An accordion that starts fully closed hides everything, including the one answer most visitors came for. Starting with that item open saves everyone a click.
The Accordion block has a Default Active Tab setting for exactly this. This guide covers what it does today, measured on a published page.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — the Default Active Tab setting needs Nexter Blocks Pro.
- Block to enable: Accordion, switched on under Nexter > Blocks in your WordPress dashboard.
- An Accordion block with a few items — see the main Accordion guide.
Please read the How It Behaves section below before using this setting. Measured on Nexter Blocks 5.0.6, it does not currently open an item.
Steps
- Select your Accordion block and open its settings.
- Enter the position of the item that should start open, counting from the first item.
- Publish and check the real page.
How It Behaves
Measured on Nexter Blocks 5.0.6, on published pages: no item opens, whatever value is entered. The accordion always loads fully closed.
- Measured directly: with the setting at
2, the published page rendered zero items carrying an active state. The markup was byte-identical to an accordion with the setting untouched. - This is a bug, not a configuration mistake. It has been reported to the development team with the measurement above. This page will be corrected once it is fixed.
- Everything else about the accordion works normally — items still open and close on click, and the rest of the block is unaffected.
- Measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated: this setting produces no attribute at all on the published page and the accordion falls back to plain click behaviour.
What to Do Instead
Until the setting works, these are the honest options.
- Put the most important content outside the accordion. If one answer matters enough to be open on arrival, it is usually better as ordinary text above the list.
- Link straight to an item. An anchor link to an accordion item opens that item for a visitor arriving from elsewhere, which covers the common case of pointing someone at one specific answer.
- Order the list so the most-wanted item is first. It costs one click and no workaround.
Limitations
- The setting does not currently work — measured, as described above.
- Pro only even once fixed: measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated, the setting produces no attribute on the page whatsoever.
- An open-by-default item still hides the rest. Opening one does not make an accordion a good place for content everybody needs.
Troubleshooting
I set a value and nothing opens
That is the current behaviour, measured and reported. Nothing is wrong with your setup. See What to Do Instead above.
Is there a value that does work?
No. Measured with the position given as both text and a number, neither opened an item.
Can I open an item with a link instead?
Yes, and this is the reliable route today. See the anchor link to an accordion item guide.
