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:

Julia Alexa – poison myself Lyrics I was dying in my dream last night For the first time this year I felt fine Felt the blade and I watched the…

SANITO – Detail Lyrics Jedes kleine Detail von dir ist perfekt Ich weiß dass dich niemals jemand ersetzt, oh fuck Das hier ist unser Lied Das hier ist unser Song…

Mikolas Josef – Boys Don’t Cry Lyrics So long Times up You told me I would be alright ‘Cause you think Boys don’t cry (Boys don’t cry) So I’ll keep Waiting For…

Florence Pugh – The Best Part Lyrics I can’t shake you off, dear Something I have tried to do But I can’t shake you off, dear Sit on trains and…

maïa – konsumier mich Lyrics Konsumier mich und spuck mich aus Ich bin für kurze Zeit das was du brauchst Und wenn ich fall’ dann fällst du auch Ich bin…

Studio Killers – Underneath My Raincoat Lyrics I take you underneath my raincoat It’s raining cats and dogs If you got a minute you could save a life See all…

Godfather of Harlem, Snoop Dogg, Denaun – Tomorrow (Snoop Dogg feat. Denaun) Lyrics The gift of life God gives the gift of life He giveth and he taketh I was…

Lola Brooke, Latto, Yung Miami – Don’t Play With It (feat. Latto & Yung Miami) – Remix Lyrics (Violation) Uh-uh-uh-uh (Dizz, you violated) (Grrr, baow) Don’t play with it, don’t…

Alejandro Sanz & Danny Ocean – Correcaminos Lyrics Tú sera’ mía algún día de la cantidad de vece’ que al universo se lo pido Si no te tengo en esta…

44phantom – ugly Lyrics Ooh-ooh, say it’s true, babe I’m only causin’ problems ’cause of you, babe And, girl, you know I’d do whatever you say, it’s hard for me…

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>