Order posts differently on different pages

Hi,

What I’m trying to do is have a custom post type ordered differently on different pages. I’ve searched around for quite a while and can’t seem to find anything to help.

I have a post type named staff which is a list of staff members. I then have several pages where those staff members are displayed using categories (a staff member can be in multiple categories and show up on multiple pages). I need to be able to order the staff list on a page by page basis.

For example let’s say I have 6 staff in the custom post type.

• – John
• – Adam
• – Steve
• – Matt
• – Andrew
• – Tom

In Category A there is John, Adam, Steve and Matt, in Category B there is John, Steve, Andrew and Adam.

On Page A I want the staff members from Category A to be displayed but in the following order John, Adam, Steve and Matt on Page B the staff from Category B are to be displayed but in the order of Steve, Andrew. Adam and John. Therefore I can’t use menu_order.

I thought the best way to accomplish this was to have a custom meta box on the Page edit screen where the posts can be ordered using jQuery.sortable.

I have written a plugin which displays a list of the custom post type staff Plugin code below

<?php

 /*
 Plugin Name: Staff Sort Meta Box
 */

 add_action('admin_print_scripts','plugin_init'); // plugin is any name
 function plugin_init() {
 /* Register our stylesheet. */
 wp_register_style( 'myPluginStylesheet', plugins_url('css/flaticon.css', __FILE__) );
 wp_enqueue_style( 'myPluginStylesheet' );
 /* Register jQuery. */
 wp_deregister_script('jquery');
 wp_register_script('jqua', plugins_url('js/jquery.js',__FILE__), false, '1.11.2');
 wp_enqueue_script('jqua');
 wp_deregister_script('jquery-ui-core');
 wp_deregister_script('jquery-ui-sortable');
 wp_deregister_script('jquery-ui-mouse');
 wp_register_script('jqueryui', plugins_url('js/jquery.min.js',__FILE__), false, '1.11.2');
 wp_enqueue_script('jqueryui');
 }
 add_action('admin_head','jui_admin_header'); //Add JQuery UI to the admin side

 function jui_admin_header() {
 ?>
 <script type="text/javascript">
 $(function() {
 $('.sortable').sortable({
    start: function(event, ui) {
        var start_pos = ui.item.index();
        ui.item.data('start_pos', start_pos);
    },
    update: function(event, ui) {
        var start_pos = ui.item.data('start_pos');
        var end_pos = ui.item.index();
        alert(start_pos + ' - ' + end_pos);
    }
});
 });
 </script>

 <?php
 }

 /* Add a meta box to the page screen */

 function staff_meta_box() {
 add_meta_box( 'staff_meta', __( 'Staff Members', 'staff-textdomain' ), 'staff_meta_callback', 'page', 'normal', 'high' );
 }

 add_action( 'add_meta_boxes', 'staff_meta_box' );

 /* Output content of meta box */
 function staff_meta_callback( $post ) {

/* Setup nonce */
wp_nonce_field( basename( __FILE__ ), 'staffsort_nonce' );
$staffsort_stored_meta = get_post_meta( $post->ID );

 /* Get the current Page ID */
 global $post;
 $pageID = $post->ID;

 if ( $pageID == 25) {
    $category = 'asset-advisory-services';
}
 /* There will be a few other categories but I thought I'd save some reading for you */
wp_reset_query();
query_posts(array(
    'post_type' => 'staff',
    'categories' => $category
) );  

 echo '<ul class="sortable">';
 if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); 

echo '<li>';
echo '<i class="flaticon-move7"></i>';
the_title();
echo '</li>';

 endwhile; else:
 endif;
 echo '</ul>';

 }
 ?>

This example http://so.devilmaycode.it/getting-the-position-of-the-element-in-a-list-when-its-drag-dropped-ui-sortable/ grabs the order and saves it to the menu_order which unfortunately I can’t use but wonder if it could be used to add the order information to postmeta.

It would be good if I could store the order in the post_meta for each post but I’m not sure if this is possible as I’ll be editing a page and not the custom post types.

Can you save postmeta information to a post when you save a page? If so, how would I go about saving it for each post that appears.

If not I would have to add the sort order details to the post meta of the page I’m editing. Again how would I cycle through each custom post and save both the custom post ID and order for each one?

Further to that I know how to order the WP Query with a meta_key but usually that is for the posts (hence why saving the info to the post would be great). Could I query the custom posts and order it by the postmeta values of a page if I put that into a page template?

Or am I overcomplicating this?