Rearranging Dashboard meta boxes with use of plugin/functions.php

add_meta_box has a the following placement parameters:

$context
'normal', 'advanced', 'side'

$priority 
'high', 'core', 'default' 'low'

For $context the difference between normal and advanced is that normal will be placed on the page before advanced.

The $priority determines the hierarchy but is overridden when dragged by the user. You can disable the drag and drop functionality.

Furthermore do_meta_boxes can be used to place (output) the registered meta box, for example if you want to place the meta box above the WYSIWYG editor you can use it in a function which fires edit_form_after_title.

If you only want to run an action once you can some trickery with did_action, for example:

function action_trickery_115819(){

    if(did_action('admin_init') === 1) {
    //some action to run once
    }
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'action_trickery_115819' );

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/do_meta_boxes
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/did_action

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