Create tables in WordPress – .com

There are many ways to create tables in WordPress (the typical row and column tables). Let’s see the best option based on your needs.

A solution for each case

The first thing we should ask ourselves is about the use of that table. Is it an isolated case? That is, is it the only table that we are going to put on our website? or are we working constantly with tables? It is not worth installing certain plugins that can affect the performance of our website, just because in a post (among hundreds of them) you have to put a table, right?

We can even go further: Do we want re-use that table? Perhaps it is a price table that we want to place at various points on our website. In that case we will need a solution that allows us to have the table in a centralized point so that when it is updated there, it is automatically modified in all the places where it is displayed.

So, let’s see the solutions based on each case. And we will start with the simplest. Create a table in the editor itself.

Create a table with the WordPress editor

This plugin is not only extremely simple and useful, but it is also developed by one of the best WordPress companies in the United States. It’s called , and it simply adds the necessary interface to our post editor to create tables simply and quickly.

Only by installing and activating the plugin can we create a table and modify it at will, as if we were doing it in Word. We can modify the appearance of the table, of the cells, rows or columns.

But the best thing about this plugin is that has no lock. This means that If one day we don’t want to use it anymore and we uninstall it, we won’t lose any table nor format, since it does not work with shortcodes. Just create the HTML code that should be used to create that table.

In fact, it would even be possible to install the plugin just to create a table, and then uninstall it, if you are not going to use it anymore. It would be the equivalent of creating a table with an online HTML editor (, which also supports tables) and then copy and paste the code in the “Text” tab. But in this case it is much more convenient and faster to have it already integrated into the editor, to be able to make changes later.

This solution is the most recommended if you simply want to make tables occasionally in certain posts, which you do not want to reuse.

Create a table in WordPress to be reused

On the contrary, if you want something more powerful in terms of creating tables, your plugin is . This plugin allows you to create tables (which are stored as CPTs) that later you can call (insert) anywhere via shortcodes.

Thus, we only have to indicate that we want to create a new table and we will find a table creation page that asks us for the basic data (later they can be modified):

And then, we can fill in the boxes with the corresponding data through the interface that it offers us:

When we save this table, it already appears in the list of tables that was previously empty. And most importantly: it tells us the shortcode (abbreviated code, short code) that we should use to display it on any page.

And ready! Now the table will appear wherever we have the shortcode, wherever it is: A post, a page, a product… Or in several of them. It doesn’t matter completely!

As you can see, by default the table looks great (may vary depending on each theme) and it also shows us the number of records and the filtering option (search engine top right). All this may be fine in certain cases, but in others we won’t need it, so we can simply disable it.

In this version we have removed both the sort option and the filter, and we have told it that we do not want it to toggle the background color of each row. The result has been a simplified and lighter version of the same board.

The plugin goes much further, and allows you to import, export, customize the design and a thousand other things. Take a look, it’s well worth it.

Be careful because unlike the other plugin, this one does have locking. In other words, if one day you get tired of the plugin and uninstall it, all the tables that are being displayed on your website will disappear and you will only see the shortcodes (that happens with any plugin that uses shortcodes, of course).

conclusion

In summary, we can say that creating tables in WordPress is easy, and here we have seen two very interesting approaches that you can choose, depending on your needs. So, as they would say in Indiana Jones, choose wisely 🙂

And as always, just to say that if you want to know more about WordPress, you can take a look at what I have available, where you will learn all this and much more, through step-by-step guided tutorials.

For any question, do not hesitate to contact!