A long list of posts covering five different subjects asks the reader to do the sorting. Most of them will not bother.
A category filter puts a row of buttons above the listing so a visitor can narrow it to the one subject they came for.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — the category filter needs Nexter Blocks Pro.
- Block to enable: Post Listing, switched on under Nexter > Blocks in your WordPress dashboard.
- Enough posts to see the effect. A listing with three posts cannot show pagination, filtering or a second row.
- Posts spread across several categories. A filter with one category in it is just a label.
Steps
- Select your Post Listing block.
- Switch the filter on.
- Choose what it filters by, normally category.
- Pick a filter style and alignment.
- Publish and try the filter on the real page.
How It Behaves
The filter renders as its own row above the listing and works in the browser.
- Measured on a published page: switching the filter on rendered the filter markup above the listing. With it off, that markup is absent entirely.
- It filters what the listing already queried. The categories offered come from the posts in the listing, so a category with no posts in range will not appear.
- There is an All option so a visitor can get back to the full list.
- It works on the published page, not in the editor.
- Everything ends up in one attribute. The block writes its whole query configuration into a
data-dypostattribute on the published page, so if a setting is not doing what you expect, that is where to look. - Measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated: this stops working. The block still renders a plain list of posts, so there is no error to see — just the feature quietly missing.
Limitations
- Pro only — measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated, the filter row disappears and the listing renders as a plain list.
- It filters the loaded posts, not your whole archive. If the listing shows six posts, the filter narrows those six.
- Many categories make a messy filter row. Past about eight it wraps and stops being scannable.
- Filtering and pagination interact awkwardly, because the filter only knows about the posts already on the page.
- The filter state is not in the URL, so a visitor cannot share a filtered view.
Troubleshooting
The filter does not appear
Check Nexter Blocks Pro is active. Measured with Pro off, the filter markup is not rendered at all.
A category is missing from the filter
No post in the current listing belongs to it. Increase the number of posts shown, or check the category is actually assigned.
Filtering hides posts that should match
The filter narrows the posts already loaded. Raise the post count so the listing covers everything you want filterable.
It does nothing in the editor
Expected. The filter runs on the published page.
