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Armando Lüscher edited this page May 27, 2016 · 60 revisions

The Display Posts Shortcode was written to allow users to easily display listings of posts without knowing PHP or editing template files.

Add the shortcode in a post or page, and use the arguments to query based on tag, category, post type, and many other possibilities (see the Arguments). I've also added some extra options to display something more than just the title: include_date, include_excerpt, and image_size.

See the WordPress Codex for information on using the arguments.

WordPress.com Users

This plugin is now available to all users of WordPress.com. There's no installation necessary, just drop the shortcode in your page's content area. Unfortunately you won't be to use any of the filters listed in Further Customization since this requires customizing your theme, which isn't allowed on WordPress.com

Image Alignment

A common request is display a list of posts with title, excerpt, and the thumbnail aligned to the left. Here's the shortcode you might use:

[display-posts include_excerpt="true" image_size="thumbnail" wrapper="div"]

This includes the excerpt, adds an image of the "thumbnail" size (you can customize the image sizes in Settings > Media), and tells it to wrap the list in a div instead of an unordered list so we don't have bullets.

This plugin does not include any styling of the listings so that you can make them look however you want. In order to get the image floating to the left, add this to your theme's style.css:

.display-posts-listing .listing-item {
	clear: both;
}

.display-posts-listing img {
	float: left;
	margin: 0 10px 10px 0;
}

Examples

[display-posts tag="advanced" posts_per_page="20"]

This will list the 20 most recent posts with the tag 'Advanced'.

[display-posts tag="advanced" image_size="thumbnail"]

This will list the 10 most recent posts tagged 'Advanced' and display a post image using the 'Thumbnail' size.

[display-posts category="must-read" posts_per_page="-1" include_date="true" order="ASC" orderby="title"]

This will list every post in the Must Read category, in alphabetical order, with the date appended to the end.

[display-posts taxonomy="color" tax_term="blue" include_excerpt="true"]

This will display the title and excerpt of the 10 most recent posts marked "blue" in the custom taxonomy "color".

[display-posts wrapper="ol"]

This will display posts as an ordered list. Options are ul for unordered lists (default), ol for ordered lists, or div for divs.

[display-posts id="14,3"]

This will display only the posts with an ID of 14 and 3.

Arguments

author
Specify the post author
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts author="bill"]

category
Specify the category slug (or comma separated list of category slugs)
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts category="fishing,hiking"]

date_format
Specify the date format used when include_date is true. See Formatting Date and Time on the Codex for more information.
Default: '(n/j/Y)'
Example: [display-posts include_date="true" date_format="F j, Y"]

id
Specify a specific post ID (or multiple post IDs) to display.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts id="9, 10"]

image_size
Specify an image size for displaying the featured image, if the post has one. The image_size can be set to thumbnail, medium, large (all controlled from Settings > Reading), or a custom image size.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts image_size="thumbnail"]

include_date
Include the post's date after the post title. The default format is (7/30/12), but this can be customized using the 'date_format' parameter.
Default: empty
Example [display-posts include_date="true"]

include_excerpt
Include the post's excerpt after the title (and date if provided).
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts include_excerpt="true"]

offset
The number of posts to pass over
Default: 0
Example: [display-posts offset="3"]

order
Specify whether posts are ordered in descending order (DESC) or ascending order (ASC).
Default: DESC
Example: [display-posts order="ASC"]

orderby
Specify what the posts are ordered by. See the available parameters here.
Default: date
Example: [display-posts orderby="title"]

post_parent
Display the pages that are a child of a certain page. You can either specify an ID or 'current', which displays the children of the current page.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts post_type="page" post_parent="8"]

post_status
Show posts associated with a certain post status
Default: publish
Example: [display-posts post_status="publish, future"]

post_type
Specify which post type to use. You can use a default one (post or page), or a custom post type you've created.
Default: post
Example: [display-posts post_type="event"]

posts_per_page
How many posts to display.
Default: 10
Example: [display-posts posts_per_page="5"]

