Here is a functionality I made for a client that can refresh the way of presenting posts for a specific category in WordPress. With slidepost ajax pagination plugin one can easily convert a WordPress posts category into a slideshow of images or just slide through the pages of a category without reloading the pages. The initial idea of the plugin was to convert a category into a kind of gallery that can be easily added inside a page template. After a number of modifications this is still doable with the additional facility to use a shortcode as to easily start the plugin on any spot of a website. The shortcode can be added inside a page, post, advanced custom field or embeded into template file by passing the shortcode into do_shortcode() function.
This can allow you to integrate a kind of small gallery inside a particular page or post without writing a single line of code. Simply specifying the desired category and number of post shown per page from the settings page of the plugin under ‘Settings’ > ‘SlidePosts’. Keep in mind that if you want to convert the plugin into a gallery each post of the category should have a featured image. In gallery mode layout the thumbnail size of featured images is used – so it is recommanded to set the minimum thumbnail size to be bigger – 300-400px is large enough.
Installation
Upload the files of the plugin inside a slideposts-ajax-pagination folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu.
Set Up
Once installed you should create a category for your plugin to use and fill it with content and images.
You will find ‘SlidePosts’ submenu in your admin panel under WordPress > Settings.
In settings page should be set the category slug name and the number of post shown per page. Each post with “published” status will be included.
Posts can be shown as a grid of thumbnails – showing featured image and title of the post on hover state. When SlidePosts is in gallery layout the thumbnails of the featured images is used – so it is recommended to set the minimum thumbnail size to be bigger – 300-400px is large enough. The Thumbnail size can be set from Media Settings in “Settings” > “Media”.
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To insert the SlidePosts content into your post or page, copy the shortcode [postslist] and paste it into the post/page content. To embed the plugin into template file you will need to pass the shortcode into do_shortcode() function and display its output like this:
<?php echo do_shortcode('[postslist]'); ?>
The shortcode will do the rest and load posts from the desired category set in the plugin settings page.
If you want to contribute to the code it is hosted on github.
You can also find the plugin on the official WordPress plugins site.
Tested up to: WordPress version 5.3 and requires: 4.1 or higher