Ordering Issues and Projects

The component provides the ability to choose your own preferred order for any of the record types in the Administrator part of the site. This is particularly useful with the projects display where we may well have sub projects. The following is relevant only for versions of Issue Tracker installed upon Joomla 2.5 and for installations on Joomla 3.x prior to release 1.6.5. Release 1.6.5 changed the manner of changing the order by using a drag and drop mechanism available in Joomla 3.3.

For those familiar with earlier versions of Joomla there are no immediately visible means of changing the order of the list items.

Figure 8.1. Ordering screen step 1

Ordering screen step 1

 To solve this problem, you need to actually click on the "Ordering" label.

Figure 8.2. Ordering screen step 2

Ordering screen step 2

After clicking you'll now see the up and down arrows, the Save button and the boxes where you can type numbers.

Figure 8.3. Ordering screen step 3

Ordering screen step 3

You can rearrange the items in one of two ways. First, you can click on the up and down arrows as in the image below:

Figure 8.4. Ordering screen step 4

Ordering screen step 4

Second, you can enter the new number you would like to assign and click the Save icon at the top of the column.

Figure 8.5. Ordering screen step 5

Ordering screen step 5

Clicking the icon will save the current state of the order column.

To move the item in spot 6 to spot 1, replace 6 with 1 and click .

Don't worry if there's already an item assigned to spot 1.

If the item does not go to the proper spot (it might be one place out) use the up/down arrows to nudge it into position. When you have found the menu-link you wish to reorder, you can click on the blue Up or Down arrows under the ‘Order’ column to move its position within its current menu level. You can also manually adjust the positions of all menu-links in this level by changing the number to the order you want to apply, then click on the floppy disk icon at the top of the order column.

[Note]Note

There is one aspect of ordering items such as articles, projects, issues etc, which is not usually covered or mentioned in any documentation we have seen. This is that a Joomla list display, usually only shows items that are 'published' or 'unpublished'. This means that items that are marked as 'archived' or 'trashed' are not shown. If one then uses the 'ordering' column upon the list display to re-arrange the order of the various items they may appear to have no effect. So for example using the 'up arrow' upon an item may not 'move' the item within the display. The reason is that the 'hidden' items (which are marked as archived or trashed) are located above the item chosen to move. The item is in fact moved within the table in the database, which is often indicated by a message saving the ordering has been saved. This can be shown if the 'hidden' items are altered and marked as 'published' or 'unpublished'.

It can sometime be confusing when this situation is encountered and indeed we ourselves tend to mark Issue Tracker sub projects as 'archived' when they are no longer supported so were initially a little mystified until we have investigated further.