WordPress by default offers posts and pages for creating your content. In addition, you can create different formats like audio, gallery, video, etc. within the post. However, this is not sufficient when you want to create a listicle targeting your readers. With the emergence of content types such as “Top 10s”, and “Rankings”, listicles are becoming an important tool in most website’s’ content creation arsenal. In this article, we will explain various ways to create listicles in WordPress site.
What is a Listicle?
HTML offers three types of list tags – unordered, ordered and distributed list. You can easily create a list using the Gutenberg list block in WordPress. Listicles are also made up of lists. However, they are different than simply using <ul>/<li> or <ol>/<li> HTML list tags. Think of a “Top 10” or “Top 5” article that you read in a newspaper website or app, and that’s basically a listicle.
Listicles will have its specific list headings and underneath each, enough content to explain and articulate each list heading.
Unlike simple ordered or unordered list content, listicles are gaining popularity and acclaim mainly because they are engaging, informative and most importantly just fun to read. No one wants to read countless paragraphs of just plain text, right? So, with listicles we get a good blend of text, images, videos, and sometimes even GIFs. All of these varied types of content helps to make the post vibrant, and interesting to read and go through.
How to Create Listicles in WordPress?
So, now that you know what listicles are and why they are important, let’s discuss how we can create them on your own website. Creating listicles on WordPress is quite simple and can be easily achieved using one of the following ways:
- Create your own listicles with Gutenberg block editor
- Use a theme that offers this feature
- Find a plugin to create listicles without hassle
Let us explain each method in detail in the following sections.
1. Create Custom Listicles with Gutenberg Editor
If you do not have a theme that offers listicle feature and do not want to install an additional plugin for this purpose, then the option is to create a custom listicle using default Gutenberg block editor. You can use heading, paragraph, image and column blocks for creating a simple listicle. It is also possible to group all these blocks together and use it as a single reusable block anywhere on your site. Below is an example of how a listicle will look on your site:
Though this is easy to create, you need to spend plenty of time if you want to have the listicles with different design.
2. Using a Theme that Offers Listicles
There are many newspaper and magazine style themes offer listicle type content creation. What you need is to simply create content with heading and other elements. The theme will automatically create listicles by using the headings as different section. The most popular Newspaper theme is one of the best examples for creating listicles in WordPress site. This theme will offer you a post layout with smart listicles and automatically create the list based on your content headings. You can customize the listicles of each post using the meta box options available in the post editor that looks like below:
You can select different style for your listicle (called Smart List in Newspaper theme), numbering style and heading to divide the section. The published listicle will look something like below in a plain case. However, you can create pagination, dropdown selections like they have shown on their theme demo page.
If you are planning to create hundreds of listicles like “Top 10” website, then we highly recommend going for a dedicated theme like Newspaper.
3. Using Listicle Plugin
The final and most viable option is to create a listicle in WordPress with the help of a plugin. But which one to go for? Well, we’ve made that choice very simple for you. Below we’ve picked out the best plugins to use for creating listicles on WordPress and not only that, but we’ve also laid out all the steps you need to follow when creating listicles through the plugin of our choice. So, keep reading to find out more.
3.1. Kadence Gutenberg Blocks Plugin
Nowadays, there are many blocks plugin offer free blocks, patterns and starter templates. Kadence blocks is one of the most beautiful plugins to create wonderful elements on your site. The plugin will allow you to pick up a block from the design library right inside your post editor. You can simply use any blocks with numbers and adjust the layout for looking like a listicle.
In fact, the example block we have shown in the section 1 above is edited from one of the base Kadence blocks.
3.2. Listicles by LezWatch.TV
When it comes to creating listicles on WordPress, nothing beats the Listicles plugin by LezWatch.TV. While it may not be the most popular listicles related plugin out there, it is still a great plugin, nonetheless, being quite user-friendly and easy to implement. The plugin will let you create interactive blocks for setting up lists in your articles. The great thing about this plugin is the fact that you will be able to add images, content, videos and more inside each list item within a list.
To make it even easier for you, we’ll guide you through the steps involved in creating listicles through the Listicles by LezWatch.TV.
- Install and activate the Listicles by LezWatch.TV plugin in your site.
- Upon activation, head over to your post where you want to generate a listicle.
- Enter the word “listicle” in the block inserter as shown below and select the “Listicle” block.
- You’ll then see a listicle block automatically generate itself, and you’ll be able to add content to it. By default, the plugin will give you 2 list items to start with but you can continually add more by clicking on the “Add List Item” button.
- As with any other Gutenberg block, you’ll be able to change the alignment, typography, width, and more of this block as well as per your design guidelines and preferences. For demonstration purposes, we’ve filled out the list items with some content to show you how it can look like.
As you can see from the example shown above, you can easily include images, content, and videos as well to each list item effortlessly.
3.3. Listly: Listicles for WordPress
This is another great option for creating listicles on WordPress. Though it is older and not updated for some time, this plugin is great for creating, maintaining, and drawing your customer’s attention to list posts, a.k.a listicles, in WordPress site.
- Just like with the previous plugin, you will be able to add different types of content such as text, images, videos, etc.
- Furthermore, the plugin offers YouTube embeds, collaborative editing, automatic device responsiveness, special list item ranking capabilities among other things.
- It also offers multiple layout options such as slideshow, list, gallery, magazine and minimal.
- Unlike the previous plugin, with the Listly plugin, you’ll have to configure the plugin’s settings page to generate listicles, and you’ll also need a Listly Publisher Key, which is free but you’ll need to sign up from the author’s website.
3.4. Infographic Maker – iList
While this plugin is amazing for creating infographics and graphical content on your articles, it offers great features to create elegant looking listicles as well. It is a state-of-the-art plugin in the sense that there is no other plugin out there that can create infographics from the website’s backend alone. So, if you want to create aesthetically pleasing, elegant and well-designed listicles that look like infographics, then this plugin is definitely the one for you.
- Brilliant for data visualization purposes as you can easily generate amazing looking infographics with Charts, graphs, text lists, and graphics by just uploading and adding images and text of your liking, and then selecting from a list of pre-built templates.
- The only downside to this plugin would be that the free version is slightly limited as you get access to only a handful of design templates, and you can only create a fixed number of listicles during a particular time period with the free version.
Bringing it All together
Well, that’s about it. Creating listicles in WordPress site shouldn’t be a challenging task to do. It is definitely something you can do yourself or with the help of theme/plugin to take your content marketing to the next level. With listicles you can add a unique presentation and layout element to your site moving forward.
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