A grid forces every card to the same height, which means cropping. If your category images are a mix of tall and wide, that is the wrong trade.
Masonry lets each card keep its own proportions and packs them together, so nothing is cut off.
For every Taxonomy Listing setting in one place, see the Taxonomy Listing guide.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — the Taxonomy Listing block needs Nexter Blocks Pro.
- Block to enable: Taxonomy Listing, switched on under Nexter > Blocks in your WordPress dashboard.
- Terms that exist. The block lists your real taxonomy terms, so a site with one category shows one card.
Steps
- Add the Taxonomy Listing block and set the layout to masonry.
- Set the column count per breakpoint, then publish.
How It Behaves
- Masonry and grid share the same engine. Measured: both carry
tpgb-isotopeon the wrapper and render real<img>tags. The difference is how the heights are resolved. - Each card keeps its image’s proportions, so a tall image stays tall.
- Cards are placed by column, not by row, so the visual order runs down a column before it runs across — worth knowing if the order of your categories carries meaning.
- The category image comes from Nexter’s own term image field, set on the term itself when you edit it. It is not WordPress’s featured image and, on a product category, it is not WooCommerce’s category image either — those are stored separately and this block does not read them.
- A term with no image still renders one. Measured: removing a term’s image produced a card showing a generic placeholder shipped with the plugin, not a blank or broken image. That is why missing category images are easy to miss.
- The post count is shown by default. Measured on an untouched listing: each card rendered its real term count.
- Type a number into the item count; do not leave it blank. Measured on 5.0.6: a blank field renders one term rather than all of them, and so does
0. Reported to the developers. - Measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated: the block renders nothing at all — not a wrapper, not a message, zero output. This is a Pro-only block.
Limitations
- Pro only — nothing renders with Pro deactivated.
- Masonry needs JavaScript to position the cards. Before it runs, the layout is briefly a plain stack.
- The bottom edge is ragged by design. If you need a clean line, use grid.
- Similar image heights make masonry pointless. If all your term images are the same shape, it renders as an ordinary grid and costs you the script.
- Reading order is by column, which can surprise people expecting left-to-right.
Troubleshooting
It looks exactly like a grid
Your term images are all the same proportions, so there are no height differences to resolve. That is working correctly; grid would be the lighter choice.
The cards jump around as the page loads
That is masonry positioning running. It settles once the script has placed everything.
The categories are in an odd order
Masonry fills by column. The query order is unchanged, but the visual order reads downwards first.
Only one card is showing
The item count is blank or zero. Enter a number.
