How to Reorder Your Categories in WordPress

Categories, along with tags, form the default WordPress taxonomies that serve to improve the user experience by grouping posts on a website or blog. By default, WordPress categories are listed in a different, alphabetical order. If for some reason you want to reorder the categories on your WordPress site to suit your particular preferences, this article is for you.

For example, if you’re running a blog, you might want to change the category order so that your Latest News category appears at the top of the category list. Or if you have a WooCommerce powered store, you may want to list a specific product category, such as your top selling products, at the top of your products page. In any case, you can help your visitors find your most relevant categories faster by changing the order of your categories. It helps them navigate your site better and improve their overall user-friendliness.

Regardless of the order in which you want to present your categories, It’s pretty easy to rearrange them the way you want if you use the help of a plugin.. And this time we’re going to show you how to do it, so keep reading.

Reorder Categories in WordPress Using a Plugin

The first step you need to take is to install and activate a plugin called Category Sorting and Taxonomy Terms Ordering. The plugin uses a drag and drop JavaScript interface to help you sort through all your categories and custom taxonomies with just a few mouse clicks.

After you finish installing and activating the plugin, access Posts >> Taxonomy Ranking.

After accessing this page, you will see that the plugin displays all your categories in default, alphabetical order.

You can continue to reorder these categories as you wish until you receive the order you are satisfied with. All you have to do is click on the category you want and drag it up or down with your mouse.

If you have any subcategories, they will be migrated along with their parent categories such as:

you should hit update When you’re done rearranging your categories, press the button.

From here, you can display your categories in one of the available widget areas (such as your sidebar or footer) if you wish. To do this, Appearance >> Widgets Page to add your categories to your preferred widget area using the default Categories widget.

Once you’re done adding your widget, go ahead and see how it looks on your page/post. Of course the widget will display your categories exactly as you rearrange them. Same goes for any pre-existing category widget on your site – update When you click the button, the categories within the widget will be rearranged automatically.

Reordering Your WooCommerce Product Categories

If you want, you can use the same plugin to rearrange any WooCommerce product categories you may have.

go Products >> Taxonomy Ranking (a new option that will appear after installing the plugin).

There you will find all the WooCommerce product categories on your site, listed in their original, alphabetical order. You will be able to easily rearrange your product categories using the plugin’s drag and drop functionality – just like you would with your post categories.

Once again, make sure you hit it. update Press the button when you’re done for all changes to take effect.

If you want to list your product categories in any of the available widget areas on your site, Appearance >> Widgets and simply find and add product categories Widget to the desired widget area.

Finally, you can visit your website to see live what your new product category order will look like.

The order of categories in any product category widget you added prior to the plugin installation will once again be automatically updated (according to the newly edited order).

Solution

As you can see from all the steps we have presented above, reordering the categories on your WordPress site is very easy if you use the help of a suitable plugin. We recommend installing the Category Sort and Taxonomy Term Order plugin as it allows you to easily rearrange both your standard and product categories with a simple drag and drop system. Start using the plugin today and follow our instructions to adjust the order of your categories to best suit your needs and also to better serve your visitors.