My goal is to provide an easy to use interface for non-technical site admins to "drag and drop" the order of a slideshow on the homepage of a WordPress site.
I am using WP_query to build a "featured slideshow" that highlights other pages on the homepage of a site.
In order to provide an easy way for web site admins to manage the order/appearance of these slides, I wanted to provide them with a custom wp_nav_menu item which they could use with "drag and drop" to set the order of slides on the homepage.
I have since found out that the syntax for 'orderby' in WP_Query is not referring to the wp_nav_menu order and only has to do with the page_meta value for sort order.
My question is, how can I pass the values from the wp_nav_menu into my wp_query so that I can use that to orderby?
OR
How can I create a "drag and drop" interface for my web admins to manage the order of the slideshow without having to go edit each pages sort order?
If your 'featured' post type is a post or page, you can actually specify the orderby => menu_order within your $args to do this.
.e.g
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'my-post-type',
'orderby' => 'menu_order'
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );
I haven't tried to use nav menus to order slides before, but if you are using custom post types for the slides, the following works well and may be a little more intuitive than using a nav menu: http://soulsizzle.com/jquery/create-an-ajax-sorter-for-wordpress-custom-post-types/
If you are ok with spending $25 AUD, Repeater Field is a fantastic add on for Advanced Custom Fields: http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/add-ons/repeater-field/
It makes building sliders and page/template specific CMS areas really easy and saves the information as post meta fields. I definitely recommend it if you are going to be doing this frequently.