A sortable list is simply a list of items that can be dragged and dropped to alter the order of those elements.

There are two sortable lists available in Wordpress, one from the JQuery framework and one from the Scriptaculous framework. For a sortable list you will need a list, so here is a simple one.

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<ul id="sortcontainer">
<li class="sortable">Item 1</li>
<li class="sortable">Item 2</li>
<li class="sortable">Item 3</li>
<li class="sortable">Item 4</li>
</ul>

The JQuery sortable control is actually a plugin and not part of the standard JQuery framework. The first thing we need to do is add in the correct JavaScript libraries that we need to use. We do this with the wp_enqueue_script() Wordpress function. The are quite a few different things that are needed so you can use an array to pass in all of the options.

Here is the JavaScript code that is needed to create the sortable list.

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<script type="text/javascript">
 jQuery(function($) {
        
 var smpSortable;
 var smpSortableInit = function() {
  try { // a hack to make sortables work in jQuery 1.2+ and IE7
   $('#sortcontainer').SortableDestroy();
  } catch(e) {}
  smpSortable = $('#sortcontainer').Sortable( {
  accept: 'sortable',
  onStop: smpSortableInit
  } );
 }
 
 // initialize sortable
 smpSortableInit();
});
</script>

For more information on the sort of options available have a look at the JQuery Sortables documentation.

To use the Scriptaculous sortable list we add in the scriptaculous-dragdrop library using the wp_enqueue_script() Wordpress function.

Here is the code you need to create the sortable list, you need to include this on the page below the list.

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<script type="text/javascript">
  Position.includeScrollOffsets = true;
  Sortable.create('sortcontainer',{
   tag: 'li',
   scroll: window
  });
</script>

For more information on the sort of options available have a look at the Scriptaculous Sortables documentation.

If you only want to run the wp_enqueue_script() function in the admin section of Wordpress you can use the is_admin() function. This returns true if the code is run in the admin section, and false if run on the front end. Using this function you can stop JavaScript libraries being included when you don't use them.