TablePress: Creating WordPress Tables Made Easy 101

WordPress is a free and open-source platform that makes it simple to create, publish, and manage websites. However, despite offering a multitude of features in building a website, prior to Gutenberg editor, it was difficult to create tables on WordPress. Tables can be an integral part of a website as they let you organize, compare, and break down data, as well as present it to visitors in an understandable manner. As a result, understanding how to make a table in WordPress is really useful.

Previously, you had to generate HTML tables by hand, but this was far too time-consuming. Furthermore, WordPress didn’t have any native capability for this until the new Gutenberg editor (which includes a table block) was released. Fortunately, WordPress provides various plugin options for incorporating tables into your site. One of the most widely used plugins is TablePress. 

In this article, you will gain information about the TablePress plugin of WordPress. You will also gain a holistic understanding of WordPress, its key features, and the different ways of using TablePress plugin. Read along to find out in-depth information about the TablePress plugin.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Introduction to WordPress
  • Key Features of WordPress
    • Flexibility
    • Adding Additional Staff Editors
    • Ease of Publishing Content
    • Easy Setup and Upgrades
    • Theme Customization
    • Search Engine Optimized
• Understanding TablePress Plugin
  • Installing TablePress
  • Creating Table
  • Editing Table
  • Inserting Table
  • Importing Tables
  • Exporting Tables
• Conclusion

Prerequisites

• Basic understanding of Content Management Systems (CMS) 
• Basic Understanding of WordPress

Introduction to WordPress

WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that businesses use to advertise and promote their products and services to potential buyers. The application allows you to host written content, improve your search engine rankings, and construct company websites for your online store. WordPress is well-known for its extensive feature set, and users like how easily it adapts to new requirements. 

It has drag-and-drop features for building a website from scratch and a vast selection of commercial and free themes covering almost any topic – everything from Blogging Sites to Corporate Portfolios and E-Commerce Sites. WordPress is also search engine friendly, which means users may develop content that appeals to visitors and search engines. Overall, WordPress makes it quick and simple to promote your business on the internet. It has a lot more features than its competitors while still being one of the cheapest web tools to use.

Key Features of WordPress

Some of the key features of WordPress are as follows:

• Flexibility
• Adding Additional Staff Editors
• Ease of Publishing Content
• Easy Setup and Upgrades
• Theme Customization
• Search Engine Optimized

1) Flexibility

WordPress lets you create practically any type of website you can think of, from a personal blog to an e-commerce store. You can use WordPress’ custom themes developed for specific use cases to improve your website, which can also be supplemented with various plugins to provide a better user interface for your visitors. WordPress also gives you the ability to create a website from the ground up and finish it in no time.

2) Adding Additional Staff Editors

WordPress allows you to add multiple editors and grant them access to the website. You can even delegate responsibilities and allow multiple team members to produce material at the same time.

3) Ease of Publishing Content

WordPress offers several drag-and-drop features that make content creation simple for users. Users can use the application from any browser and operating system, allowing them to post material from numerous devices. WordPress users can save drafts and schedule articles to make the content publication process easier. 

4) Easy Setup and Upgrades

WordPress is incredibly simple to set up and update. Many web servers provide one-click WordPress installations. If you prefer to use an FTP application, begin by establishing a database, upload WordPress through FTP, and run the installer.

5) Theme Customization

WordPress offers a customization tool that allows you to change your website’s frontend and backend appearance. The theme customization feature is accessible via the theme and customization option in the WordPress sidebar. Each pre-built website design has a varying level of customization. Users may, however, customize the most common elements in all of WordPress’s website designs.

6) Search Engine Optimized

WordPress was built with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in mind from the start. You may use multiple SEO plugins in the WordPress plugin store to improve fine-grained SEO management.

Understanding TablePress Plugin

TablePress is a well-known WordPress plugin that can assist you in creating tables in WordPress with ease and without any technical knowledge. With a simple Shortcode, you may embed the tables into posts, pages, or text widgets.

TablePress not only allows you to build tables but also enables you to import data from a variety of sources (Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON). Since it eliminates the need for manually entering data into your spreadsheet, you can start using it right away. The converse is also true: every table created with TablePress may be exported in a variety of formats. This allows you to export the data to a different website, create an Excel file, or employ it for any other purpose.

TablePress also has a lot of add-on tools that let you make your tables responsive, add column filters, save tables to PDF, and more. While most of these extensions are free to download, there are a few “premium” ones that will require you to make a modest payment to the developer community when you download them.

The different ways of interacting and leveraging the TablePress plugin are as follows:

• Installing TablePress
• Creating Table
• Editing Table
• Inserting Table
• Importing Tables
• Exporting Tables

A) Installing TablePress

The plugin is simple to set up and only requires a few steps outlined below.

