Posts in Category List – Customize Order – Sobek's Plugin

I’m using Sobek’s Posts in Category plugin to generate lists of posts organized by category to use in navigation.

I would like to control the order that the posts appear in on the list (probably by creating a custom field). Similar to the “Order” option in Pages (unfortunately, because of the functionality of the rest of the website, these have to be Posts and cannot be Pages).

There are three options in Sobek for sorting the order that the posts are listed in, 1) alphabetically by Title, 2) by Date, or 3) number of comments. For someone with a good knowledge of php, it looks totally possible to add a 4th sort option to Sobek’s code, but my php isn’t that strong and unfortunately, Sobek’s forum seems not have been moderated for a year or so.

Here’s a link to the plugin page.

Can anyone help me out?

(There are only about 100 lines of code in the whole plugin, so I pasted it here.)

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Sobek
s Posts in Category
Plugin URI: https://wordpress.sobek.pl/sobeks-post-in-category-plugin/
Version: 1.9
Description: Displays a list of the posts in one or more categories in virtually any way you want. Please read <a href="https://wordpress.sobek.pl/sobeks-post-in-category-plugin/">the plugin page</a> for installation and usage.
Author: Lukasz Sobek
Author URI: https://sobek.pl/
*/ 

function sobeks_posts_in_category() {

	// Definitions
	global $wpdb;
	$wp_tp = $wpdb->prefix;
	$num_of_args = func_num_args();
	$list_of_args = func_get_args();
	$disp_post_count = 0; $disp_comment_count = 0; $disp_date = 0; $disp_author = 0;
	$text_before = '
<li>'; $text_after = '</li>
'; $text_container_before = ''; $text_container_after = '';
	$limit_text = ''; $order_meta_key = '';
	$order_posts_by = "{$wp_tp}posts.post_title ASC";
	$cstm_err_msg = '<b style="color:#f00;">Error:</b> Please enter the ID of at least one category';
	// there are arguments
	if ($num_of_args != 0) {
		// there are "display" arguments
		if(!is_bool(array_search('postcount',$list_of_args))) { $disp_post_count = 1; }
		if(!is_bool(array_search('commentcount',$list_of_args))) { $disp_comment_count = 1; }
		if(!is_bool(array_search('date',$list_of_args))) { $disp_date = 1; }
		if(!is_bool(array_search('author',$list_of_args))) { $disp_author = 1; }
		//------------------------------
		$list_of_args = implode(",",$list_of_args);
		if(!is_bool(stripos($list_of_args,'sort:'))) {
			preg_match('/(sort:)(comments|date|meta:)([\w\-]*)/',$list_of_args, $matches);
			if($matches[2] == 'comments'){$order_posts_by = "{$wp_tp}posts.comment_count DESC";}
			if($matches[2] == 'date'){$order_posts_by = "{$wp_tp}posts.post_date DESC";}
			if($matches[2] == 'meta:'){
				$order_meta_key = "{$wp_tp}postmeta.meta_key = '" . $matches[3] . "' AND ";
				$order_posts_by = "{$wp_tp}postmeta.meta_value ASC"; }
			$list_of_args = str_replace($matches[0], '', $list_of_args);
		}
		if(!is_bool(stripos($list_of_args,'style:'))) {
			preg_match('/(style:)(order|unorder|comma)/',$list_of_args, $matches);
			if($matches[2] == 'order') {
				$text_container_before = '<ol class="sobeks_pic">';	$text_container_after = ''; }
			if($matches[2] == 'unorder') {
				$text_container_before = '<ul class="sobeks_pic">';	$text_container_after = ''; }
			if($matches[2] == 'comma') {
				$text_before = ''; $text_after = ' <font style="font-size: 120%"><b>?</b></font> '; }
			$list_of_args = str_replace($matches[0], '', $list_of_args);
		}
		if(!is_bool(stripos($list_of_args,'limit:'))) {
			preg_match('/(limit:)([0-9]*)/',$list_of_args, $matches);
			$limit_text = ' LIMIT 0, ' . $matches[2];
			$list_of_args = str_replace($matches[0], '', $list_of_args); }
		$list_of_args = explode(",",$list_of_args);
		$list_of_args = array_diff($list_of_args, array('', 'postcount', 'commentcount', 'date', 'author'));
		//------------------------------
		$num_of_args = func_num_args($list_of_args);
		// after having dealt with the "display arguments" there are some arguments left
		if ($num_of_args != 0) {
			// there is more than one category
			if($num_of_args != 1) {
				$the_cat_result = "AND ( ";
				for ($i = 0; $i < $num_of_args; $i++) {
					if($i != 0) { $the_cat_result .= " OR "; }
					$the_cat_result .= "{$wp_tp}term_taxonomy.term_id = '" . $list_of_args[$i] . "'"; }
				$the_cat_result .= " )";
			// there is one category
			} else { $the_cat_result = "AND {$wp_tp}term_taxonomy.term_id = '" . $list_of_args[0] ."'"; }
		//------------------------------
		// after having dealt with the "display arguments" there are no arguments left
		} else { echo $cstm_err_msg; exit; }
	// there are no arguments
	} else { echo $cstm_err_msg; exit; }
	// to execute after having done the checking
	$posts_in_term = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT {$wp_tp}posts.ID, {$wp_tp}posts.post_date, {$wp_tp}posts.post_title, {$wp_tp}posts.post_status, {$wp_tp}posts.comment_count, {$wp_tp}term_relationships.object_id, {$wp_tp}term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id, {$wp_tp}users.display_name FROM {$wp_tp}posts, {$wp_tp}term_relationships, {$wp_tp}term_taxonomy, {$wp_tp}users WHERE {$wp_tp}posts.ID = {$wp_tp}term_relationships.object_id AND " . $order_meta_key . "{$wp_tp}term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = {$wp_tp}term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id AND {$wp_tp}term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category' AND {$wp_tp}users.ID = {$wp_tp}posts.post_author AND {$wp_tp}posts.post_status = 'publish' " . $the_cat_result . " AND {$wp_tp}posts.post_date < NOW( ) ORDER BY " . $order_posts_by . $limit_text);
	$posts_in_term = array_values($posts_in_term);
	$num_of_posts = count($posts_in_term);
	$i = 1;
	if ($disp_post_count != 0) {
		if($num_of_posts != 1) { $post_count_statement = 'are ' . $num_of_posts . ' posts';
		} else { $post_count_statement = 'is one post'; }
		echo 'There ' . $post_count_statement . ' in this category'; }
	echo $text_container_before;
	foreach ($posts_in_term as $posts) {
		echo $text_before;
		if($disp_date != 0){ echo date('j-M-y',strtotime($posts->post_date)) . " - "; }
		echo '<a>ID) . '">' . $posts->post_title . '</a>';
		if($disp_author != 0){ echo ' by ' . $posts->display_name; }
		if($disp_comment_count != 0) {
			if($posts->comment_count != 1) { echo ', ' . $posts->comment_count . ' comments';
			} else { echo ', ' . $posts->comment_count . ' comment'; }
		}
	if($i == $num_of_posts && $text_after == ' <font style="font-size: 120%"><b>?</b></font> ') { $text_after = ''; }
	$i++;
	echo $text_after; }
	echo $text_container_after;
}
?>