WARNING: Due to long URLs, this article MAY stretch your screen.

This is a fairly well known strategy, but despite the fact that it IS used a lot, I'm surprised to find how many people don't know how to do it. So I'm gonna show you!

But first, we need to know what we're doing. At the bottom of every forum page (the URL contains showforum=), there are some drop down menus with which you can change the way topics in this forum are sorted. Now, what if you want to have links at the top of the forum that do the same thing? That's what we're about to do.

Preview (Press Ctrl + F and type "Sort me by")

The reason that a lot of people find this hard to do is because it's NOT a 1 step process. Contrary to popular belief, you can't change the settings in the drop down menu, copy the new URL, and make a link to it in forum rules. What you need to do is copy paste the URLs I've inserted below, and edit them where necessary. Each URL will need to be edited to include your Server, Board Name, and Forum Number.

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Show all topics sorted by Topic Title

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to Z-A to reverse the order

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Show all topics sorted by Topic Creator

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to Z-A to reverse the order

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Show all topics sorted by Last Post (default)

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to A-Z to reverse the order

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Show all topics sorted by Number of Views

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to A-Z to reverse the order (least views first)

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Show all topics sorted by Number of Replies

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to A-Z to reverse the order (least views first)

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Show all topics sorted by Topic Start Date

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to Z-A to reverse the order (newest topics first)

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Show all topics sorted by Last Poster

Edit the green to change the number of days it goes back. 100 = Forever.

Change the orange to Z-A to reverse the order (newest topics first)

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Now for the most important part. Actually USING these long and complex URLs. Open Admin CP, Manage Forums, Forum Rules (For whichever forum you want to add custom sorting). For the state, choose "Show Full Text". For the actual text, insert the following:

And so on....just keep adding more entries for more options.