Reorder Grid filter menu

Grid orders your filter menu by category ID, which means that your categories will display in the order in which they were created. We chose to build the plugin this way so that it would be possible for you to reorder your filter menu (versus forcing alphabetical order, or another order). 

To re-order your filters/categories, you will need to recreate your categories in the preferred order and map the old categories to the new ones. This article will show you how to do it.

BEFORE BEGINNING

We recommend following the steps in this article only for categories in which you are sure you may not add sub-categories in the future, or you don't mind if future sub-categories are amended to the end of your filter menu.

For example:

• Suppose you are a food blogger who has a parent category of Recipes, and sub-categories of Lunch and Dinner. If you re-order your categories using the instructions below, but add Brunch, Breakfast, and Dessert on later, your filter menu would read: Lunch, Dinner, Brunch, Breakfast, Dessert. You can always re-order your categories again, but this is something to keep in mind!

Install the Term Management Tools plugin

1. The plugin can be directly downloaded by clicking here. 

If you’re searching manually under Plugins > Add New, you will need to scroll down a bit to find the correct plugin. 

• NOTE: You may notice the plugin has not been updated in some time, but as of 2020, we have found it still works with recently updated versions of WordPress. It hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it still works. 
• You may deactivate and delete this plugin once the process is complete (or use it to reorganize your other categories and tags!).

Create new sub-categories.

2. Head over to Posts > Categories and recreate all of your sub-categories in the order you want them to appear. Don’t forget to select the proper Parent category if necessary. 

3. Type NEW after each to help you distinguish it from the old. We’ll update this later so it doesn’t display on your site or change the URL to the category. 

4. Reload the page after you have added all of the new categories, so that you are able to work with them in the next step.

Merge each old category with the new in order.

5. Next, you’ll need to merge each old category with its new one. Check both the old and new category, then select Merge from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu, and match the new category name. This ensures that the merged category retains the new category ID so that your categories will appear in the order you want. Repeat for all categories.

Update your category names back to the original name.

6. Now you can update all of your categories to remove the word “NEW.” Hover over each and click the Quick Edit link. Delete NEW from the Name, and don’t forget to delete -new from the slug as well to keep your URL structure the same as it was (i.e., so that your category URL won't update to blogname.com/hair-new).

That's it! Your categories have been re-established in the correct order, and should appear as you prefer in the Grid filter menu.