Dynamic Smart Showcase turns any post type on your site into one of three things: a magazine-style slider, a filterable magazine grid, or a scrolling headline ticker.
This page walks through every section of the Dynamic Smart Showcase widget panel in The Plus Addons for Elementor, with the defaults and the behaviour each setting produces.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro, make sure it’s installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — Dynamic Smart Showcase is only in The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro. With the Pro plugin switched off the widget is not in the editor at all, and a page that already uses it shows nothing where the widget was.
- Widget to enable: Dynamic Smart Showcase, switched on under The Plus Addons > Widgets.
- You need published content: the widget queries your site. Posts, pages or a custom post type with published entries must already exist, or the widget prints Posts not found.
- Raise the post count: Maximum Posts Display in Content Source defaults to 1, so a freshly dropped widget shows a single post. Set it to the number you want, or to -1 for every matching post.
How to Enable the Widget
- Go to The Plus Addons > Widgets in the WordPress dashboard.
- Search for Dynamic Smart Showcase.
- Switch its toggle on and save.
Layout
The first section decides everything else. Style has three options and the rest of the panel changes with it:
| Style | What it builds | Sections it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Magazine Slider (default) | A slick carousel of post cards, each using the featured image as its background. | Magazine Layout (eight picture choices, tooltips Style-1 to Style-8), Post Ticker, Carousel Options in the Style tab |
| Magazine Filter | A grid with one highlighted post and an optional category filter row. | Highlight (Left / Right / Top), News Layout (News Layout 1 or 2), Heading, Category Wise Filter, News Post Loop |
| Post Ticker | A single-line scrolling headline strip and nothing else – no grid is drawn. | Post Ticker, Post Ticker Responsive Option |
Post Type sits in the same section. It lists every public post type that has an admin screen, so Posts, Pages and your own custom post types all appear here.
Magazine Layout Style-6 and Style-8 add a Height slider (0-1000 px, default 300) for the card height.
Content Source
This section is the query. It is also where the single most common surprise lives: Maximum Posts Display ships set to 1.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Select Category | Limits the listing to one or more categories. Only shown when Post Type is Posts. | empty |
| Taxonomies | Which taxonomy to filter by. Shown for every post type except Posts. The list shows raw taxonomy names, not their display labels. | category |
| Taxonomies Slug | One or more term slugs, comma separated. A space after the comma is fine. | empty |
| Include Post(s) | Show only these post IDs, comma separated. | empty |
| Exclude Post(s) | Drop these post IDs from the listing. | empty |
| Select Tags | Limits the listing to one or more tags. | empty |
| Maximum Posts Display | How many posts to show. -1 shows every matching post. | 1 |
| News Post Loop | How many posts make up one page of the Magazine Filter grid. Magazine Filter only. | 6 |
| Offset Posts | Skips this many posts from the start of the list. | 0 |
| Order By | None, ID, Author, Title, Name (slug), Date, Modified, Random, Comment Count or Default Menu Order. | Date |
| Order | Descending or Ascending. | Descending |
If you set both a category and a tag, a post has to match both to appear. Picking a category with no tagged posts in it produces Posts not found.
Post Ticker
The ticker is a separate strip that can run on its own (Style set to Post Ticker) or above a Magazine Slider. It is on by default, with the label LATEST NEWS.
- Post Ticker — shows or hides the strip.
- Label — the coloured block at the start. A second field of the same name holds its text, and Label Icon and Label Link sit under it.
- Date, Author Name, Author Image — extra details beside each headline, all off by default. The author image is the author’s Gravatar.
- The section is hidden entirely when Style is Magazine Filter.
Post Ticker Responsive Option
Eight switches, all off. They hide the label, the date, the author name and the author image on tablet and on mobile, one part per switch. They do not hide the ticker itself — the strip and its headlines stay on screen at every width.
Category Wise Filter
This section only exists when Style is Magazine Filter. Switching Category Wise Filter on adds a row of buttons above the grid that filter the cards in place, with no page reload.
- All Filter Category Text — the label of the button that shows everything. Default All.
- Only Show Next Previous — hides the whole button row and leaves just the arrows.
- Category Filter Style and Filter Hover Style — four presets each. Styles 2 and 3 print a post count next to every button.
- Filter Alignment — Left, Center or Right. Default Center.
- The text to the left of the buttons comes from Heading in the Layout section.
Extra Options
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Title Tag | HTML tag for the post title, h1 to h6, div, p or span. | h3 |
| Display Category Post | The category chip on each card. | on |
| Post Category Style | Two presets for that chip. | style-2 |
| Title Word Limit | Trims the title. The card shows one word fewer than the number you enter. | 10 |
| Ticker Autoplay | Scrolls the ticker on its own. Adds Ticker Speed in milliseconds when on. | off / 2000 |
| Title & Description Word Break | Normal, Keep All or Break All. | Normal |
| Display Excerpt/Content | The excerpt under the title, with Excerpt/Content Word Limit below it. | on / 30 |
| Display Image Size | Meant to pick the featured-image size. See Limitations. | off |
| Display Post Meta | The date and author line, with Post Meta Tag choosing between two presets. | on / style-1 |
The Style Tab
The Style tab holds the appearance of everything the Content tab produced, and its sections change with the chosen Style:
- All styles: Title, Excerpt/Content, Post Meta Tag, Category Post, Box Loop Style, Post Not Found Options.
- Magazine Slider: Carousel Options — the slider behaviour, arrows and dots, plus the Unique Carousel ID used to pair the slider with a Carousel Remote widget.
- Post Ticker (and Magazine Slider with the ticker on): Label Style, Content Style, Date Style, Navigation Style, Author Style, Box Content.
- Magazine Filter: Left Side Heading, Filter Category, Top Content (Heading & Filter), Highlight Section, Normal Section.
How It Behaves
- A newly dropped widget shows one post, because Maximum Posts Display starts at 1.
- Magazine Slider paints the featured image as a CSS background on each card, so a post with no featured image falls back to a plain grey panel rather than a broken image.
- Magazine Filter renders featured images as ordinary images inside the cards.
- Post Ticker shows one headline at a time and moves through them with the arrows at the end of the strip.
- Order By set to Random reshuffles on every page load.
- When nothing matches the query the widget prints Posts not found instead of the grid.
Limitations
- Display Image Size, Image Resolution and Image Dimension have no effect. Whatever you pick, the full-size file is used. Resize the originals or use an image-optimisation plugin instead.
- Title Word Limit and Excerpt/Content Word Limit show one word fewer than the number you type. Enter 6 to get 5 words.
- There is no columns setting in the Content tab. A Columns Manage section exists in the widget but its display condition is never met, so it is hidden for all three styles. The Magazine Filter grid is sized by the chosen News Layout; for the Magazine Slider use Columns inside Carousel Options in the Style tab.
- The filter row lists every category on the site that has posts anywhere, not only the ones in this listing, so a button can filter to an empty grid.
- The ticker’s previous and next arrows cannot be switched off.
- Category Wise Filter is Magazine Filter only. Switching it on with any other style does nothing.
Troubleshooting
Only one post shows up
Open Content Source and raise Maximum Posts Display. It defaults to 1. Use -1 for every matching post.
The widget says Posts not found
The query matched nothing. Check Post Type, and clear Include Post(s), Offset Posts and any category or tag selection one at a time. A category and a tag together have to both match.
Changing Image Resolution does nothing
That is a known product issue — the setting is ignored and the full-size image is always used. See Limitations.
There is no filter row
Category Wise Filter only appears when Style is Magazine Filter, and it is its own section in the Content tab, not part of Extra Options.
