Plugin: List Posts on Pages
July 13, 2009 ·
This fantastic plugin gives you yet another way to get your target audiences to the blog posts they are interested in quicker. On a standard WordPress blog, you have several ways of displaying your posts but all of these options keep your posts very separate from your pages.
The List Category Posts Plugin opens up a whole new set of layout options on a WordPress site combining static web pages and blog posts. It allows you to present your posts in a much more personal way rather than trying to appeal to everyone at once. Following are some ideas and examples of how to use the plugin to improve your WordPress blog.
Create Custom Pages for Each Target Audience
Using this plugin, create a new page for each blog category. Include a description at the top of what the posts in that category are about, who will benefit from reading them and a call to action. Eg. ‘Join our mailing list to receive future posts direct to your inbox’. You could also include a photo if appropriate and even a couple of downloadable files which compliment the category. Then insert the code to list posts in that category and you are away. (instructions below)
NOTE: If you have a lot of different categories, you may want these pages to be child pages appearing in a drop down under the parent category called “Blog” or similar.
How to Use this Plugin
- Download List Category Posts Plugin…
- Upload to your Plugins folder using ftp
- Login to your WordPress site
- Go to plugins and activate the new plugin
- Create a page for a blog category
- Type your descriptions etc
- Go to Manage/Categories
- Click on the category you want and note the catgeory ID in your browser’s address bar (see below).
- Return to your page and enter the code (see below) including the category id and the number of posts you want to list.
Promote Your Categories
This could also be the perfect opportunity to rethink your categories from your customers’ point of view. Once your main categories are clear, you could create buttons or banners placed throughout your site promoting them. Include title, a short description and an image. By splitting up your topics, you increase your advertising opportunities. Try approaching other complimentary businesses to display your banners or think about displaying other banners/affiliate products on your newly created pages.
Excluding a Category from News Page
You may decide that only one or two of your categories are special enough to deserve their own page. Eg, Job listings. In this case you could create a page called Jobs and list new posts in this category (as described above). You may however decide you don’t want this category showing up on your main news page or category widegts in your sidebar. Once again you need the id of that catgeory, then edit the appropriate php file to exclude that id. Get instructions…
Examples of Plugin in Action
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Categories: Blogging, Design & Layout, Website Ideas, WordPress Plugins, Wordpress Tutorials
Tags: blog templates, category plugin, custom category page, list posts, posts on pages
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Great plugin – just what I have been looking for – why is it not a standard function in WP?
Keep up the great work.
What about options for ordering the posts listed? date or alphabetical ??
Ok – helps if you read the instructions – you can change the display order – great plugin!
[...] Create a new page to list all your videos on (you could use List Posts on Pages plugin) [...]
[...] best effort that I’ve seen so far, in my oh-so-brief journey, is the WP plug-in named “List Posts on Pages.” I will definitely be taking a closer look at [...]
Mike, Have a look at the plugin author’s page. You can order the post numerous different ways.
I’ve reorganised my blog a few times since it’s inception a few weeks ago because I didn’t like the way it looked. I changed everything to static pages (when there were less) organised under a heading page, because I wanted a plug-in just like this and couldn’t find it.
Thanks for sharing – I’m off to reorganise my WP site again.
List several categories’ posts at once by listing all the relevant post ids separated by commas.
The very latest version of this plugin allows you to display the post’s excerpt. Default is ‘no’, use excerpt=yes to activate it inside your square brackets. Note: You need to have text in the excerpt box under each post for this to work. See this page as an example – Essential WordPress Plugins
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by nzwebwoman: Create a Custom page for each Blog Post Category – http://tinyurl.com/nj8obs {Appeal to separate audiences on same website}…
[...] you write a blog post, it is sent to your subscriber database as an email newsletter. The second is the List Category Posts Plugin which allows you to display posts from a particular category on either a page or a post. The latest [...]
awesome plugin. thanks! i have a question in regards to the page:
http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/website-articles/essential-plugins/
are you using anything special for “More posts about WordPress Plugins…”
Here is what I am trying to do:
The category I would like to use has 50+ posts, so instead having all 50 listed on the page, I wish to have no more than 10 per page. Using your plugin, I can create that intial page of 10, is there a way to create more pages of 10 for the same category, or do you just link the intial page back to the category, and then the users just scroll thru the category as normal?
Hope this makes sense?
also wanted to ask if there was a way to show the post content itself, instead of the excerpt? my blog is a photoblog with very little text.
Hi Joey,
Answer 1: No using anything special for read more posts, just a link to the category itself.
Answer 2: To show an Image just place that image in the excerpt using html. Make sure you include the http etc. View sample html…
is it possible to show some images when using the catlist id?
fx – i have a “animal” category – what to do on my pages using catlist id – so it shows an image from that category?
with regards and thanx for a great plugin.
The only way to show an image is to add excerpt=yes to the catlist code. See sample code 2 comments up.
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Thanks for sharing the plug-in. It’s what I’ve been looking for to add to my blog. However, I was wondering if you could help me with the installation. I followed all the steps suggested on your blog (and on the plug-in site), not sure if I did it correctly but this is what I did.
I created a new page template specifically for this (say template A). Then, I put [catlist id= orderby=date order=asc numberposts=-1] into the page (under the edit page on WP dashboard) and chose the attribute for that page to be as template A).
The result is that I was able to have a page that lists all the posts (links) in there. However, instead of showing only posts from the specific category ID that I put in the number, it shows all the posts I have on the blog. I’m not sure what happened here. I’m pretty new with the WP and have only basic knowledge on css, php. I’m not even sure if the way I stalled the plug-in is corrected. Would you be able to help me out? Thank you!
Hi Pearl,
The sample code you have pasted above doesn’t show a category id or how many posts to show. Is this exactly what you pasted onto the page?
Also, you don’t need a special template for this plugin, you just add the code to any page.
This plugin now has a widget so you can show posts from a certain category in your sidebars (with Excerpts).
Hi there,
I am trying to get a list of category posts to list on one of my pages using the same formatting as the normal WP posts page.
The problem I’m having is that when I add content=yes to the shortcode, all the formatting is removed from the post and it seems to ignore the tag.
Any idea how to solve this?
Thanks a million!
Hi Ken,
Try using excerpt=yes instead and adding an excerpt to each of your posts. If you go to the plugin author’s page, there are some styles you can add to your style sheet too.
I have just uploaded a Help Sheet for this plugin – http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/wordpress-guides/wordpress-help-sheets/?did=11
Hey Jo,
Will this plugin allow me to post several different posts on pages other than my home page?
Yes. That’s exactly what it does.
Hey Jo,
Thanks for the help. I was having the same problem as Ken with the Titles of posts showing up as well as the full content of every post, instead of selected ones.
It took some tinkering and figured It out. If you just want to display the entire content of selected posts from a given category, then this is what you should post into the page:
[catlist id=27 catlist content=yes numberposts=2]
Substituting your id and the # of posts you want to show.
Cheers,
JJW