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WP Latest Posts: Content Source

The main idea of WP Latest Posts is to display your content the way you want using an instance of the plugin as a widget or in the editor. WP Latest Posts works on every WordPress WYSIWYG editor. For example, you can use it in post and pages.

 

1. Add a WP Latest Posts instance

When WP Latest Posts is installed you have a left menu entry that allows you to add a new instance of a news block. Click NEW BLOCK to generate a new instance.

 

new-lp-block

 

The interface of WP Latest Posts will be loaded and will help you to configure:

  • The content source
  • The display and theme
  • The images source
  • The shortcode
  • Advanced parameters

 

2. Content source configuration

Add a title and start the configuration. 

 

content-news-selection

 

The configuration is divided into tabs.

 

Content-source-Post

 

The content source tab helps to choose the content you want to load in the new instance. You have the possibility to load:

  • WordPress posts from a selection of categories
  • WordPress category list
  • All pages in WP

 

In PRO version, there are some more filters including:

  • Select individual pages
  • Select post tags
  • Load content from custom post types with taxonomy

 

The custom post type selection will activate a dropdown list where you can select:

  • The custom post type
  • The custom post type taxonomy (not mandatory, if available)
  • The custom post type term or category (not mandatory, if available)

 

Here's an example in WP File Download 

 

custom-post-woocommerce

 

A maximum number of news and an ordering can be also defined for each content source.

The Order by is a parameter to set-up how the news is sorted, including by:

  • Date of content publication
  • Last updated (PRO version)
  • Title (alphabetical)
  • Random order
  • Most popular

 

order-content

 

Note that in the PRO version you will have more options, like a date filter, content created and content inclusion.

 

date-select-calendar

 

3. Display and default theme

The display and theme tab will offer options to set how your content will be displayed in this instance.

 

Display-Theme

 

The number of pages with posts will add pagination depending on the amount of content you have and the theme you’ve chosen; this is the same for the columns. For example, if you are loading 10 posts from a category with 2 columns and limited to 3 pages, this is what you’ll get:

 

image16

 

In this example, there are only 10 articles because the page number is limited to 2. You have also a possibility to add a limit on the element number.

 

Depending on the theme, some parameters may be set automatically. For example, for the smooth slider, you can’t set the column number - it's set automatically depending on the width available.

In the Default theme > Theme setup tab, you can now customize the Read more button, Overlay image, Pagination, Arrows settings and Content automatic crop.

 

Theme-Settings-2

 

pagination-option

 

In the rest themes, you can pick a color for the selected theme.

 

select-theme-color

 

In the TEXT SETTINGS  tab, you'll be able to define all the options related to the text display and functionality. Show title will add or remove the news instance title.

 

theme-setup

 

The crop option will cut short your content, adding a read more button (eventually). You can crop your content using lines (in CSS), the number of words or chars. 

The ANIMATION tab helps you to configure if the slide effect will be enabled by default or not. 

 

Animation-tab

 

The theme section helps you to define a display style that will be applied to this new instance, as the preview shows.

 

theme-selection

 

The default theme allows you to adjust the Image position and Text alignment options. Meanwhile, the News item content feature, which lets you add or remove details, applies to all themes.

 

content-selector

 

Besides, you can select items to add a link to the post in each block. Please enable Add post link only on option, the default selected items to add the link are: Thumbnail, Title and Readmore. You can select other items: Author, Date, Category, Text.

 

add-post-link

 

In the Grid and Category grid themes, you got an additional option to load more posts in AJAX.

 

load-more

 

4. Image source configuration

The image source configuration is about what and how to load images. You can define to load the featured image or the first article image detected in your content, and the thumbnail size. The 3 default WordPress sizes are available:  Thumbnail, Medium, Large.

 

Image-Size

 

A crop feature is also available to make the image fit exactly the size that you want. A margin value can be applied to each image to prevent text going over images. You can set a default image in case there’s no image in your content.

 

image-source

 

5. Block shortcode

Here you can copy the shortcode block quickly and easily by clicking on the shortcode area. And you can change status, set the visibility or adjust publication date and time.

 

shortcode-block

 

6. Advanced parameters

The advanced parameters are used to set the date format or to override the read more text. A custom CSS field is also available to apply custom CSS on the news block. The <php> shortcode allows you to add your news instance inside a page layout, for example.

 

advanced-paramaters