---
title: "What this plugin orders, and what it leaves to other plugins"
date: 2026-10-22
author: "Matt Cromwell"
featured_image: "https://rootsandfruit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/rf-featured-reorder-all-the-things-2400x1260-1.png"
---

# What this plugin orders, and what it leaves to other plugins

I kept this plugin on one job: put published items of a post type into an order, and remember the parent when the type is hierarchical. The requests that sit next to that job are real, and they are a different product. Stuffing them in here is how a small plugin gets hard to trust.

## In scope

- Published posts and pages, on from the start
- Other post types you enable, including types that have no admin menu
- Nesting for hierarchical types. A drag can change the parent
- A Query Loop switch, and an optional Advanced switch, so a front-end query can read that order

## Out of scope

- **Posts inside a category, tag, or other term.** One post has one menu order. It cannot be third in News and first in Notes. That is [Companion plugins](https://rootsandfruit.com/docs/reorder-posts/companion-plugins/), the Reorder by Term plugin
- **The order of the categories themselves.** Also a companion, Reorder Terms
- **Dragging on the front of the site.** Visitors do not get a reorder UI. Editors work in wp-admin
- **Drafts, pending, private, and scheduled posts.** The screen queries published items only
- **The All Posts screen.** That list stays on date. Reorder is its own screen
- **Feeds.** Auto-sort leaves them alone
- **A query for several post types at once.** Advanced skips it, because it will not guess which type’s setting should win

If the thing you want is “this category, in this order,” stop here and use the term companion. The settings screen will not grow a control for it.