Order by Title not working as expected

Hello!

could you provide a link to a page where I can see the example of that weird ordering by title?

regarding you point 2), unfortunately there isn’t a shortcode at the moment, even though it is on my to-do list. But maybe this other plugin could help you and use shortcodes to output my widget?
https://en-gb.www.ads-software.com/plugins/amr-shortcode-any-widget/

though, I am not sure why do you think you will need a different widget for each page.. Maybe with a simple php filter we can dynamically change a parameter based on the page value? By instance I could easily tell the widget to grab the tags from the current page and use those to filter the widget output.
could you explain what are you aiming to achieve?

Wow, thank you for the quick reply.

My site isn’t live yet but I’ve removed the blacklist for you to see.
https://hiddengemsutah.com/lifestyle/condos/

I’m building a real estate website with lots of very specific search pages. The primary page structure like below.
city/condos for sale
city/luxury for sale
county/condos for sale
county/luxury for sale

What I want now are a set of pages that look at that structure form the other direction.

Condos page will show all of the featured and listpages.
[list pages tag=condo-city]
[list pages tag=condo-county]

I’m very close to what I’m trying to accomplish.

List Pages widgets are in the accordian on the right.
Utah by county is where the ordering is strange.

>>By instance I could easily tell the widget to grab the tags from the current page and use those to filter the widget output.

Ok, I could see this working. Not from the tag of the current page, because it’s not tagged as one of the city or county result pages. But pull the tag from meta value on the page would possibly do it.

ok, so let me know if I got it right.

you have pages like this https://hiddengemsutah.com/lifestyle/condos
where you want to show always the same amount of widgets but pulling different lists in each of those pages.

the items in the sidebar (pulled by my widget) are custom pages that you’ve built to list the properties.

those pages have tags, and in my widget you say: list all the pages within this or that tag

will these widgets always be like “Condos by city” and “Condos by county” if the page is “condos”, or “luxury by city” and “luxury by county” if the page is “luxury” etc?

also, can I ask you why are you using tags and not categories? or a custom taxonomy?
I am asking because tags are not hierarchical, and otherwise with a hierarchical taxonomy we could add a meta field in those pages, where you can simply add by instance “condos”, and then in the taxonomy you would group your terms under “condos” parent term. And in the filter-hook we would tell to display all the pages from the parent term “condos” and include all the child terms..

otherwise you would need a meta field where you have to list each of the terms that you want to include in the list for that page (then the filter-hook will pick that list and tell the widget to use them as tags in the query)

p.s. I will pick this up tomorrow and have a look at the title ordering on my test website to see if there is a bug or something

actually, I have the feeling that all of that could have been handled by using a hierarchical taxonomy and its normal archive pages..

so you’d have some terms like
utah
—weber-county
——-condos-and-townhomes-for-sale-in-weber-county
——-luxury-homes-for-sale-in-weber-county
—davis-county
——-condos-and-townhomes-for-sale-in-davis-county
——-luxury-homes-for-sale-in-davis-county

etc..

then wordpress url for the archive of all the posts within the term “condos and townhomes for sale in davis county”, will be:
/utah/davis-county/condos-and-townhouses-for-sale-in-davis-county/
exactly the same as your manually built page..

that might have required to do some tweaks at the archives template file, and maybe the creation of a custom taxonomy to keep things a bit tidier. I mean that you would need some basic coding skills, but it would have probably saved a lot of work to manually building all those pages/archives..

in general I have the feeling that you are trying to make a real estate website using only wp default pages and posts, and categories and tags.
I am sorry but if that’s the case I would suggest to change approach because the result won’t be efficient and will be an headache to build and to maintain and fill with content… There are hundreds of premium themes that you can use to quickly make such websites, they might cost 60-80$ but the investment is definitely worth it.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by piccart.
• This reply was modified 7 years ago by piccart.

Once again, thank you for this stellar support. Let’s start with the obvious. The primary reason I haven’t done anything is inexperience. I’m figuring it out as I go along and not a WP expert.

Your question about the types of pages I’m trying to create is correct and at this point I could easily switch from tags to categories if you recommend that.

To give you an idea of scope I have about 400 total cities, 40 counties and about 40 property type pages (condos, luxury, golf, handicapped…). So the property type pages just contain pages that are found under cities/countys). Not every city or county will have a condo or luxury page though.

On each of these page would be the featured/ featured city/ featured county and then on the sidebar would be list page with text links coming from your plugin. I guess there probably a way to do the left side of the page with your plugin as well.

I’m happy to donate to your plugin for your help.

Oh, one other thing. I noticed there was no option to order by “page order”, that would have been a different ordering I could have considered. Just curious why it is omitted.

I’ve started category hierarchy and assigned categories to pages and change widget params to match county. Getting the correct/same result and also still have ordering by title issue. I also double checked the slugs on those pages to make sure they matched the titles.

property types
-condos
–condos-city
–condos-county
-single family
–single family-city
–single family-county

Hello!

I think it would make more sense to structure them starting from the location, so the category archives will end up having the same url structure that you were trying to achieve with pages.

State1
— County1
—— City1
——— Type1-City1
——— Type2-City1
——— Type3-City1
— County2
—— City2
——— Type1-City2
——— Type2-City2
——— Type3-City2

so if you create the categories as above, and assign some properties to the type1-city1, then if you go to:
/state1/county1/city1/Type1-City1
you will see that wordpress will generate automatically an archive page with the list of properties in that category. (if you already have a normal page with same url, you will have to delete it to avoid conflicts)

Wp uses the file archive.php to generate that page (or category.php if you have it, or index.php if nothing else is available). And you can customise that in order to create a specific layout for your archives and how the listings are displayed (i.e. adding the map and using boxes with icons for properties).

then at that point you won’t even need my widget to list the archive pages (cause they are dynamic archives and not post_types), and you will instead need a small php script to read all the categories, and print out a list of only the categories which contains the “type” within their name (you will pass the “type” in the metafield of the current page).

but this won’t be an optimal solution, especially if you are doing things as I am supposing..
are you using wp pages for everything, including the property pages? (Pages aren’t really flexible, and they are a post_type meant for static content informative pages.. posts are more fit for things like properties or events or other listings).
are you building up the layout of those pages/properties manually for each page, using a visual builder or shortcodes?
how do you print out the list of properties in the pages (below the map, the ones that uses those boxes with icons and details)? Is that a shortcode again, where you manually have to tell which category you want to show?

If that’s the approach you are using, trust me that you will regret it in the future. It will be messy and a nightmare to update/maintain. I know because we all started learning by trial and error. ??

I honestly suggest to buy another theme specialised for the kind of website you want to make, and in a fraction of the time you will have a more beautiful website with same frontend functionality, but more organised and easy to update/maintain in the backend.

have a look here, there is a category dedicated to that type of themes: https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/real-estate

p.s. I have checked in my test website and the list is correctly ordering by title.. could you try adding a couple more pages and see how it orders it in your site? Also, could you take a screenshot of the settings of the widget and show it to me? Thanks!

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by piccart.

Hi, thank you again for your support. I’ve sent you a request through your website to continue dialog on this project. Let me know if you don’t see it. Thanks again!

Hello!

I know we’ve already found a bespoke solution for your needs, but I wanted to let you know that the latest version of the plugin now includes a specific option to Order By “page order” if you ever need it for another widget/website.

cheers!