tag
Display posts from a specific tag, or tags. You must use the tag slug(ex: example-tag), not the tag's name (ex: Example Tag).
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts tag="tag1, tag2"]

taxonomy, tax_term, and tax_operator
Use these parameters to do advanced taxonomy queries. Use 'taxonomy' for the taxonomy you'd like to query, 'tax_term' for the term slug (or terms) you'd like to include, and 'operator' to change how the query uses those terms (most likely this field will not be needed).
Default: 'taxonomy' = empty , 'tax_term' = empty , 'tax_operator' = 'IN'
Example: [display-posts taxonomy="color" tax_term="blue, green"]

title
Give the div a title heading
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts title="Recent Posts"] Result: <h2 class="display-posts-title">Recent Posts</h2> inside the wrapper div. The heading tag is filterable via display_posts_shortcode_title_tag

wrapper
What type of HTML should be used to display the listings. It can be an unordered list (ul), ordered list (ol), or divs (div) which you can then style yourself.
Default: ul
Example: [display-posts wrapper="ol"]

wrapper_class
Class applied to the wrapper tag for custom css formatting for this instance.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts wrapper="div" wrapper_class="my-grid-layout"]

Multiple Taxonomy Queries

While most people will only ever need a single taxonomy query, this plugin supports an infinite number of taxonomy queries. Let's say you wanted to get all posts in category "featured" and also tagged "homepage". We'll use a shortcode that looks like this:

[display-posts taxonomy="category" tax_term="featured" taxonomy_2="post_tag" tax_2_term="homepage"]

You can string as many of those as you like, just start the count at 2. In the field listing below, replace (count) with an actual number.

Here's the available fields:

taxonomy_(count)
Which taxonomy to query
Default: empty

tax_(count)_term
Which terms to include (if more than one, separate with commas)
Default: empty

tax_(count)_operator
How to query the terms (IN, NOT IN, or AND)
Default: IN

tax_relation
Describe the relationship between the multiple taxonomy queries (should the results match all the queries or just one of them). Available options: AND and OR
Default: AND

Further Customization

shortcode_atts_display-posts

Change the default arguments of the shortcode. For instance, if you want all shortcodes to have include_excerpt="true" and include_author="true", you could use this to set it once and then not have to include those parameters on all shortcodes. Example: http://www.billerickson.net/code/change-default-attributes-in-display-posts-shortcode/

display_posts_shortcode_args

For customizing the $args passed to WP_Query. Useful if a query arg you want isn't already in the shortcode. Example: http://www.billerickson.net/code/display-posts-shortcode-exclude-posts/

display_posts_shortcode_output

For customizing the output of individual posts. Example: http://www.billerickson.net/code/display-posts-shortcode-full-content/

no_posts_message

Content to display if no posts are found (default is empty).

display_posts_shortcode_wrapper_open and display_posts_shortcode_wrapper_close

For customizing the outer markup of the whole listing. By default it is a ul but can be changed to ol or div using the 'wrapper' attribute, or by using this filter. Example: http://www.billerickson.net/code/display-posts-shortcode-outer-markup/

display_posts_shortcode_post_class

For adding classes to the individual posts (ex: break into columns)

Adding a target="_blank" to the anchor tag in posts

Add the following code to your theme's functions.php file:

function be_links_in_new_window( $output ) {
    return str_replace( '<a ', '<a target="_blank" ', $output );
}
add_filter( 'display_posts_shortcode_output', 'be_links_in_new_window', 20 );

More examples: http://www.billerickson.net/code-tag/display-posts-shortcode/

Pagination

A common question I receive is how to load the next page of results, or paginate the query. This plugin does not support pagination, nor will it in the future. If you need pagination in your query, you should not be using a shortcode. Use the WordPress core templates like the category archive or tag archive. Or if you must, build a custom page template that overrides the main WordPress query: http://www.billerickson.net/code/pagination-in-a-custom-query/

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