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How to Reorder Posts Across Pages in WordPress with Post Types Order

29 threads Sep 10, 2025 Plugin → Post types order

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If you're using the Post Types Order plugin to manually arrange your WordPress posts, you may have encountered a common frustration: the inability to drag and drop a post from one page of the admin list to another. This is a frequent point of confusion, but it's not a bug. It's a limitation of how the standard WordPress admin list is structured.

Why This Happens

By default, WordPress paginates the list of posts in the dashboard (e.g., showing 20 items per page). The drag-and-drop functionality on the main posts screen is designed to work within the current page of loaded items. The plugin cannot interact with posts that are not loaded on the current screen, which is why dragging an item from page 1 to page 2 doesn't work as expected.

The Best Solution: Use the Re-Order Interface

The most effective way to move posts across your entire list is to use the dedicated Re-Order interface built into the plugin. This screen bypasses pagination and loads all of your posts into a single, sortable list.

To access the Re-Order interface:

  1. Navigate to your post type in the WordPress admin (e.g., Posts or your custom post type).
  2. Look for a sub-menu item labeled Re-Order. If you don't see it immediately, it may be under a parent menu.
  3. If it's still not visible, go to Settings > Post Types Order and ensure your user role has the necessary capabilities to see and use the interface.

Once in the Re-Order screen, you can drag any post to any position, regardless of where it was originally located. This is the recommended method for making large-scale order changes.

Alternative Workaround: Increase Posts Per Page

If your list is relatively small, a temporary workaround is to increase the number of posts displayed on a single page. This can allow you to see more items at once and drag between them.

To change the number of posts per page:

  1. While on the main list of posts (e.g., Posts > All Posts), look at the top right of the screen for the Screen Options tab.
  2. Click the tab and increase the number in the Number of items per page field.
  3. Click Apply to reload the list with more posts.

Important Note: For very large sites (e.g., thousands of posts), increasing this number to an extreme value can severely slow down your browser or cause it to crash. This method is best used sparingly and for smaller post counts. The Re-Order interface is a more reliable solution for large lists.

What About Advanced Features?

Several user questions in the community forums ask about more advanced functionality, such as:

  • Bulk selecting and moving multiple posts at once.
  • Applying custom order to AJAX-powered search results.
  • Creating different sort orders for different pages on the front end.
  • Adding pagination to the Re-Order interface for massive post lists.
  • Filtering posts by category or taxonomy before manually sorting them.

Based on the sample threads, the 'Post Types Order' team has indicated that these specific features are available in their advanced, premium version of the plugin. The free version, as discussed here, provides the core manual sorting functionality through the main admin list and the Re-Order interface.

Conclusion

You don't need to move posts one page at a time. For cross-page sorting, forget the default admin list and head straight to the Re-Order screen. It's the most powerful and reliable tool for managing the order of your posts, especially when working with long lists.

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