Reply To: Cannot get field group to appear after editor for CPT

• John Huebner

• September 9, 2020 at 2:55 am

The problem you have is that someone has already reordered the boxes. The first thing you need to do is find all of the user meta and delete it.

I would employ 2 things form here https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/2474/disable-dragging-of-meta-boxes

1) Disable the boxes from being sorted in the first place. In a custom JS file that loads in the admin I add

(function($){
	$(document).ready(function(e) {
		$('.meta-box-sortables').sortable({
			disabled: true
		});
		$('.postbox .hndle').css('cursor', 'pointer');
	});
})(jQuery);

Then, in case that fails for some reason I add the following which prevents the saving of the order meta, priority of 0 causes my action to fire before the built in WP action.

// disable saving of metabox order
add_action('wp_ajax_meta-box-order', 'disable_meta_box_order_save', 0);
function disable_meta_box_order_save() {
	wp_die(-1);
}