I have worked on a couple of projects over the past few months that both needed similar “tweaks” to the usual method WordPress uses to order Posts as well as delving into the various ins and outs of ordering product listings in sites that use the WP E-Commerce plugin. It’s basically very easy. All it takes is altering the date a post or product is published!

To Order Posts

Step 1: Get a strategy in place. Since you are going to be setting your site’s Posts to arrange themselves according to date of publication, what kind of date range should you use? If you are going to be adding things frequently to a particular category, then space their dates out by a few days or more. You don’t have to worry too much though. The publication date also includes a timestamp so you can go down to the minute if necessary. Sometimes it helps to list the desired order of your Posts on a piece of paper and then put a date next to each so you can keep track of what should show up where in the new lineup.

Step 2: Log into your site’s dashboard and find the posts to put in order.
If you need to change a lot of posts’ publish dates, then the most efficient method is to use “Quick Edit” mode. Click on “Posts” in your left toolbar and you will see all your Posts listed. Hovering over the title of a Post makes a few choices available directly underneath (Edit, Quick Edit, View and Trash). If you click on “Quick Edit” a dropdown edit window appears.

Quick Tip: Got a lot of posts to make quick changes to? At the top of your Posts’ listings, there is a dropdown menu of categories. Select one there and click “Filter” to view only the Posts in a particular category.

Step 3: In Edit (or Quick Edit) go to the published date. In Edit it will be to the right, where it says “Published”. In “Quick Edit” it wil be underneath the slug for the Post’s title.  Click on the Edit link next to the date to change it. Once you put in the new date, click “OK” and click the blue “Update” button to save the new published date.
Continue to do the same with the other Posts and then they should be displayed in their revised order on the site.

To Order Product Listings Using the WP-Ecommerce plugin

Step 1: Same as ordering Posts, get a strategy together for ordering your Products. In theory, there is a way that you can custom order your Products using the “drag and drop” method, but I have come across cases where it didn’t work on a site for whatever mysterious reason (maybe the choice of theme?).

Setting Your Products Page to Display Products based on Time Uploaded

You can set your Products Page (the one that can showcase all your products on the site), to display Products by Time Uploaded. In order to set this up, go to your left dashboard toolbar and hover over Settings. Select Store and then in the next page, click on the Presentation tab. Scroll down to where it says “Product Page Settings” and where it says “Sort Product By” select “Time Uploaded” from the dropdown menu.

Again, if you are going to be constantly adding new products, make sure you have enough “time” between Product listings to have some wiggle room.

Step 2: Log into your dashboard and in the left toolbar, go to Store. Hover over it to bring up the quick-jump menu and then select “Products”.

Step 3: You will then see a page that lists all the Products you have on your site (it may be a few pages if you have a lot of products). Click on the Product name to open up its Edit window and then change the Published date and save your changes. Continue to do this with all your Products and then view your Products Page to make sure the order is correct.

The Publish panel on the right side of the Edit Product window

Changing the date the Product was published (you can also change the time too!)

The new date has been entered, now click "OK"

Now that the new date has been saved, click Update