Advice/opinion requested on page section lineup

Hi Experts, I would like to be able to alter the lining-up of several sections on a php generated webpage. What would be the best/optimal approach in achieving that? As an example "sections" referred to are mostly tables generated via code on data obtained from a DB. Should I name them (somehow), shall I use a seperate table to store the lining-up information or shall I add a "precedence" integer column to each relevant table in the database, ...? Thanks in advance for your guidance. Alp