How do I manage Series with Nelio Content?

Nelio Content allows you to group your posts into collections or series. This is perfect for magazines, newspapers, short-story authors, educators, comic creators, or anyone who produces multiple posts on a similar subject.

Nelio Content makes managing your series of posts effortless, so you can focus on creating great content. Here’s why it’s a fantastic choice:

• It streamlines the process of organizing series without relying on unrelated taxonomy plugins.
• Your audience can easily follow and explore your serialized content.
• You can build excitement and anticipation for upcoming posts in your series.

Series and post types

You can use the series feature of Nelio Content Premium with WordPress posts, pages and any other post type.

To activate this feature, go to Nelio Content > Settings. Under the Editorial Tools tab, you find a selector of post types where you want to enable series:

Just select the post types that can be part of a series of content and click on the Save Changes button. That’s it! Now you will be able to group your content in series following the next steps in this article.

Create and manage series

Series in Nelio Content uses the default WordPress taxonomy system to organize content. When you activate series on post types, a new custom taxonomy is created to group posts in series.

If you are already using a taxonomy to simulate series on your site, you can decide to move into Nelio Content series easily just by indicating in the series settings the slug of your taxonomy. To do so, go to Nelio Content > Settings, open the Editorial Tools tab and click on the Series link on top. You will see the following settings for series:

If you are starting from zero with series, you do not need to change the default value there.

Assign series to posts

When editing a post or any other custom post type selected in the aforementioned post type selector for series, a new Series panel appears under the Nelio Content Tools plugin in the block editor:

The existing series appear listed in this panel for the editor of the post. You can select the series where the editing post participates and, optionally, set the part number of the post in the series to keep an order.

You can also create a new series for the editing post by clicking on the Add New Series link. That will unfold a field where you can type the name of the new series. After that, if you click on the Add New Series button, the new series is created and linked to the editing post.

Manage order of posts in series

In the list of posts of WordPress, a new custom column appears showing the series of each post in the list:

In addition to it, you can click on the Quick Edit action that appears for each post in the list and there, you will be able to select the series the post belongs to. This same behavior occurs when selecting several posts in the list and using the bulk Edit action under the group of posts.

Also, a new submenu appears called Series under each post type that support series. If you click on that submenu, you go to the list of series. There you can add a new series (like adding a new category) or go edit an existing one by clicking on the Edit action that appears when hovering over a series:

When editing a series, you can modify its name, slug or description. If the series has posts in it, a section called Issues appears with an ordered list of the posts that belong to the series:

You can reorder the list of posts by drag and dropping them. Note that the list goes from the first element in the series to the latest one.

Once you have the order set, click on Update to save the changes. This is the easiest way to manage the order of the posts within a series.

Display series

Apart from organizing posts in series, Nelio Content provides ways to display the series information in the frontend of your WordPress site. Let’s review them.

Display order in series archives

Each series on your site that has published posts in it has a public URL like the following: https://yoursite.domain/series-taxonomy-slug/series-item-slug/. For example the Star Wars series URL would be as follows: https://yoursite.domain/series/star-wars/. And the page will list the posts in that series as in the following image:

Posts in a series archive page are listed according to an order method depending on their part in the series and their date. By default, posts are listed by part in ascending order. But for those posts that do not have a part number set in the series, Nelio Content orders them by date in ascending order.

To change this behavior you can go to Nelio Content > Settings and select the Editorial Tools tab. Under the Series subsection you see the Series Frontend Display section. There you can change the Series Archive Order Method by selecting Ascending (the default value) or Descending (that list posts by part in descending order, but for those posts that do not have a part number set, it orders them by date in descending order).

In the previous example, if you select Descending in the Series Archive Order Method setting, the result is as follows:

Display series metadata

Nelio Content allows you to display series metadata on a single post, that is, a box in a single post showing metadata about the series the post belongs to. Just go to Nelio Content > Settings and select the Editorial Tools tab. Under the Series subsection you see the Series Frontend Display section. There you will find the Series Metadata settings:

First, you can activate the checkbox to display the series metadata box in a single post. Next, the Series Metadata Location allows you to select where you want the series metadata box to appear in a single post. The available options are:

• Before the content: the series metadata will appear before the content of the post.
• After the content: the series metadata will appear after the content of the post.
• Manual: the series metadata will not be shown automatically. You must manually display it using, for example, the [nc_series_metadata] shortcode (explained later) wherever you want.

