; All, 50; Search, I’m not sure. Search is done via Ajax, which I’m less familiar with. Realize searches also search content as well as titles, and unexpected matches can occur. For example searching “court” will match “halfcourt” and “courtisan” as well as “court”.

    Plugins and themes can alter how menu meta box queries are run, either on purpose or by accident, so the above may not hold true for your site. This also means you can alter the queries yourself so it better meets your needs. But realize asking for large numbers of query results can cause timeout errors, especially with large DBs. Good queries can be a balancing act.

    It seems to me your best way of finding pages would be by search, assuming the search works as expected. Part of searches working well is composing good search terms that locate your target page without finding too many extraneous pages. The other part is ensuring your theme or plugins are not making this more difficult. Try deactivating all plugins and switching to twentyseventeen theme. Do your searches work better this way? You can restore your theme and plugins once you’re done testing. If the search works better, restore your modules one at a time, testing after each. When the searches fail to work well again, the last module activated is the cause.

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