Fast Post Lists is a WordPress post list plugin with thumbnails that provides additional shortcodes to display a list of posts within another post or page. It is fully customizable so you can present the list exactly as you like, whether it is bullets, thumbnails from the posts or whatever you like.
Key features are:
- Filter posts by a search query
- Filter posts by category, via an inclusion or exclusion list of categories
- Filter posts by tag, via an inclusion or exclusion list of tags
- Order posts by a post field of your choice
- Limit the number in the list, e.g. to show the 10 most recent posts
- Group posts by category or tag, with subheadings displayed for category or tag
- Create lists with thumbnails from each post
- Full control to configure list CSS styles, HTML per post and HTML at the start and end
Example
You can view an example of Fast Post Lists in use on this web page:
Beginner Biker Adventures – Motorcycle Gear Reviews
Here, Fast Post Lists is used to query all posts within my ‘review’ category and present them in groups per their ‘tags’. Thumbnails are displayed, that are pulled from images within each post.
Installation
You can download this plugin from WordPress.org, or install it directly from within your WordPress Plugins page by searching for “fast post lists”.
Configuration
The options page allows you to manually enter some HTML to include at the start and end of the list, plus the exact format of each list item. Additionally, CSS styles can also be added through the options page as required. The configured HTML per post uses a number of key values that will be substituted with data from each post. These are:
- [[title]] – the post title
- [[permalink]] – the post’s permalink
- [[img]] – the first image attachment for the post (if any).
Shortcode Usage
The shortcode to use in your posts or pages is:
[fu_postlist]
By default, this will query all posts and sort by post title.
Below are some examples of how each of the parameters can be used:
List only posts that match the search keyword ‘stuff’
[fu_postlist search='stuff']
List only posts that match the search keyword ‘stuff’ but don’t have the keyword ‘rubbish’
[fu_postlist search='stuff -rubbish']
List only posts within the single category ‘Spiders’
[fu_postlist cat='Spiders']
A single category can be listed by name or by id.
List posts within the categories Spiders or Dogs
[fu_postlist cat='Spiders,Dogs']
List posts within the categories Spiders and Dogs
[fu_postlist cat='Spiders+Dogs']
List posts not within the categories 10 or 12
[fu_postlist notcat='10,12']
Categories to exclude must be listed as a comma-separated list of ids.
List posts with either the tags ‘rain’ or ‘shine’
[fu_postlist tag='rain,shine']
List posts with both the tags ‘heavy’ and ‘metal’
[fu_postlist tag='heavy+metal']
List posts without the tag ‘trouble’
[fu_postlist nottag='trouble']
Limit the number of posts listed to 10
[fu_postlist maxposts=10]
A value of -1 or the parameter omitted entirely will list all posts found.
Group posts by category.
The category name will be inserted as a subheading at the start of each group. If posts are in multiple categories, they will be repeated in each group.
[fu_postlist groupby=cat]
Group posts by tag
Similar to the above, posts are grouped by tags. If posts have multiple tags, they will be repeated in each group.
[fu_postlist groupby=tag]
Order posts by post title (default behaviour)
[fu_postlist orderby='title']
You may order by ‘ID’, ‘author’, ‘name’ (post slug), ‘date’, ‘rand’ etc.
Of course, you can mix and match many of these parameters to your heart’s content.