4. Posts Table Pro settings page
The Posts Table Pro plugin settings page is at Post Tables → Settings in the WordPress Dashboard. It includes a range of options for setting the defaults in your tables. These will apply to all the tables that you create. (You can override these using the options for each individual table.)
License key
Enter your license key here. This is essential for the plugin to work.
Table content
Post type
Select the post type that you wish to display in your tables, e.g. 'post', 'page' or a custom post type.
Please note that the dropdown lists all the available post types on your website. Please note that some of these may be added automatically by other plugins and it may not be appropriate to list them in a table.
If you haven’t created the post type that you will be displaying in the table yet (e.g. Articles, Members, or Resources), you can easily do this with the free Easy Post Types and Fields plugin.
Columns
Add a comma separated list (without spaces) of the columns to appear in the table.
The available columns are: id, title, content, excerpt, image, date, author, categories, tags, and status. You can also add columns for any custom field or taxonomy.
Example: title,content,date
Content length
If you are using the content column, then this option controls the number of words that will appear in the table. Enter a whole number.
Excerpt length
If you are using the excerpt column, then this option controls the number of words that will appear in the table. Enter a whole number.
Post links
Choose whether items in the table are clickable. The following columns can be formatted as links: id, title, categories, tags, author, image, and any custom taxonomy.
Enter all to add links to all possible columns, none to disable all links, or add a comma separated list (without spaces) of the specific columns that should be clickable.
Image size
This option controls the size of the featured image in the image column. Enter the required image size in pixels, e.g. 50×70 will set the image to 50 pixels wide by 70 pixels high.
Button text
If you have included a 'button' column then this option controls the text that appears on the button, for example 'Read Post' or 'VIEW'.
Loading
Lazy load
Tick this box if you want to load the contents of the table one page at a time, or if you want the table to load after the rest of the content on your page. This option boosts performance for tables with lots of items, but there are some limitations, so please read the full article about lazy load.
Post limit
Enter a whole number to specify the maximum number of items that can appear in the table.
Warning: If you are not using the lazy load option then increasing this number could cause performance issues or even server crashes. For big tables, we recommend activating lazy load so that only one page of posts are loaded at a time. If you do this then the post limit option is not applicable.
Sorting
Sort by
Choose an option for how the table will be sorted when it first loads. (Customers can also sort the table by clicking on any column header.)
Sort column
If lazy load is disabled then in addition to the options listed in the 'Sort by' dropdown, you can sort by any column which is present in the table. For example, if your table contains a categories column then you can sort by this column.
To sort by a column which is not listed in the 'Sort by' dropdown, simply enter the column name into the 'Sort column' field. For example, in the above example, you would enter 'categories'.
Sort direction
Choose whether the table will be ordered in ascending or descending order.
Search and filter
Search filters
This option controls whether or not filter dropdowns will appear above your tables. You can add filters for categories, tags, author or any custom taxonomy.
- Disabled – no filters will be displayed.
- Enabled – shows all possible filters based on the contents of the table.
- Custom – add a comma separated list (without spaces) of which filters to add.
Search box
Positions, shows or hides the keyword search box.
Post totals
Positions, shows or hides the (e.g. ‘Showing 1 to 10 of 50 posts’).
Reset search
Positions, shows or hides the reset button which lets customers reset the table after performing a search or filter.
Search page
Select a page which will be used to display search results. This will only be used if you have added a standalone search box to your site - if you are just using the search box which appears above the table then the results appear within the table rather than on a separate page.
Pagination
Posts per page
Enter a whole number to control how many posts appear on each page of the table. If there are more posts than the number of rows per page then pagination links will appear linking to the other pages.
Posts per page selector
Positions, shows or hides the ‘Show [x] posts’ dropdown.
Pagination buttons
Positions, shows or hides the pagination buttons.
Pagination type
Choose a style for the pagination buttons. This can be any combination of Previous or Next links, plus actual page numbers.
Advanced
Shortcodes
Tick this box if you want content added by other shortcodes to appear within the table. For example, you might be adding a button shortcode to add other types of button; embedded audio or media players; icon shortcodes; etc.
Image lightbox
Ticking this option will make the featured image in the image column open in a lightbox/popup when someone clicks on it. If you untick this box then clicking on an image will take visitors to the single post page instead. If you wish to disable this behavior then you can do so using the 'Post links' option, above.
Caching
This option allows the contents of your posts tables to be cached to improve performance and speed up page load times.
If you tick the 'Caching' box then you can also set the 'Cache expiration' time to control how often the cache is cleared. Enter a whole number of hours.
Show sticky header
Enable this to keep the top row of the table visible when the user scrolls down. We recommend enabling this if your tables contain a lot of posts per page so that people can always see the table header.
Tip: If your theme has a sticky header and the height doesn't work well with the sticky header in Posts Table Pro, then you can fix this using the scroll offset option.
Hide table header
Enable this to remove the top row of the table completely. We only recommend doing this if your table columns are self-explanatory and don't require labels, and if customers don't need to be able to click on the table headings to change the sort order.
Scroll offset
When paging between multiple pages of results in your table, Posts Table Pro will automatically “jump” back to the top each time. This is particularly useful if you are displaying a large number of posts on each page. The plugin attempts to scroll to the correct position on the page but sometimes it doesn’t quite calculate this correctly. This is because each website and WordPress theme is different and some can have features which interfere with the scroll position – e.g. sticky navigation menus.
The Scroll Offset option lets you override the scroll amount or disable this behavior altogether. The default scroll amount is 15. If you find that the top of your table is “chopped off” when moving between pages, try increasing this to a larger number (e.g. 50). If you’d like to disable automatic scrolling, then enter "false".
Clear Cache
A 'Clear Cache' button appears next to the 'Save' button when the caching option (above) is enabled. This removes any cached data. We recommend clearing the cache after making changes to the table so that you and your customers can instantly see the changes, instead of waiting for the cache to clear on its own.
More posts table options
The plugin settings page lets you set defaults for the most widely used options. You can override these and use additional options directly in the posts table shortcode. Please see the complete list of shortcode options.
Next steps
Next, it's time to choose a template and tweak the design of your tables.