How to alter the order of custom form fields

Question

I've added a "Custom Title" field to the Category editor in order to capture a keyword friendly title that can be used separately from the category name. It works great, but it appears as the last input element of the category screen. Ideally, I would like it to sit under the "Name" field (or at the very top). Is this possible?

Here's the code I'm using to add my custom input field to the category edit screen...

if($pagenow == "edit-tags.php" && $_REQUEST['action'] == "edit") 
add_filter('edit_category_form', 'my_category_fields');

function my_category_fields($tag) {
$tag_extra_fields = get_option(MY_CATEGORY_FIELDS);?>
<table class="form-table">
    <tr class="form-field">
        <th scope="row" valign="top"><label for="categoryTitle">Full Category Title</label></th>
        <td><input name="categoryTitle" id="categoryTitle" type="text" size="40" aria-required="false" value="<?php echo $tag_extra_fields[$tag->term_id]['cat_title']; ?>" />
        <p class="description">The title is optional but will be used in place of the name on the category landing page.</p></td>
    </tr>   
</table>
<?php
}

Answer 1

WordPress doesn't provide the hooks you want but it you are willing to use PHP's output buffering and preg_replace() you can get it to work without hacking core. Here's an answer that talks about the general technique required:

• Removing Unnecessary Text from Admin Menu without CSS

The hooks you'll want to use are 'category_pre_add_form' for ob_start() and 'category_add_form' for ob_get_clean().

Answer 2

There is no php-based solution without hacking core. Crack open the file wp-admin/edt-tag-form.php and you'll see it. The hook you're using is fired right before the submit button, and the rest of the form is hard-coded.

But can probably do this with jQuery. Read my answer to this similar question for an example. The example is for the post edit screen, but the concept should be the same--use jQuery's insertBefore() method to move an element (by ID) before another element (by ID).