Global Meta Box Order vs Module Positions

Intuitively harmonize meta box positions and screen column layout for all backend users of your WordPress installation. Quick Overview Install and activate the plugin Switch to a post, a page, a custom post type, or the dashboard Change the order and position of a meta box (or all of them) Change the column layout Switch to a different user (maybe with the help of the User Switching plugin) See your changes applied Installation Download and unpack, then move the folder ‘global-meta-box-order’ into your ‘plugins’ folder. Head over to your WordPress installation and activate the plugin in the admin area. Rollback The plugin doesn’t write anything to the database, it just reads. So it never touches any user settings, but instead filters them on a per request basis. Though all applied changes appear to be permanent from a user’s perspective, they are not. Just deactivate the plugin and see all changes disappear. Activate it again, and they will all be reapplied. How It Works The plugin operates on a blueprint user whose screen settings for meta boxes (visibility, position and ordering), and column layout are cloned for all other backend users on the fly. By default, this blueprint user is the first admin user found, so you’ll need to be logged in as that user to globally change screen settings. For how to change the default blueprint user as well as other settings, please refer to the Configuration section below. Where It Works By default, the plugin kicks in when a user: edits a post edits a page edits a custom post type hits the dashboard What It Changes It will always change the meta boxes visibility, ordering, and column positions the column layout When told so, it will also remove the screen options box immobilize all boxes, so they can’t be moved around by your users anymore Usage Log in as your blueprint user. By default, the is the first admin user found in your system. Select an editing screen (post, page, custom post type) or the dashboard, move the meta boxes around, change their screen settings and the screen’s column layout. Switch to some user to review your settings, switch back to adjust them. When done, you might want to lock your views down by removing the screen options box and by locking the boxes’ sort order. Your blueprint user, of course, wil not be affected by this. Configuration The backend integration is kept to a minimum. No navigation entry, no options page, no entry in the database. Instead, the place to go to configure the plugin is your theme’s functions.php. By the way: You don’t need to configure the plugin. As long as it finds an admin user, it will work just fine. Preparation Fire up an editor, load your functions.php, and copy and paste the following code into it. The idea is to have some sort of container to do the configuration in, but do it any way you like. For brevity, we’ll assume the plugin is loaded and active, so we won’t check for that (see this nice write-up on QueryLoop on some ways to do it, though). if (is_admin()) { // The path to the configuation is rather long, so let's // make us a shorthand. class_alias('\GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config', 'MetaBoxConfig'); // Add MetaBoxConfig below this line ... } Now we are ready to add some of the configuration settings below to adjust the plugin’s default behaviour. You might also want to have a look at the example configuration near the end of this document. Please keep in mind that you need to be logged in as any user but your blueprint user to see a setting applied. Again, the User Switching plugin might come in handy. Screens To Operate On By default, the plugin operates on the post, page, and custom post type editing screens, and the dashboard. You can change this as follows: // Operate on post and page screens only, leave the dashboard alone. // This will still include custom post types. MetaBoxConfig::$filter = array('post', 'page'); // Exclude custom post types MetaBoxConfig::$include_cpts = false; // Allow custom post types... MetaBoxConfig::$include_cpts = true; // ...but not all of them MetaBoxConfig::$exclude = array('acme_product'); MetaBoxConfig in the example above is assumed to be an alias to \GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config as shown in the preparation section above. Changing the Blueprint User Register a function that returns a user id, like so: MetaBoxConfig::$getBlueprintUserId = function () { return 1; }; Or, more involved: MetaBoxConfig::$getBlueprintUserId = function () { $user = get_user_by('slug', 'jane'); return $user ? $user->ID : false; }; MetaBoxConfig in the example above is assumed to be an alias to \GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config as shown in the preparation section above. Locking Views By default, all users will be able to interact with the screen options box, and to move around the meta boxes themselves. There is a rationale behind it, but to cut things short, this is how you might want to change it: // No screen options MetaBoxConfig::$remove_screen_options = true; // Meta boxes can't be moved anymore MetaBoxConfig::$lock_meta_box_order = true; MetaBoxConfig in the example above is assumed to be an alias to \GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config as shown in the preparation section above. Example Configuration if (is_admin()) { // Make sure plugin is active if (class_exists('\GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config')) { // Make a long name short. class_alias('\GlobalMetaBoxOrder\Config', 'MetaBoxConfig'); // Settings MetaBoxConfig::$filter = array('post', 'page', 'dashboard'); // default MetaBoxConfig::$include_cpts = true; // default MetaBoxConfig::$getBlueprintUserId = function () { return 1; }; MetaBoxConfig::$exclude = array('acme_product'); MetaBoxConfig::$remove_screen_options = true; MetaBoxConfig::$lock_meta_box_order = true; } } On Moving the WYSIWYG Editor The position of WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor is fixed, and can’t be changed out of the box (mostly because it lacks a box around it). There are reasons for this, but if you want to have a positionable editor anyway, you might want to have a look at our very own Movable Editor plugin. If, on the other hand, if you want to place one specific box above the editor, you might want to check out this answer on stackexchange.

What does it do? If you have a site with multiple subpages, you might have some positions in your template where you probably want to manage individual content (like a sidebar, a footer, a banner or whatever). The WordPress widgets can display content in specific widget-positions, but you can’t tell WordPress to only display your content on a certain page – That’s where my plugin comes in. You can create different module positions, assign content and choose on which pages it will be shown. If you use WordPress as a CMS, this will be very helpful. Create Module Positions First, you can create different module positions. Rename these as you want. To put a module position in your template you can easily copy & paste the shortcode right next to the positions’s name. if you have already created content, you can drag and drop these around to change their order. Create Content Now, you can create content for your module positions. You can choose on which pages, categories or posts your content will be displayed. For this information your custom menus will be loaded (which are defined in your template). If there are categories with posts in your custom menu, click the “+”-button to show them. You also can choose on which posts your content will be displayed here. Define your HTML-markup In the little metabox on the right side, you can simply define your HTML-markup. Try writing {{post_content}} for your content and {{post_title}} for your title – A list of all values can be found here. To reset your markup just click on “Reset”, that will load the standard markup (which can be changed on the settings page). Settings Change your standard HTML-markup. If you click on “Reset” in your moduleposition-posts, this will be loaded. Change the order of posts in the drop-down menus of your categories. That may be useful if you have a lot of posts in a category and you want to find a special post. Missing something? Send me an e-mail! I’m open to new ideas! Write me: [email protected]