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 name of the game in wealth building, in reaching financial freedom, and establishing financial well-being is learning to convert earned income into passive income. Recognizing this simple fact changed…

A life insurance ladder lets your coverage step down over time. Here’s how it works, when it may help physicians, and why I chose a simpler policy.

AI may be increasing healthcare spending by identifying more patient complexity. But for physicians, the bigger question is whether those costs were actually there all along.

I carried tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt through training. Paying it off changed how I think about high-interest debt and where it belongs in a physician’s financial priorities.

Living below your means matters. Living the same way you did in training forever is a different question.

When my 403(b) appeared as two accounts, I learned something surprising about what I own and which details of a retirement plan actually matter.

Mineral rights and working interests offer two different paths to direct oil and gas ownership. Here’s how they work, where the tax benefits come from, and what physicians should consider.

It isn’t passive income. But it may be one of the most flexible ways physicians can use the expertise they already have.

Employment isn’t the problem. Losing autonomy, fair compensation, and the ability to care for patients is.

A simple investing habit that keeps your portfolio on target without trying to time the market.

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>