Have you read those big articles on Forbes or NY Times? Try reading some. Sometimes the long wordy articles can daunt readers. At least they scare me. Those reads seem never ending. At the same time, think of Wikipedia. The information might be just as lengthy. But what makes the article on Wikipedia easier to navigate through, is the organization of the content. A sitemap of content makes it all the more user friendly and effortless to read a particular post.
If you want to add a sitemap of content to your posts or pages, there is a great plugin to help you do this. The Table of Contents Plus plugin, creates a sitemap for the content on your WordPress post or page, depending on the heading tags in your write-up. This can be really helpful when you have a tutorial to categorize.
How does the Table of Contents Plugin Work?
The plugin generates anchor tags according to the HTML heading tags for the post or page, i.e., <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, to create a list of content. The table of contents is then styled and presented according to your settings.
Having HTML header tags helps better structure your article too.
You can customize the Position and Appearance of the Table of Contents
There are several options provided to customize your Table of Contents according to your preference.
- You can select the position of the table of contents, in your post or pages. By default the position is ‘before the first heading’. This means that the table of contents will be displayed before the first heading tag in your post or page. You can change it to top, bottom, or after first heading.
- You can decide when the table of contents will appear. By default, the plugin will display table of contents if a post or page has more than 4 heading tags. You can change that to a lower or higher number.
- You can choose to set the table of contents for different content types like the pages, posts, products and so on.
- This plugin comes with a few default skins to set the appearance. There is also an option to create your own custom style for your table of content box.
- You can also display the table of content box in your sidebar widget.
Conclusion
Table of Contents plugin easily adds a sitemap in your articles making it easy for the readers to read and even directly link to a relevant part of the article. This makes the content more presentable on the site. Overall, this is a very handy plugin for those of you who have long posts on the site.
