Is there any way to reorder subcategories? I have a series of books that I'd like listed chronologically instead of alphabetically. Macgyver89 22:34, October 18, 2009 (UTC)

I notice that Help:Category does not discuss this but I did learn a method for doing this. When you add a category label to an article use this format to specify a sort key that is different than the page name:

[[Category:Name-of-category|Alternate-sort-key]]

See also: mw:Help:Category#Sort_key and mw:meta:Help:Category#Sort_key

--najevi 00:52, October 19, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! That worked very well =D Macgyver89 02:22, October 19, 2009 (UTC)

Take note of the DEFAULTSORT statement on the second page that Najevi pointed you to. This allows you to set the same sort key for all the categories on the page, saving the effort of inserting it into each cat statement. ~ Phlox 19:39, October 19, 2009 (UTC)

Could you give me an example of that in use? I don't get how it works. How can one key be used to sort, chronologically, the seven Harry Potter books? Macgyver89 03:00, October 23, 2009 (UTC)

[[Category:Philosopher's Stone|Book-1]]

[[Category:Chamber of Secrets|Book-2]]

[[Category:Prison of Azkaban|Book-3]]...

Is how I'd go about doing it. It will sort by default numerically (0-9) and then alphabetically. If my alternate codes were "5" and "Bob", "5" would come before Bob. Hence, it's exceptionally important to be consistent about how one uses alternate text. --DaNASCAT 14:31, October 23, 2009 (UTC)