Finally you have the Series Metadata Template where you can customize the output content of the series metadata. Inside the textarea you can use several placeholders (a key-phrase between curly braces) that will be replaced by the proper value in the frontend:

The current selection of settings from the previous screenshot will produce the following series metadata in the frontend:

The available placeholders to be used in the series metadata template are the following:

• {series_title}: Displays the title of a series.
• {series_title_linked}: Displays the title of a series linked to the series archive page.
• {series_description}: Displays the description of a series.
• {total_posts_in_series}: Displays the total number of posts in a series.
• {post_title}: Displays the title of a post.
• {post_title_linked}: Displays the title of a post linked to the post page.
• {series_part_number}: Displays what part of a series the post is.

Display series post list box

Nelio Content allows you to display a box in a single post with the list of all posts belonging to the series where the post belongs to. Just go to Nelio Content > Settings and select the Editorial Tools tab. Under the Series subsection you see the Series Frontend Display section. There you will find the Series Post List settings:

First, you can activate the checkbox to display the series post list box in a single post. Next, the Series Post List Location allows you to select where do you want the series post list box to appear in a single post. The available options are:

• Before the content: the series post list will appear before the content of the post.
• After the content: the series post list will appear after the content of the post.
• Manual: the series post list will not be shown automatically. You must manually display it using, for example, the [nc_series_post_list_box] shortcode (explained later) wherever you want.

Finally you have the three templates for the series post list box. First, the Series Post List Template where you can customize the output content of the series post list box. Inside the textarea you can use several placeholders (a key-phrase between curly braces) that will be replaced by the proper value in the frontend:

The available placeholders to be used in the series post list template are the following:

• {series_title}: Displays the title of a series.
• {series_title_linked}: Displays the title of a series linked to the series archive page.
• {series_description}: Displays the description of a series.
• {total_posts_in_series}: Displays the total number of posts in a series.
• {series_post_list}: Displays the list of posts in a series. It is replaced with all the Series Single Post Item and the Series Current Single Post Item templates, for all posts in the series.

Then, there are two templates: one template for a single item in the list of posts, and other template for the current post in the list of posts:

The available placeholders to be used in the series post list item template are the following:

• {post_title}: Displays the title of a post.
• {post_title_linked}: Displays the title of a post linked to the post page.
• {series_part_number}: Displays what part of a series the post is.

The default selection of settings for the series post list will produce the following series post list in the frontend:

Frontend styles

By default, Nelio Content will use a set of minimum CSS rules to make the default Series Metadata and Series Post List output to be rendered nice in the frontend. If you prefer to use your own styles, you can deactivate the Frontend Styles setting:

This checkbox can be found in Nelio Content > Settings. Then select the Editorial Tools tab. Under the Series subsection you see the Frontend Styles settings.

Shortcodes

Nelio Content provides two shortcodes to display series manually: [nc_series_metadata]and [nc_series_post_list_box].

nc_series_metadata

[nc_series_metadata] is a shortcode that outputs the series metadata information for a particular post in a series. To display series metadata within a post, you can use the [nc_series_metadata] shortcode. If the post belongs to a series, the metadata for that series will be displayed, as we saw in the previous Display series metadata section.

For a specific series, use [nc_series_metadata series={series_id}]. For example, [nc_series_metadata series=3] will output metadata for the series with ID 3. And if you want to output metadata for more than one series, you can pass a comma-separated list of series IDs to the series attribute of the shortcode, as in [nc_series_metadata series=3,4,5].

The default template layout is determined by what you have in the Series Metadata Template setting, as described in the previous Display series metadata section.

You can also customize the output with a shortcode with content. Here’s an example: [nc_series_metadata]Part {series_part_number} of {total_posts_in_series} in the series {series_title}[/nc_series_metadata].

The text inside the [nc_series_metadata] shortcode defines how the metadata is displayed. You can include placeholders like {series_part_number}, {total_posts_in_series}, and {series_title}, which are explained in the previous Display series metadata section.

nc_series_post_list_box

[nc_series_post_list_box] is a shortcode that outputs the series post list box for a particular post in a series. To display the list of posts in a series within a post, you can use the [nc_series_post_list_box] shortcode. If the post belongs to a series, the metadata for that series will be displayed, as we saw in the previous Display series post list box section.

For a specific series, use [nc_series_post_list_box series={series_id}]. For example, [nc_series_post_list_box series=3] will output the list of posts for the series with ID 3. And if you want to output a series post list for more than one series, you can pass a comma-separated list of series IDs to the series attribute of the shortcode, as in [nc_series_post_list_box series=3,4,5].

The default template layout is determined by what you have in the Series Post List Template setting, as described in the previous Display series post list box section section.