Recent Posts inside the Tabs element content area

[TrainingMGR]

I’m trying to move forward from the Classic Recent Posts element. The best thing about that element is that I could nest the shortcode inside the content area of the Tabs element so I could essentially create an ‘on the fly’ post list filter for my audiences.

Because the Tabs element content area will not allow me to use anything other than shortcode, I tried to create a global post list block and designed it to look like the Classic Recent Posts list element. If I were to continue down that path, it would require me to make a Global Block for every tab, which over the years in how I have built our site that would be 100s of Global blocks.

With all that said, I was excited to see the ACF integration with loopers, and I was curious if you all could show me the steps on how to create an ACF category-based looper that would allow me to modify the categories for a Post List global block.

I’ve watched (admittedly several times now) the looper videos and the newly introduced ACF video with loopers; however, I feel so close to figuring this out, but I’m not finding the ultimate way.

I’m on an intranet, so I pasted an example of how I would like this to look.

[alexander]

Hi @TrainingMGR,

I see what you mean there. You’re on the right here. Unfortunately, as you’ve already concluded, your options would be Global Blocks like you’ve described or sticking with the recent posts shortcode. There isn’t a way to build the content that goes inside of tabs. You’re running into that limitation, as well as not being able to pass information into Global Blocks.

You can use ACF relational fields to loop over a list of categories and output their titles, meta information, etc. but you can’t actually generate a list of posts from the category using ACF.

The real challenge here is that the Tab content isn’t buildable. We plan on making this possible, but haven’t gotten to it yet. Our next cycle will be a step in that direction because we’re going to add Modal, Dropdown, and Off Canvas elements that allow building directly inside them. We’re holding off a bit longer on tabs because we want to explore some lower level systems to arbitrarily making things “toggleable”. Our goal is something that allows more flexibility and supports separating the tab content and tab navigation.

I wish I had better news and a solution, but regretfully it might be best to stick with shortcodes for now.

[TrainingMGR]

Thank you, @alexander, for the detailed reply. I will pause my quest for now and most likely use the Classic Recent Posts shortcode. I hope the Classic Recent Posts element will not be retired anytime soon.

Thanks again, Nate

[alexander]

Hi Nate,

Sounds good. It certainly won’t be retired. Any features we add will be supported indefinitely for backwards compatibility. We don’t really recommend using classic elements when building new websites because you’ll run into many limitations compared to what can be done with the newer elements, but we’ll never remove them. The only exception I can think of is if something starts conflicting with newer versions of WordPress and we have to make adjustments to keep it working but WordPress has always been great about supporting things long term.

[TrainingMGR]

Great to know @alexander! Much appreciated.

[tristup]

You are most welcome, Nate.