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sandywp / plugins / insert-pages

Insert Pages

4.8 out of 5 stars. 4.8 71 reviews

Insert Pages lets you embed any WordPress content (e.g., pages, posts, custom post types) into other WordPress content using the Shortcode API.

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v3.11.5 30,000+ installs WP 3.3.0+

By Paul Ryan · Read the readme on WordPress.org

your-sandbox.sandywp.com/wp-admin
Insert Pages running inside a SandyWP sandbox

What you get inside

3 screens

  • Insert Pages toolbar button.

  • Insert Pages browser.

  • Insert Pages shortcode example.

screenshot 1 of 3
Insert Pages toolbar button.

Insert Pages toolbar button.

About this plugin

Insert Pages lets you embed any WordPress content (e.g., pages, posts, custom post types) into other WordPress content using the Shortcode API. It also includes a widget for inserting pages into any widget area.

The real power of Insert Pages comes when you start creating custom post types, either programmatically in your theme, or using another plugin like Custom Post Type UI. You can then abstract away common data types (like videos, quizzes, due dates) into their own custom post types, and then show those pieces of content within your normal pages and posts by Inserting them as a shortcode.

Advanced Tutorial

Contributor Wes Modes has graciously written an updated tutorial for the Gutenberg era, focused on creating a custom post type with custom fields and a custom template for rendering content. Read it here: https://medium.com/@wesmodes/using-wordpress-insert-pages-plugin-with-your-custom-post-types-and-custom-templates-535c141f9635

Example: Normal Use Case

Say you teach a course and you’re constantly referring to an assignment due date in your course website. The next semester the due date changes, and you have to go change all of the locations you referred to it. Instead, you’d rather just change the date once! With Insert Pages, you can do the following:

  1. Create a custom post type called Due Date.
  2. Create a new Due Date called Assignment 1 Due Date with Fri Nov 22, 2013 as its content.
  3. Edit all the pages where the due date occurs and use the Insert Pages toolbar button to insert a reference to the Due Date you just created. Be sure to set the Display to Content so Fri Nov 22, 2013 shows wherever you insert it. The shortcode you just created should look something like this: [insert page='assignment-1-due-date' display='content']
  4. That’s it! Now, when you want to change the due date, just edit the Assignment 1 Due Date custom post you created, and it will automatically be updated on all the pages you inserted it on.

Example: Advanced Use Case

Say your site has a lot of video content, and you want to include video transcripts and video lengths along with the videos wherever you show them. You could just paste the transcripts into the page content under the video, but then you’d have to do this on every page the video showed on. (It’s also just a bad idea, architecturally!) With Insert Pages, you can use a custom post type and create a custom theme template to display your videos+transcripts+lengths just the way you want!

  1. Create a custom post type called Video.
  2. Use a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields to add extra fields to your new Video custom post type. Add a Video URL field, a Transcript field, and a Video Length field.
  3. Create a new Video called My Awesome Video with the following values in its fields:
    • Video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
    • Transcript: We’re no strangers to love, You know the rules and so do I…
    • Video Length: 3:34
  4. Create a template in your theme so we can display the video content as we want. I won’t cover this step here since it’s pretty involved, but you can find more help in the WordPress Codex. Let’s assume you created a template called Video with transcript (video-with-transcript.php) that shows the youtube video in a fancybox, and includes a button that shows the text transcript when a user clicks on it.
  5. Edit the pages where you want the video to show up and use the Insert Pages toolbar button to insert a reference to the Video you just created. Be sure to set the Display to Use a custom template, and select your new template Video with transcript. The shortcode you just created should look something like this: [insert page='my-awesome-video' display='video-with-transcript.php']
  6. That’s it! Now you can create all sorts of video content and know that it’s being tracked cleanly in the database as its own custom post type, and you can place videos all over your site and not worry about lots of duplicate content.

The possibilities are endless!

Questions

How do I create a custom template for use by Insert Pages?

A basic template would look like the following. This would be a file on your theme directory, e.g., your-custom-template.php:

<?php
/**
 * Template Name: Name of your custom template
 */
?>
<div id="your-wrapper-div">
  <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
    <div id="your-container-div-for-each-post">
      <?php the_content(); ?>
      <?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>
    </div>
  <?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

You can use whatever template tags that you’d like, check out the WordPress documentation.

How do I limit the list of pages in the dialog to certain post types?

You can hook into the ‘insert_pages_available_post_types’ filter to limit the post types displayed in the dialog. Here’s an example filter that just shows Posts:

/**
 * Filter the list of post types to show in the insert pages dialog.
 *
 * @param $post_types Array of post type names to include in the insert pages list.
 */
function only_insert_posts( $post_types ) {
    return array( 'post' );
}
add_filter( 'insert_pages_available_post_types', 'only_insert_posts' );

Do I have to use the toolbar button to Insert Pages?

No! You can type out the shortcode yourself if you’d like, it’s easy. Here’s the format:

[insert page='{slug}|{id}' display='title|link|content|all|{custom-template.php}']

Examples:

  • [insert page='your-page-slug' display='link']
  • [insert page='your-page-slug' display='your-custom-template.php']
  • [insert page='123' display='all']

Anything I should be careful of?

Just one! The plugin prevents you from embedding a page in itself, but you can totally create a loop that will prevent a page from rendering. Say on page A you embed page B, but on page B you also embed page A. As the plugin tries to render either page, it will keep going down the rabbit hole until your server runs out of memory. Future versions should have a way to prevent this behavior!

4.8

71 reviews

  • 5 ★ 66
  • 4 ★ 0
  • 3 ★ 2
  • 2 ★ 0
  • 1 ★ 3

Ratings come from WordPress.org. SandyWP does not collect its own reviews.

sandywp / also on the shelf

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