Ordering Web App Items by Date in Adobe Business Catalyst

This issue recently came up simultaneously on several of our websites built using the super easy to use Adobe Business Catalyst CMS. It's a great system for getting sites up and running quickly, but sometimes it takes a minute to figure out how to fully customize everything to your own specifications.

For example, by default, web app items are listed alphabetically whenever you use {module_webapps} to display them as a list, no matter what other parameters you pass. There's a simple way to change it, but it may not be what immediately jumps to mind. I originally thought that when adding the module to a page, there would be a setting "order web app items by…" and a list of options such as alphabetically, by date, etc. After probably too much time looking for such a selection, I realized there would have to be another way.

The Business Catalyst documentation at kb.worldsecuresystems.com can be hit or miss, but I took my chances and went to see if it could help. If I can't find something quickly in the docs, I usually just get on chat with one of their support people. But luckily I found just what I was looking for. The docs explain how to order the web app items by date here.

Basically, you enter the dates in the "weighting" field on the individual web app item page under "more options". Enter it in the format YYYYMMDD. Because of the way the weighting works, i.e. the highest numbers go to the top, this ensures that the most recent items, whether news or events or anything else you might want to list by date, appear most recent first. But make sure you enter in the date that way for every item, or else the ones that don't have a weighting will list alphabetically after the ones that do.

Happy site-building!