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.
Table of Contents
- 1 Advanced Settings
- 2 Duplicating WP Show Posts List
- 3 The Bizarre Belief of the ‘Steamed Buns Soaked in Human Blood’
- 4 Cathleen Clarke: Whatever Hour You Woke There Was a Door Shutting
- 5 China’s new crackdown on celebrity culture and fans
- 6 Bilibili Releases 21 New Titles at DOCUMENTARY MADE BY BILIBILI 2021-2022
- 7 Content Wrap (WPSP Only)
- 8 Featured Image
- 9 Meta above title
- 10 Entry Title forced to 2 lines
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 Bizarre Belief of the ‘Steamed Buns Soaked in Human Blood’
1 moreSteamed buns soaked in human blood Steamed buns soaked in human blood (血 馒头) is an ancient Chinese folk remedy according to which human blood…
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>
Interview with Artist Jingyi Wang
1 moreJingyi Wang is a surrealist artist specializes in oil painting. Jingyi Wang is a visual artist, born and raised in China that currently works and lives in New York City. She graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013, with a BFA degree in painting. She earned her MFA degree from the New…
Interview with Makeup Artist Mimi Choi
23 moreMimi Choi is a professional makeup artist with a unique creative style Mimi was born in Macau and immigrated to Canada with her parents in the mid-’90s, where she now practices and teaches her craft. In her 20s, she made a change in her life and decide to pursue her creative passions. Before her career…
Interview with Photographer Jessica Chou
moreJessica Chou is a Taiwanese-American photographer located between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Jessica is a photographer, born in Taipei, Taiwan, raised in San Gabriel Valley, and based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in Middle East History. After graduation, Jessica moves first to New York and then…
Interview with Pianist Composer Mélodie Zhao
moreMélodie Zhao is a Pianist Composer and Conductor that aim to make classical music young again. Mélodie Zhao is a Swiss-born pianist and composer. She began studying the piano at age two, and she studied first at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, with Jiaquan Chen until age nine. Then she entered the Geneva…
Lists: Sidebar
In the right had sidebar you can see the Sidebar list. This List is set to 1 column and only displays the Featured Image, Title and Category. This is designed for Widgets, a narrow column or as part of a grid (like in our next List).
To add this style the Widget requires a CSS Class of:
wpsp-cardDispatch comes with Widget Classes Plugin installed. This provides this function.
List: Header
The Header list as seen on the Front Page requires a list containing only 5 posts. And can accomodate most of the content elements. Which are only displayed on the large leader post.
To add this style the Header Element requires the following element classes:
wpsp-grid wpsp-cardList: Simple
This is output using the wpsp-card inserted into a containing DIV like so:
<div class="wpsp-card">shortcode goes here</dib>
List: Simple Sidebar
Nothing fancy here, just a list being output using the a Widget in the sidebar.
China-underground.com includes thousands of articles on news, Chinese history, Chinese art, Chinese literature , China pictures gallery, videos, and Chinese cinema.
