Joomla Help Screens

Where Ordering Matters¶

The ordering of items in a list starts to matter when viewed from the Site frontend. For example, suppose you have a number of featured articles that you present in a Featured Article layout. The menu data entry form for that layout offers a number of Article Order alternatives, one of which is Featured Articles Order. The default order is the order in which the articles are added. But what if you want one particular article to be first in the list. If you have a Committee with articles on each member you may want the Chairman to be in first position in the front page layout.

The same principle applies to Category Blog layouts. You may have several Committees, each in a different Category. In that case you filter the articles list by Category and make the article on the Chairman first in the list.

The Ordering Column¶

In a component list view the Ordering column is typically second from the left (in left to right languages) immediately next to the Checkbox column. If the list is not sorted by the ordering column it will be empty. In that case you need to select the ordering column icon, a double chevron (). Each time the icon is selected the order toggles from ascending to descending. You need ascending order () to drag an item upwards towards the top of the list. This is indicated in the sort order field of the Search bar.

Drag and Drop¶

With the ordering column set for use, each item will contain a vertical ellipsis icon (). This icon can be dragged upwards or downwards to change the list order. The new list order is set in the database with a JavaScript call. There is no page reload.

It is tricky! You need to practice. And this is one of the occasions when you may wish to set the list limit to All.