Drag-and-Drop Ordering for Taxonomies adds a drag handle to the term tables in your WordPress admin so you can reorder categories, tags, or any custom-taxonomy terms visually. The order is saved as menu_order on each term and applied automatically to get_terms() queries.
What this feature does
WordPress doesn’t give you a way to control the order of taxonomy terms beyond alphabetical or by post count. AdminEase adds a small drag handle to each row of the term-list tables (the screen at Posts › Categories, Posts › Tags, and similar pages for custom taxonomies). Drag a row, and AdminEase saves the new sequence to each term’s menu_order via AJAX.
Term-list queries (get_terms() and friends) are then sorted by menu_order automatically, so your reordering shows up everywhere terms are displayed: in widget output, theme templates, archive pages, and shortcodes that don’t override the order.
The free version applies the drag-and-drop ordering to every registered taxonomy. Pro adds a Taxonomies picker so you can scope it to just the ones you want (e.g. only your custom topic taxonomy and not the built-in tags).
How to enable it
- Open AdminEase › Taxonomies. Click AdminEase in the WordPress admin menu, then switch to the Taxonomies tab.
- Toggle Order Taxonomies using Drag and Drop on. On Pro, the taxonomies picker appears as a child field. Pick the taxonomies you want to enable ordering for.
- Save settings and reorder. Open the term-list table for any covered taxonomy and drag rows by the handle. The new position saves automatically.
Settings reference
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Order Taxonomies using Drag and Drop | Master switch. While on, drag handles appear on covered taxonomy term tables and the front-end ordering is applied via the get_terms filter. |
Off |
| Taxonomies Pro | Multi-select of taxonomies to enable ordering for. Empty means “all taxonomies,” matching free behaviour. | All |
What happens behind the scenes
Each drag fires the adminease_update_term_order AJAX action, which writes the new menu_order value to the term’s row in the database. Sorting on the front-end is applied through the get_terms filter, which re-orders results by menu_order ascending unless the calling code has already specified its own order.
The drag handle column is added via the manage_edit-{taxonomy}_columns filter for each covered taxonomy.
Troubleshooting
I dragged a term but the front-end still shows the old order
Confirm that nothing in your theme or shortcode is overriding the order. Many widgets explicitly request orderby=name, which AdminEase respects. You’ll need to update the calling code to use the default ordering for AdminEase’s drag-and-drop result to take effect.
The drag column is missing
Confirm the master switch is on. On Pro, confirm the taxonomy is in the Taxonomies picker (or that the picker is empty). If the column is still missing, another plugin may be filtering the columns array; disable plugins one at a time to find the conflict.
Some terms refuse to reorder
Most common cause: the term has a parent. Drag-and-drop ordering operates within each parent group; you can’t reorder a child term to a position above its parent. Move the parent term to reorder the whole group.