Description

Advanced Post Lists (APL) sets itself apart from being “Just Another Post List Plugin” by giving admins the most amount of control when displaying Recent Posts, Related Posts, Future Posts, or a list of posts in general. However, there is a learning curve.

You must know:

• HTML
• CSS
• (Optional)
  • JavaScript
  • PHP

In many ways, APL is designed to act much like The Loop which is most notable in Themes, but APL takes that concept and turns it into an Admin tool that can easily be changed, moved, or added/removed. This eliminates much of the backend work, and prevents being limited to what is hardcoded into a theme.

APL accomplishes 3 main types of tasks. Filter, Design, and Placement.

Filter

• Custom Post Type and Taxonomy Support – Displays Posts/Pages from custom post types, taxonomies, and terms. This includes other plugins, but may not be compatibly supported.
• Enhanced/Diverse Queries – Capable of diverse filter configuration when displaying posts. This feature allows…
  • Different Post Types -> Taxonomies query configurations.
  • Multiple Page Parents from multiple Post Types.
• Dynamic Filters (Terms & Page Parents) – Grabs values to filter by that is based on the current page being viewed. Ex. Displaying Related Posts in a Header, Footer, Sidebar, etc..
• Show Content from Published, Private, Future, etc. – Display content on the frontend so users don’t have to navigate to the admin side. Allowing private landing pages to be created. Note: Further development may be required.

DESIGN

• Internal Shortcodes – Primarily used to add various data from a given Post/Page, but the capabilities is rather extensive, and being able to extend to custom PHP functions the options are practically limitless. See documentation for a full list & details.
• Custom Formats to Loop ( The Loop ) – Themes follow this concept, but APL turns that concept into a tool. The “List Content” loop, as well as the before & after, is where most of the work is done with preset HTML, CSS, JS, & PHP designs. It is also optional to set an Empty Message (No Posts Found) to display.

PLACEMENT

• Post List Shortcode – User friendly method of adding Preset Post Lists to a section of a page.
• Sidebar Widget – Easier to use. However, adding post list shortcodes to the text sidebar also produces the same results.
• PHP Hardcode – For more extensive design work. There is a public function for displaying Preset Post Lists where WordPress support and functions for admins aren’t fully present.

This is an evolved version of Kalins Post List. Most of the credit for the idea behind APL goes to that plugin. As you may have noticed, APL is still in the development stages of its target version (1.0.0).

APL’s Documentation is located on GitHub Wiki (WIP). Which is also open for others to contribute.

Questions/Bug Report submit thread / ticket at WordPress or GitHub Issue / Tickets.