The attached screenshot is of a course I am running using Discourse. It’s spread over four weeks, and the students are asking for me to order the assignments chronologically. I can’t find a way to do this? Is it possible?
Lee
They are in order of most recent activity, though I think that they can be changed with a theme component.
What I did was create a syllabus topic that linked to stuff. You can see it Syllabus: EDM510 2016 Summer - EDM510 Summer 2016 - Literate Computing: Learning to Think Like a Geek
No need for a theme component.
Edit the category where the topics are, in the settings change " Topic List Sort By" to created.
If necessary, you can use the 
button in the topic to change timestamps to re-order.
Once I have set them in ‘Order Created’ is there a way of moving individual posts around? I ask because moving forward, setting it to Order Created for a new course will work, but not for this current course because the order of posts has been all over the place.
You mean topics right?
This should be doable by:
Inside a topic, in the top right, above the blue scroll bar you should see the Wrench button, that can “Change Timestamp” of a topic.
Ok, so laborious, but I can change each one individually.
Thanks for all your help.
Lee
Is there a way to enable users to select this sort view on their own?
E.g. by adding a created option to top menu and/or topic list action?
I haven’t yet written a plugin; would this be a good case for such an attempt?
You can do this in a theme component, which is easier than a plugin.
Ooo, thanks for the tip!
A site where I admin uses an ‘archive’ tag, and chronological topic view of tagged topics would be very useful. I better get studying on writing theme components…
I suppose I should ask, so I begin to look in the correct places,
Would a theme component allow for configuration via topic list action, or would it use another mechanism?
Is there an index on the topic created (date) field?