How to create a custom sort for WordPress categories

Question

I have this problem that I am encountering. I am trying to sort my categories to display in the order that I want them to. I have read the WordPress documentation on all of the sort options. However, there is no inclination of how to choose the categories and make them flow the way I want.

This is what the Codex presents:

orderby (string) Sort categories alphabetically or by unique category ID. The default is sort by Category ID. Valid values:
- id
- name - default
- slug
- count
- term_group

order (string) Sort order for categories (either ascending or descending). The default is ascending. Valid values:
- asc - default
- desc

However, like I said, this does not help me because I need them to display in the order I choose.

Here is the code I am implementing at the moment. Which is in the order that I want them to display.

<?php
$args = array(
'orderby' => 'ID',
'order' => 'ASC',
'include' => '5,6,7,8,29,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16'
);
$categories = get_categories($args);
foreach($categories as $category) {
echo '<li><a href="' . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . '" title="' . sprintf(     __( "View all posts in %s" ), $category->name ) . '" ' . '>' . $category->name . '</a>' . ' ' . '(' . $category->count . ')' . '</li> ';
}
?>

Answer 1

If you're already using Advanced Custom Fields (which you should be!) you can create an order field for your categories from which you can set them manually in numerical order.

Then all you have to do is:

$categories = get_categories( $args );  

usort($categories, function($a, $b) {
   return get_field("category_order", "category_".$a->term_id) - get_field("category_order", "category_".$b->term_id);
});

foreach ($categories as $category){
...

Where category_order is the field name you created with ACF.

Note: Using the PHP 5.3 way of usort.

Answer 2

Okay, I found this plugin that does exactly what I want. I didn't want to use a plugin but this one seemed pretty light weight and it did the job perfectly. http://wordpress.org/plugins/taxonomy-terms-order/

Answer 3

The original code will work if you change the arguments to: 'orderby' => 'include'

$args = array(
    'orderby' => 'include',
    'order' => 'ASC',
    'include' => '5,6,7,8,29,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16'
);
$categories = get_categories($args);
foreach($categories as $category) {
    echo '<li><a href="' . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . '" title="' . sprintf(     __( "View all posts in %s" ), $category->name ) . '" ' . '>' . $category->name . '</a>' . ' ' . '(' . $category->count . ')' . '</li> ';
}