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Loop Grid widget

Last Update: February 19, 2024

What is a Loop Grid?

Many websites contain a page or pages with a list of posts. These posts can be anything from product listings to news stories to blog posts. The Loop Grid lets you customize the appearance of these lists, allowing you to build a design tailored to your specifications.

Common use cases

Alex has a site that hosts a blog about worldwide travel. They want to create four pages – one with all posts about traveling to Europe, another about traveling to the US, another about traveling to South America and one more about traveling to Asia – all of which will update automatically when a new post fitting their subject is created. They want all these listings to be in alphabetical order, with each item featuring an icon associated with that geographical region.

Francis has a cooking site. They want their site to include pages of recipes grouped by chef and by main ingredient, with each recipe featuring a photo of the chef and they want these pages to automatically update whenever a new post is created fitting their criteria. In addition, there will be individual pages where each chef can feature their favorite recipes.

Additional use cases

  • News sites that want to display stories by type, such as Politics, Sports, Local.
  • Stores that want to display different product lines.
  • Portfolio sites to display different types of artwork.

How Loop Grids work

The Loop Grid is a widget but acts a little differently from most widgets. In most cases, users drag the widget onto the canvas and then edit them in the panel. With the Loop Grid, however, after you drag the widget onto the canvas, you’ll be asked to create a template. That’s because when you build a loop, you’re creating a template that will be used to display a listing of various items in a uniform way. 

You’ll then edit this template in the canvas using other widgets. Once you’re ready to design the loop’s layout, set its pagination and control its content – you can click the Loop grid widget on the canvas or by selecting the Loop Grid in the Navigator. This will open the editing panel.

You’re now ready to start building a loop

Learn more about Loop Grids

To learn more about how Loop Grids work, check out these articles:

 

Settings for the Loop Grid widget

You can customize your widgets using content, style, and other advanced parameters, offering you great flexibility in tailoring them to your needs. Click the tabs below to see all the settings available for this widget.

Content tab

Add, delete, and edit loop grid items and controls. 

Content tab Layout Loop Grid widget 129

Each loop grid must contain a template. Use the dropdown to select which template you want to use or click Edit template to create a new template. For more details, see Build a Loop Grid.

Edit template has two functions:

  • If you have selected a template, you can edit that template.
  • If you have not selected a template, you create a new template.

In the text box, enter the number of columns you want in your loop grid. 

In the text box, enter the number of items to appear on each page of the loop grid. 

Toggle to On to automatically lay out the items in your loop.

Masonry refers to a dynamic layout grid system that automatically arranges the items in your loop so they are visually balanced and responsive.

 

Toggle On if you want all the rows in the loop to have the same height. 

Tip
If you use more than one parent container in your loop and turn on Equal height, all the parent containers will be of equal height. You cannot have some parent containers of equal height and others not of equal height in the same loop.

Toggle On if you want part of your loop to use a different template. For example, you can create a loop of store items where every third item is an advertisement for a special sale. 

For more details, see Add an alternate template in a loop grid

Content tab Query Loop Grid widget 131

Queries are used to determine what items appear in the loop. For example, a query that includes only shirts, will create a loop that only includes shirts.  For more details, see Build a query with the loop grid.

Your loop can include:

  • Posts
  • Pages
  • Landing pages
  • Manually selected pages
  • The current query: Used when you build a template that will be applied for several categories and or tags. This way you won’t have to write a new query for each category or tag. 
  • Related items

Click include to build a query defining the items you want in your Loop Grid.  

Click include to build a query defining the items you want in your Loop Grid.  

Use the text box to enter the types of posts you want to include or exclude. For more details, see Build a query with the loop grid

Use the dropdown menu to include or exclude items according to when they were created.

Use the dropdown menu to determine the criteria for arranging the loop items. 

Use the dropdown menu set whether the loop items will be arranged in:

  • DESC: Descending order
  • ASC: Ascending order

Sticky posts refer to blog posts that are designated to stay at the forefront of a blog’s homepage, even if newer posts are published. 

When toggled to Yes, the query does not take into account a post being sticky when arranging the loop.

Use the dropdown menu to include or exclude items according to when they were created.

Content tab Pagination Loop Grid widget 133

If you loop has more than one screen’s worth of items, it will be broken up into pages. These pages can be listed as:

  • Numbers
  • Previous/Next
  • Numbers + Previous/Next
  • Load on Click
  • Infinite Scroll

For more details, see Paginate your loop

Use the text box to enter the maximum number of pages you want your loop to include. 

If you use page numbering, you can save page clutter by limiting the page numbers on the screen. For more details, see Paginate your loop

Set the pagination to the right, left or center of the loop.

When a website visitor reaches a new page in your loop, the loop needs to reload. There are two ways to do this:

  • Page Reload – Reloads the entire webpage when the loop reloads.
  • AJAX – Reloads only the loop grid widget.

By default, if you have more than one Loop Grid on a page, all the loops will refresh to the same page. For instance, if you have one loop containing news stories and another containing sports stories, when visitors move to page two of the politics loop, the sports loop will automatically refresh to page two.

  • Toggle Individual Pagination to On to have all loop grids on a page refresh individually.
All Loop Grids on a page must have the same Individual Pagination setting.
Content tab Additional Options Loop Grid widget 135

In some cases, website visitors can filter loops and come up with no results. For example, in a loop of clothing items, a visitor could for filter for the categories “Blue” and “Pants”.  If there are no blue pants in the loop, it will have no results. 

Toggle to On to display a message when the loop has no results. 

If you choose to display a message, you have the following options:

  • Text box: Fill in the text you want to display to visitors.
  • Alignment: Display your text on the right, center or left of the loop.
  • HTML tag: Set the message[‘s HTML tag to H1- H6, Div, or Span. This can help search engines find and understand these messages.

Style tab

Determine the look and feel of menu items and controls.

Style tab Pagination Loop Grid widget 137

Set the size, type and color of the font used for the pagination. For more details, see Typography.

Determine the color of the numbers or text used for pagination.

  • Normal: The default color of the numbers or text. 
  • Hover: The color when visitors mouseover the numbers or text.
  • Active: The color of the numbers or text when the page being viewed by a visitor.
  • Color: To choose a color, either use the color picker or a global color.
  • Space Between: Use the slider to control the space between the page numbers or text.
  • Spacing: Use the slider to control the how far the page numbers or text are from the edges of the loop.

 

Style tab Layout Loop Grid widget 139

Control the look of your loop:

  • Gap between columns: Use the slider to control the distance between the columns in the loop.
  • Gap between rows: Use the slider to control the distance between the rows in the loop.
Style tab Message Not found Loop Grid widget 141

Control the look of the Nothing Found Message:

  • Space from top: Use the slider to determine how far the message will appear from the top of the loop.
  • Space from bottom: Use the slider to determine how far the message will appear from the top of the loop.
  • Typography: Control the color, size and type of font used in the message. For more details, see Typography.
  • Color: Choose a color for the message. For more details, see Choose a color or Use global fonts and colors
  • Text Shadow: Click the pencil icon to add shadow to the text. 
  • Text Stroke: Click the pencil icon to color the outline of your text.  Learn more about text stroke

Advanced tab

Control the placement of your widget, insert links, add custom code and more.

Advanced tab Loop Grid widget 143

Learn more about the Advanced tab settings.

Learn more about Loop Grids

Have more questions? We’re more than happy to assist.

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