Both Posts and Pages are used for displaying your site's content. Posts can have categories and tags that are used by Post Widgets and Pages with the Blog Page template when filtering posts to display. In addition, all posts use the default sidebar.
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Post Widgets
If you’re trying to display certain posts through a widget, you may notice that you have a few different widgets to choose from, namely Recent Posts, Recent Custom Posts Type Widget, Flexible Posts Widget, and Post Loop. Below outlines what each widget can do and how each differs from the others.
Recent Posts
Recent Posts is the simplest of the post widgets. It automatically displays posts based on when they were created, in descending order. This widget displays each post’s title as a link to that post. You can choose how many posts you want displayed and you’re also given the option to display each post’s creation date.
Recent Custom Posts Type Widget
Recent Custom Posts Type Widget is a lot more flexible than Recent Posts. In fact, you don’t even have to display your most recent posts, or even posts at all! Recent Custom Posts Type Widget can display Posts, Pages, People, Media, and Meta Sliders. You can filter which posts to display by Author. You can also choose to order the posts by post title, ID, author, creation date, last modified date, randomly, or in no specific order at all. Like Recent Posts you can choose how many posts you want displayed. In addition, you can choose what parts of the posts you want displayed, including the title, body excerpt, date posted, and featured thumbnails. Keep in mind that not every post type has all of these; for example, Media does not have a body excerpt so checking that box would mean nothing.
Flexible Posts Widget
Flexible Posts Widget is another versatile post widget, however some of the features do not work when using the widget with Page Builder. This widget is fully functional when placed in a sidebar.
Flexible Posts Widget can display Posts, Pages, Media, People, or Meta Sliders. You can order posts by publish date, modified date, title, menu order, post ID, author, post slug, comment count, randomly, or post ID order. You can also choose to skip over a certain number of posts. You can choose whether or not to display the posts’ thumbnails, and at what size.
In addition to these sorting options, you may choose to filter posts by certain taxonomies or terms, such as by category, tag, format, or group. You can even specify exactly which posts you want to display by listing their IDs. Note that selecting posts based on ID will override any options you may have chosen for filtering by post type or taxonomy/term.
Post Loop
Post Loop can display posts, pages, people, or meta sliders. You can order posts by post ID, author, name, date, date modified, parent, random, comment count, menu order, or post in order. The widget displays the title of each post. In addition, you may choose to display a certain number of posts and filter the posts by tag or by category.
Here are instructions on how to use Post Loop:
- Add a Post Loop widget to your Page Builder page
- Select the content.php template
- Under the additional field add following code to filter by category: &category_name=yourcatname
- For tags you would use: & tag=yourtagname
- Under the Widget Styles section on the right side of the widget, add a class name (anything you want) to the area called Widget Class
- Save/Update the page
- Add the CSS below to the Custom CSS section of your site
Note: In this example I’ve given my Post Loop widget a class of any-name-you-want
/* ===================== Start Post Loop Template Code ===================== */
.any-name-you-want .entry-content, .any-name-you-want .entry-footer, .any-name-you-want .entry-meta {
display: none;
}
.any-name-you-want h1 {
border-bottom: medium none !important;
font-size: 16px;
line-height:1.5em;
margin-top:0px !important;
margin-bottom:0px !important;
}
.any-name-you-want .hentry {
margin-bottom: 0;
padding-bottom: 0 !important;
}
/* ===================== End Post Loop Template Code ===================== */
Note: If you use the Post Loop widget in multiple places and want the same style then you can use the same class name on the widget and it will pick up the custom CSS.
Post Loop Templates
If you use the Post Loop widget, you’ll notice that it has many options under “Template”. The following are short descriptions of each template and if/how it can be used with Post Loop. Note that not all of these templates will be useful to people using this widget, as some were intended for other areas of Aurora and just happen to have been picked up by this widget.
- content-az.php
- (not fully intended for use with post loop but it can be utilized)
- Returns an a-z listing of all the pages in your site (which can also be achieved with the A-Z Listing page template). You will need to create a category with no posts in it and then define it or else the a-z post loop will pull your most recent post’s content and add an A-Z listing below it.
- content-blank.php
- (not intended for use with post loop)
- Returns posts with no styling.
- content-featured-image.php
- Returns the featured image, post date, excerpt and read more link. This is by far the most widely used template.
- content-home.php
- (not intended for use with post loop)
- Same as content-blank except it will not display the content and markup if the post is blank.
- content-none.php
- (not intended for use with post loop)
- Returns errors for the system.
- content-page.php
- Returns posts with a title and excerpt.
- content-person.php
- (not intended for use with post loop)
- Returns people for a different portion of WordPress.
- content-single.php
- Returns post title, date, excerpt, categories and tags.
- content.php
- Returns post title that links to post, date, excerpt, categories and tags.
Post Expirator
Post Expirator is a plugin that allows you to add an expiration date to any post or page. In order to do so, Post Expirator must be enabled in the Screen Options of the post’s edit screen. Scroll down to the box labeled ‘Post Expirator’ on the right side of the edit screen. From there, you must first check the box labeled ‘Enable Post Expiration’ to set an expiration date. After, choose a date and time at which you would like your post to expire and choose what happens to the post upon expiration. You have the following options:
- Change its status to draft
- Delete the post
- Change the post’s visibility to private
- Update the post’s category:
- Category: Replace
- Category: Add
- Category: Remove
Be sure to click Update after to save your changes.
Excerpts
Posts can have custom excerpts that show up in place of the full text in post feeds such as search result pages and tag pages. To add or edit a post's custom excerpt, scroll down to the box labeled 'Excerpt' on the post's edit screen. Type the custom text you'd like to show up in the text box and Update the post when you are finished.
In order for these excerpts to show up anywhere, you must have 'Summary' chosen next to Settings > Reading > For each article in a feed, show [Full text, Summary].
Note: If you have 'Summary' chosen, posts without excerpts will also be affected. In post feeds, the body of such posts will be cut off after a certain number of characters rather than displaying in full.
Below is an example of what the SASS Tag page looks like with 'Full Text' chosen vs with 'Summary' chosen. The Child Theming with SASS page has an excerpt whereas the Child Theming with CSS page does not.
SASS Tag Page: Full Text
SASS Tag Page: Summary
Basic Aurora WordPress Articles
- Accessibility
- Dashboard
- Manage Storage Space and Specification
- Theme - Beecher Stowe
- Pages
- Posts
- Layout page using Page Builder
- Images
- Media Library
- Accordions
- Buttons
- Color Picker
- Columns
- Glyphicons
- Videos