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Using the Featured Content Option of the Post List Element in Thrive Architect

Whenever you add a “Post List” element to the website, that you are building with Thrive Architect, you will also have the possibility to use the “Featured Content” option, from the “Main Options” of the “Post List” element.

The “Featured Content” option allows you to display your most important post(s), (or pages, Thrive Apprentice content, custom post types) above the content you display with the “Post List” element.

The content you choose to display with the “Featured Content” option will always remain on top of the “Post List” element, so you can highlight essential posts/pages, if you use this option.

Here is how you can do this:

First, you have to add the “Post List” element to your page and customize it. If you need detailed information on how to do that, take a look at this article:

After you have added the “Post List” element to your page, when this element is selected, you will find the “Show Featured Content” option among the main “Post List” options from the left sidebar:

Click on the switch next to this option to activate it:

The switch will become green, signaling that the “Show Featured Content” option is now active:

Once you activate the “Show Featured Content” option, you will see a new section appear above the “Post List” element in the page:

This is the “Featured Content List” and it stands in the place of the featured content that you will add here. However, before you will be able to do that, you have to choose a template for your featured posts first.

In order to do that, click on the “Insert Featured Content List” button from this section:

This will open a pop-up window with various templates available for your “Featured Content List”. Select the template that you would like to use by clicking on it and then click on the “Choose Template” button to apply it:

Use the Sidebar Options

After you have chosen a template, you will see one of your posts appear in the “Featured Content List” on the page, as an example for the template. Furthermore, the main options of the “Featured Content List” will open in the left sidebar:

These are the options you will have to use to add the posts/pages as the featured content and then, to customize the “Featured Content List”.

As you can see, these options are similar to those that you have for the “Post List” element.

Choose the Template

First, you have the “Template Options”, with the help of which you can change the template you have chosen for the “Featured Content List” anytime. To do this, simply click on the field with the template:

This will open the pop-up with the available templates and you can choose the one you want to replace the current one with from the list, just as you did the first time you have selected a template from here.

Note: Before changing the template, keep in mind that if you do this, all the content, as well as customization, that you have added to the “Featured Content List” will be lost.

This is why we recommend you select a suitable template for your “Featured Content List”, before adding content to it.

Filter Posts

Next, you will see the “Edit Design” and the “Filter Posts” options.

The “Edit Design” option allows you to do more in-depth customization when it comes to the design of the “Featured Content List”, by making the editing interface change. Because of this, we will describe this option further down this article.

The other option, the “Filter Posts” one is also very useful, because it allows you to select what content to display as the featured content in the “Featured Content List”.

In order to do that, first, click on the “Filter Posts” button from the left sidebar:

After you click on the “Filter Posts” button, a pop-up window will open, containing various options with which you can select what content you would like to display in the element and how to display it:

You can add a “Custom Query”, also including various “Display Rules”, or you can use the “Related Posts” tab to display posts that are related to your page as the featured content.

These options are exactly the same as the “Filter Posts” options for the “Post List element. Therefore, if you need help with using them, please check out this article where you will find detailed instructions regarding the use of these options.

Note: Since the “Featured Content List” is meant to highlight your most important content, we recommend that you only display 1 or 2 posts/pages in it, the ones that are really important.

If your goal is to display many posts, so not featured content, then you can display them using the “Post List” element.

Display Type

Here you can select how to display the posts/pages in the “Featured Content List”. You can choose between the following three display types:

  • List: This type will display each post/page or item of content in a list format, one after another.

  • Grid: This type is useful if you want to display the posts/pages/content in a series of columns side by side. Each column will have a fixed height and spacing between them, to form a perfect grid.

  • Masonry: This type will also display the posts/pages/content in columns, but unlike the “Grid” type, there are no fixed heights for the columns when “Masonry” is used as the “Display Type”. This is an irregular layout, best visible when having 2 or more rows on your “Featured Content List”.

In order to use one of these “Display Types”, simply click on it from the “Display Type” section:

After clicking on either of these three, you will see how the content of the “Featured Content List” will be adjusted accordingly on the page.

Note: Just as its name says, the “Featured Content List” is meant to display your featured content (1 or 2 items) in the form of a list. The designs of the “Featured Content List” templates were also created with this in mind.

