Most grids show posts: blog posts, pages, WooCommerce products, or a custom post type of your theme or of a plugin. The grid fills itself from WordPress: a new post in a chosen category shows up in the grid without any change to it. The Content page of the grid editor chooses the posts.
Source
Under Source, choose Posts. The other choice, Custom items, is a grid of items you add yourself (Custom grids); More sources lists the sources of add-ons (Streams and other sources from add-ons).
Which posts
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Post types | Post, Page, Product, and every other post type of the site. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) to choose several. |
| Categories and tags | The categories, tags and other taxonomies of those post types, with the number of items each has. Choose none to show every post of the post types. Clear, All Categories, All Tags and All Items choose quickly. |
| Match | Match any: a post in one of the chosen categories or tags shows. Match all: only posts in all of them show. |
| Extra query arguments | More conditions for WordPress’s query, written like year=2025&monthnum=12. For developers. |
With Page among the post types, Pages › Select Pages lets you choose single pages: start to type a page’s title. The categories you choose here are also the grid’s filters (Filters, sorting and search).
How many, and in which order
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Limit | The most posts the grid shows; -1 shows all. |
| Preview items | How many the editor’s preview shows. The site is not affected. |
| Initial order | The order of the items when the grid loads: by date, title, a custom field and more. |
| Direction | Descending (newest first, for a date) or Ascending. |
Visitors can reorder the grid themselves with a sort menu (Filters, sorting and search). The row Media chooses which image of a post the grid shows and in which size (Loading and performance).
The options of each post: the Essential Grid box
Below the editor of every post and page, the Essential Grid box holds what the grid knows about that post:
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Custom Meta | The post’s values of your custom fields, such as a price or a photographer, for skins and sorting. |
| Alternative Sources | A video (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, a file), a SoundCloud track, another image, an iframe or another grid, for the grid and the lightbox instead of the post’s own media. |
| Skin Modifications | Rules that change the look of this post’s item, such as another colour for one layer. |
| Featured Grid | A grid that replaces the post’s featured image wherever the theme shows it. |
The same options open from the grid editor: click the cog of an item in the preview. There they have one more tab, Item Settings: the post’s size in a Cobbles grid and a skin of its own (Choose Specific Skin), both for this grid only (Items), and how its media fits (Media Fit, Media Repeat, Media Align), for the post in every grid.
Whether the box shows on posts is set in Global Settings › General › Box on posts.
Custom fields in items
To show your own data in the items, such as a price, a location or a date:
- Create the field in Global Settings › Custom fields, for example “Price” with the handle price.
- Fill in its value in each post: the Essential Grid box › Custom Meta, or the cog of an item in the grid editor.
- Show it in a skin: in the skin editor, Add › Custom field… adds a layer and asks for the field; or set a layer’s Shows to Meta (under Custom field) and pick the field with Choose.
To use a field of WooCommerce, an events plugin or your theme in skins, give it a short name under References to other fields on the same page.
Good to know
- WooCommerce products have more to show, such as prices and stock: WooCommerce products.
- A post’s video in the grid: Video in grids.