Do you want to display posts from a specific category using the Team Member Listing widget in Elementor? With AJAX filters from The Plus Addons for Elementor, you can easily show category-based posts from all available posts, not just the ones currently visible on the page.
When you use AJAX filtering, it searches through your entire post list, even if you’re only showing a few posts at first. This guide explains how AJAX filtering differs from the Normal type, and what this pass found when testing it.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor, make sure it’s installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
Note – This specific feature (AJAX/Shareable-URL/Load More) is available only when The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro is active; the base widget above is Free.
Before You Start
- The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro installed and activated.
- Team member posts (custom post type source) with a category assigned, more posts than your Maximum Posts Display so Normal and AJAX visibly differ.
Steps
- Add the Team Member Listing widget with Select Source set to Post Type.
- Set Maximum Posts Display under Content Source lower than your total post count.
- Turn on Category Wise Filter, then set Filter Type to AJAX.
Normal Filter Type
With Filter Type set to Normal and Maximum Posts Display set to 3, even with a total of 8 posts, the filter only applies to the 3 posts currently displayed. Selecting a category the visible posts don’t belong to shows nothing.
AJAX Filter Type
With Filter Type set to AJAX, selecting a category searches your entire post list (all 8), not just the visible 3, and shows every matching post.
What this pass verified
Confirmed on the front end (site 1, 2026-09-27), logged in: with 8 real custom-post-type members split across two categories and Maximum Posts Display set to 3, clicking a category button that matched none of the 3 visible posts returned zero results under Normal, and correctly pulled the matching posts from the full set of 8 under AJAX – exactly as this doc describes.
Defect found – the AJAX filter does not work for a logged-out visitor
This is the headline finding of this pass. The same test, repeated logged out (i.e. as a normal site visitor), failed silently: clicking any category button under AJAX Filter Type produced no change at all – the visible posts never updated.
Root cause traced in the plugin’s own code: the AJAX request’s security nonce (theplus_nonce) is only generated if ( is_user_logged_in() ) (modules/enqueue/plus-generator.php). For a logged-out visitor this value is an empty string, the server’s nonce check (check_ajax_referer) fails, and WordPress returns HTTP 403 with body -1 – confirmed directly via the browser’s network log.
Since virtually all real site visitors are logged out, the AJAX Category Filter on Team Member Listing does not work in production for anyone but a logged-in administrator. The Normal filter type is unaffected (it is pure client-side JavaScript and needs no AJAX call).
Not verified
So you know exactly what has and has not been checked:
- Whether other AJAX-driven features on this widget (besides Category Filter) share the same logged-out nonce bug was not exhaustively swept – the Load More feature was checked separately and found to work logged out (see the Shareable URL with Load More doc).