This is why we recommend you use the “List” display type for your featured content. That is the most suitable display option for the “Featured Content List”.

Columns Number

With this option, you can set the number of columns in which the content of the “Featured Content List” should be displayed.

The default number of columns is 3. In order to change this, simply drag the slider from the “Columns Number” section, or enter a value manually in the box next to it:

Vertical Space

You can use this option to adjust the vertical space (the space between the rows) of the “Featured Content List”.

In order to do that drag the slider, or enter a value manually in the box next to the slider for the space you want to modify:

Number of Items

The next field allows you to set the number of different article boxes that will be displayed within the “Featured Content List”:

Content

This option allows you to define how much should be displayed in the “Featured Content List” from the posts/pages or other types of content that you have selected for the list.

All you have to do is to click on the preferred content display option and it will be selected. You can choose between the following content display options:

  • Full: Selecting this option will show the entire content of the post/page

  • Excerpt: This option will show a part of the content of the post/page. You can set up which part in the WordPress editor of that post/page, through the “Excerpt” option.

  • Words: With this option, you can display an exact number of words from every post/page. If you click on the “Words” option, the “Word Count” field will appear. Here you can select, or type in the number of words you want to show for every post/page in the “Featured Content List”:

Read More Text

The “Read More Text” option can be used to display a hyperlinked text at the end of the “Featured Content List” items. This is useful for cases when you choose to show an excerpt or a certain number of words from the posts/pages as the featured content.

In order to use this option, you have to enter the text you want to be linked (for e.g. “Read more”, “Continue reading”) in the box from the “Read More Text” option:

After this is done, the text will be displayed at the end of every “Featured Content List” item and it will be linked automatically to the actual blog post/page, aka the featured content. This way, when someone will click on this linked text, they will be redirected to the actual content they have read an excerpt or a few words from.

With the help of this option, you can make the entire items from the “Featured Content List” to be linked to the featured content they represent. What this means, is that if you activate the “Link entire item to content” option, each item will be linked to the blog post/page they display a part of.

This way whenever someone will see the “Featured Content List”, they will not have to click on a specific title, button or on the featured image to be redirected to the post/page. They will be able to click anywhere inside/on the respective “Featured Content List” item and they will be redirected to the featured content.

In order to activate this option, simply click on the switch next to it:

The switch will become green, signaling that the “Link entire item to content” option is activated, and every item from the “Featured Content List” will become linked to their post/page.

Note: Please keep in mind that if you activate the “Link entire item to content” option, all the other links from the “Featured Content List” (for example, the links applied to buttons or images of an item, with the “Animation and Action” option) will be disabled.

Edit Design

Besides using these options to choose what and how to display as featured content, you can also customize the design of the “Featured Content List”.

To do that, go back to the first options in the left sidebar and click on the “Edit Design” button:

This will open the edit mode of the “Featured Content List”, represented by the orange borders in the editor. While this mode is open, you will see that the editing interface changes and it will allow you to make changes to the actual elements inside the “Featured Content List”.

To do this, simply click on the element you want to customize and use its options from the left sidebar to customize it.

Group styling is also activated for the elements of the “Featured Content List”, so whenever you apply a change to an element from an item, the same change will be applied to the corresponding elements from the other items. This has the purpose of keeping the consistency inside the “Featured Content List”.

Editing the design of the “Featured Content List” elements works the same way as editing the design included in the “Post List”. Thus, if you want to find out more about how to do this, check out this article.

Once you have finished editing the design, you can click on the “Done” button from the bottom center part of the page:

With this “Done” button you will exit the edit mode and you can go back to the “Featured Content List”.

Besides the main options of the “Featured Content List” that have been described so far, you can also use the more general options that are available in the left sidebar, below the main options. Since these general options are available for almost every Thrive Architect element, we have separate tutorials about each of them.

Therefore, if you need in-depth information on how to use these general options, take a look at our knowledge base.

If you decide that you do not need the “Featured Content List” anymore, you can simply delete it by clicking on the “Delete” option (the little trash icon) on its upper-right corner:

Keep in mind that deleting the “Featured Content List” will also automatically deactivate the “Show Featured Content” option from the “Post List” element.

In case you would like to see more tutorials about various Thrive Architect elements and features, check out our tutorials page.

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