Using WP Show Posts

Adding post lists and grids to your Site couldn’t be easier than with the WP Show Posts plugin. Dispatch uses the Free version to display posts on the Front page and in the Sidebars. Of course with a little Flint Skin CSS treatment.

Head off to Dashboard > WP Show Posts > All Lists. Within are six lists:

Align
Standard
Sidebar
Header
Simple
Simple Sidebar

Each of them have very particular settings required to match the demo content you see here. Changing those settings may affect the way the post is displayed, and not necessarily for the better. So please work on a duplicate or make a note before changing.

Note: the name of the List has no relevance to the different styles displayed.

General ( and important ) information

Before we go into the detail let’s cover some basic and very important information.

Advanced Settings

For the purpose of the demo content a couple of the Lists are using Advanced Settings. First off the Standard List is using Ascending Order (Default: Descending). Secondly the Simple List is using Offset, so it omits the first 4 posts. You may want to put these back to default if you’re not intending to replace them.

Duplicating WP Show Posts List

So we have four lists, and we want to make a new Standard list with a different category. The easiest way is to use one of the Duplicate Post plugins in the WordPress repository. Simple hey. And it works for all post types including GP Elements. Awesome. Note: When making a duplicate you are generally given two options. Clone and New Draft. I advise using the New Draft as some people have reported issues when using Clone.

List: Standard

This is the standard WP Show Post list that has the same custom styling applied to the GP Blog:

The wine (and beer) might be what intrigues you, but it’s the people that you’ll remember. Meet Gail. Traveling for wine will never be the same.

Winter Park is more than just a ski town, it’s a craft beer town! Check out some of the best breweries in Winter Park, Colorado.

Meet Cooper, the Instigator behind The SoulFire Project, a nomadic music experience. We talk travel, music and dreams coming to fruition.

Nashville’s craft breweries are as good as its music. But if you’ve only got time for one, we’ve got a few of Nashville’s best breweries for you!

Meet Josiah Roe, co-founder of The Journal of Lost Time and van-life event planner extraordinaire. Take a listen; he’ll inspire and intrigue you!

When you have limited time in Phoenix and can only visit one or two breweries, we’ve got the best breweries in Phoenix for you right here.

Meet Sam of Third Space Brewing. Brewing Like a Girl, this is her story and more as we celebrate International Women’s Day and Pink Boots Society.

Slab City isn’t a town but people live there. What is this free community really like where people live without the normal rules of society?

Overnight camping at ski resorts is a great way to live slopeside, even if only for a night or two. We’ll tell you where to park overnight and where to drink the beer afterwards.

If you ever find yourself in need or want of a gluten-free beer, we’ve got the ultimate gluten-free brewery guide for you.

This is how the list is displayed within the Content area just by adding the WP Show Post Shortcode. Here follows the basic styling changes that have been made.

Content Wrap (WPSP Only)

Using a custom Hook Element the Post article content is now wrapped within a DIV container. This container carries a class of wpsp-content-wrap for styling. This wrap is present on all WP Show Posts that are output inside Dispatch.

Featured Image

The featured image has a fixed height to match the layout. This is achieved using this CSS:


.generate-columns-container article .inside-article img,  .wp-show-posts-image img {
    height: 180px;
    width: 100%;
    -o-object-fit: cover !important;
    object-fit: cover !important;
}

You can edit the height property to suit, or remove the CSS it entirely if you want to use your own sizes.

Meta above title

This is achieved using a flex box on the Entry Header. Again this applied to the GP Blog:


.generate-columns-container article .entry-header, .wp-show-posts-entry-header {
    display: -webkit-box;
    display: -ms-flexbox;
    display: flex;
    -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
    -webkit-box-direction: reverse;
    -ms-flex-direction: column-reverse;
    flex-direction: column-reverse;
}

Entry Title forced to 2 lines

The entry title always displays a minimum and maximum of 2 lines. This mantains the across row alignment. Again this is applied to GP Blog. The ex unit is used to define the number of lines visible. The lines are set by defining the line-height and setting the height to as many mutiples as you require lines. e.g up the height to 7.5ex will create three lines.


.generate-columns-container article .entry-header .entry-title, .wp-show-posts article .wp-show-posts-entry-title {
    line-height: 2.5ex;
    height: 5ex;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

List: Align

Designed for a single column list this displays the content the image to the left and content to the right. This is subtly different to just resizing the image in the WP Show Posts list settings and aligning it left. Thanks to the Content Wrap we added (above) the content will never wrap around the image. On mobile it just stacks.

To add one of these your posts requires a little markup. And is done like so:

<div class="wpsp-align">shortcode_goes_here</div>