I completed a project that involved capturing metadata on images that are located on the web. I presumed that the images should be displayed in alpha order since order was never specified in the requirements. After completing the project and presenting it, folks wanted the option to sort the media. So I simply added another field to the media table, sortOrder, and then added a textbox on the metadata form. This field is defined as a decimal(12,4). So folks can use the form and enter 1, 2, 3, etc. to order the items. (Or if after sequencing items and adding more, they can add 2.2 or 2.25, etc.) to adjust the order without having to renumber everything.
Then whenever selecting the media to display, the SQL looks like this:
select mediaID, mediaName, ifnull(sortOrder,999999999.9999) as mSequence, ...
from media
where ???
order by mSequence, mediaName
This retrieves my data so that all items that have been given a sortOrder value come first and everything else is assigned the max value. Items that have the same sortValue are listed alphabetically.
That concept would work for you if you were to show thumbnails with text boxes. (Use the thumbnail file name as the textbox form field name so you know which value goes with which thumbnail.) Each time they submitted the form you could reload and update the database with the sort values and then retrieve using the sortOrder and then they'd see the changes and just scroll down until they get to those they have not ordered.
Hope this is helpful,
Jack
