Organizing dashboard sidebars for admin

You can’t really reorganize these. The theme registers the sidebars in whatever order they do, and if they don’t use a sidebar name in the function call, then the ID is assigned in the order of registration. This name(sidebar ID) is used when the theme is outputting the sidebar, so it needs to match.

That’s a bummer. It would be something nice to have so that clients wouldn’t be so confused about the sidebars and their widgets.

Ask the theme author to consider rearranging them.

I know that I can remove all my widget areas, (sidebars, attention boxes, feature boxes) and then add them back in order. But that’s a pain in the butt and you run the potential of breaking your site. It doesn’t matter which theme you use, when you choose to put a widget in an element of your website, it will place that box for you to throw widgets into at the end of the list. In my case, I have a lot of widget boxes. It would be awesome if we could arrange those for our customers after the design is complete.

There are a few plugins that let you edit the admin menus such as
Admin menu editor https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/admin-menu-editor/
Admin cleanup https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/admin-cleanup/
Hierarchy https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/hierarchy/ (not updated since 4.9.x)
Post Types order https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/post-types-order/

I am sure there are others out there too but these are the only ones I’ve ever used.

I think that one of the first two I suggested here will be the most relevant to what you are trying to do. However, I am not sure.

I know that I can remove all my widget areas, (sidebars, attention boxes, feature boxes) and then add them back in order.

Do you mean you as the theme author? Or you as the user?
Or are you referring to the actual widgets and not the widget areas?
The widgets themselves can be dragged around to change the order or to move to a different area. The areas themselves are determined by the order of registration by the theme. I’m referring here to the admin Appearance > Widget page. In the Customizer it’s a little different as you can’t drag from one area to another and you can’t see the Inactive Widgets.
They are currently working on changing the admin widget page to use blocks. Hopefully they won’t reduce the functionality by doing that.

I am the web designer for this site. I’m talking about the boxes that you drag and drop the widgets into… When you design a section that is to take a widget, a box is generated inside your dashboard, under widgets. i.e., the main sidebar, 2nd sidebar, feature box, attention box, footers, etc. Anytime you design a section of your framework to hold a widget, a new box pops up in the dashboard > appearances > widgets area. These boxes are generated as you design them. So, if you (or your client) decides to not have a widget, say, in the footer, and you remove it, it removes the box from the dashboard. However, if you change your mind again and put the widget back, the box shows up out of order and is placed at the end of all your widget boxes.

@binarywc Thanks for the links of plugins, but none of them seem to organize the appearances > widgets area, as far as I can see.

I’m talking about the boxes that you drag and drop the widgets into

Right, these are widget areas and they are in the order that the theme or plugin registers them.

So, if you (or your client) decides to not have a widget, say, in the footer, and you remove it, it removes the box from the dashboard. However, if you change your mind again and put the widget back, the box shows up out of order and is placed at the end of all your widget boxes.

This sounds like you are using some sort of page builder plugin that dynamically registers widget areas. If so, you should ask in the plugin’s support forum about standardizing the order in which the widget areas are registered.