Are you looking to create a custom loop skin in Elementor for your Custom Post Type listings? With the Smart Loop Builder, you can design unique templates for your CPT items – whether it’s Portfolio, Events, Products, Services, or any other custom content type. By building a custom design, you ensure that your listings perfectly match your brand identity, highlight the most important details of your content, and create a more engaging user experience.
With the Dynamic Listing widget from The Plus Addons for Elementor, you can easily add a custom design to the custom post type listing items using custom HTML and CSS.
To check the complete feature overview documentation of The Plus Addons for Elementor Dynamic Listing widget, click here.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor, make sure its installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
To do this, make sure you have created at least one custom post type, you can use the free Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) to create a custom post type.
For instance, we have created a custom post type called Books.
Once you’ve created your custom post type, follow the steps –
1. Add the Dynamic Listing widget to the page.
2. After selecting the appropriate listing type from the Post Listing Types dropdown (except ACF Repeater and Custom Query), select your custom post type from the Post Type dropdown.
3. Then select Smart Loop Builder from the Style dropdown.
After that, select the appropriate layout from the Layout dropdown.
4. Then go to the Smart Loop Builder tab, here you have to add custom HTML and CSS to create your design or you can use a ready preset style and customize it.
Note: To use this feature effectively, you should know HTML and CSS.
Use Ready Preset
To use ready presets click on the Ready Presets button.
It will open a popup, where you’ll find some free and pro preset templates.
Click on the download icon of the template you want to use and the HTML and CSS code of that template will be added in the HTML and CSS sections.
Then you can easily modify the HTML and CSS code as per your requirements.
Custom Template
But if you want to create the template from scratch, you can do that as well by writing your custom HTML and CSS code.
In the HTML section, you have to write the HTML of your template.
In your HTML template, you have to use the following tags to show the respective data.
- For the Post Title – {{tpae_title}}
- For the Post Excerpt – {{tpae_excerpt}}
- For the Featured Image – {{tpae_image}}
- For the Featured Image URL – {{tpae_image_url}}
- For the Post Description – {{tpae_description}}
- For the Post URL – {{tpae_permalink}}
- For the Post Author – {{tpae_author_meta}}
- For the Post Author Avatar – {{tpae_author_logo}}
- For the Post Date (publish date) – {{tpae_date_created}}
- For the Post Time (publish time) – {{tpae_time_created}}
- For the Post Category – {{tpae_category}}
- For the Post Tag – {{tpae_tag}}
- For the Post Author URL – {{tpae_author_url}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – month / year / day) – {{tpae_date_created_m_y_d}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – month (full month name) / year / day) – {{tpae_date_created_f_d_y}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – day / month / year) – {{tpae_date_created_d_m_y}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – month / day / year) – {{tpae_date_created_m_d_y}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – day / month / year / hour) – {{tpae_date_created_d_m_y_h}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – Hour:Minute AM/PM) – {{tpae_date_created_h_m_a}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – Date with GMT offset) – {{tpae_date_created_d_m_y_g}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – ISO 8601 Date Format) – {{tpae_date_created_iso}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – RFC 2822 Date Format) – {{tpae_date_created_rfc}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – day month) – {{tpae_date_created_day_month}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – month year) – {{tpae_date_created_month_year}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – Just the day) – {{tpae_date_created_day}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – Time ago) – {{tpae_date_created_time_ago}}
- For the Post Date (publish date – month (short month name) / year / day) – {{tpae_date_created_M_D_Y}}
- For Custom Field Data – {{custom_field_id}} i.e. if the field id is customer_data then it will be {{customer_data}}
Note: You can add custom class and static content in your HTML but for dynamic data, you have to use these tags.
Then in the CSS section, you have to write custom CSS to style your template.
Example
Here, we will add a custom (static) HTML and CSS code, then will add the dynamic tags to make it dynamic.
In this code, we have a category, featured image, post tag, post title, post excerpt and a custom field called rating.
To make the category dynamic will use {{tpae_category}} tag.
For the featured image, we will just use the {{tpae_image}} tag without any <img> tag.
Then, for the post tag will use the {{tpae_tag}} tag.
To make the post title dynamic we will use {{tpae_title}} tag.
For the post excerpt, we will use the {{tpae_excerpt}} tag.
Then, to make the title URL dynamic, we will use {{tpae_permalink}} tag in the <a> tag.
Now, for the custom field, here it is “rating”, we will add the custom field ID like this {{rating}}.
Following this process you can also convert your static HTML and CSS code into a template for the custom post type listing. You can also use code from Codepen, JSFiddle etc.