• Step 1: Log in to your WordPress account. Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard.
• Step 2: In the left sidebar menu, select the “Plugins” option.
• Step 3: From the Plugins menu, select the “Add New” option. A new window will open. 
• Step 4: In the search menu in the upper left corner of the window, type “TablePress” and hit the “Enter” button. A drop-down menu will appear with a list of plugins. Select the plugin (here, TablePress) you want to install and click the “Install Now” button.
• Step 5: After finishing the installation, click the “Activate” button.

B) Creating Table

The steps to create a table using TablePress plugin are as follows:

• Step 1: Hover over TablePress in the left side menu bar. Click the “Add New Table” option to start creating a new table in WordPress with the TablePress plugin.

• Step 2: Enter a table name, a description (this field is optional), the number of rows, and the number of columns on the new table creation page.
• Step 3: After you’ve finished, click the “Add Table” button.

C) Editing Table

After selecting “Add Table,” you’ll be directed to the Table Editor, where you can fill up your table with information. 

• Step 1: You’ll see a header named Table Content on the edit screen for your table. Your table will be listed under this section. To add content to the table, click within any of the fields.
• Step 2: You may also include things like photos and links in addition to text. To do so, click the “Insert an Image” button located in the “Table Manipulation” section.
• Step 3: You will find a popup advising you to select a cell. Click the “OK” button and within the “Table Content” section, select the cell you’d like to add an image to.

• Step 4: In the Table Manipulation section, you can easily add more rows or columns to your table. For this, scroll to the bottom of the Table Manipulation section and click the relevant buttons to add the needed amount of rows and columns.
• Step 5: In the “Table Manipulation” section of TablePress, there is a tool called “Combine cells.” You can combine cells in a row or a column by clicking the “in a row (colspan)” or “in a column (rowspan)” buttons, depending on whether you want to combine cells in a row or a column.
• Step 6: You can also attach links using the Table Manipulation section. Select the “Put a Link” button from the Table Manipulation section to insert a link into a table cell. A popup will appear, prompting you to choose a cell. Select the cell you’d like to connect to in the “Table Content” section after clicking “OK.” A new box will appear, allowing you to enter a URL and link text.
• Step 7: Next, go to the “Table options” section, where you can enable settings for your table. For instance, you can choose the first row of the table as a header, and the last row can be used as a footer. You can also activate features such as alternate row colors and row to hover highlighting. CSS classes will also be available for further customization.

• Step 8: Now, move to the “features of data table javascript library” section. You may activate advanced options like sorting, pagination, search or filtering, and more. When you’re through modifying, click the “Save Changes” button and check the preview to see if the table is presented correctly.

D) Inserting Table

You must first copy the table’s shortcode before inserting it into a post or page. To do so, copy the shortcode and paste it on the page where you want the table to appear.

After you’ve saved your changes, you’ll see the table’s shortcode. Make a copy of the shortcode.

There are two ways to insert a table. 

1. To embed the tables, you’ll need to create a page or post. Go to the block editor and click the “+” symbol to add a new block. Now, look for the “shortcode” block. Copy the shortcode and paste it.
2. The second option is to use the TablePress-added “Insert a Table from WordPress” button in the visual editor toolbar. A panel will appear, enabling you to select from all of the tables you’ve built before using the plugin. 

TablePress also has a useful feature called ‘Search Tables,’ which allows you to find a certain table without going through all of them. Once you’ve decided whatever table you want to add to your website, simply click the ‘Insert Shortcode‘ option and the table’s shortcode will appear where you want it. The post or page can then be published or updated.

Check to see if the table is properly presented. You can use this technique to integrate tables anywhere on your website easily.

E) Importing Tables

If you already have tables prepared in Excel, Google Sheets, or other formats and want to integrate them into your webpage, you can use the TablePress plugin to import them straight away. The following steps are:

• Step 1: Go to the WordPress Admin dashboard.
• Step 2: Select the “TablePress” option, and then click the “Import a table” option. 

• Step 3: Select the file you wish to import by clicking the Choose File option. You will be asked to select your Import Source, which can be File Upload, URL, File on the Server, or Manual Input. Then, using the Choose File option, you can import your file. 
• Step 4: When you’re finished, click the “Import” button.

Your table data should be imported to your tables when you click the Import button.

F) Exporting Tables

You can even export tables from our WordPress site using TablePress. This is excellent if you’ve developed a new website and want to include your old tables in it. Just make sure they are saved as CSV, HTML, or JSON files.

The steps are as follows:

• Step 1: Go to the WordPress admin dashboard.
• Step 2: Select the “TablePress” option. Then, select the “Export” option.

• Step 3: Choose the table you want to export and the format you want it to be exported in.
• Step 4: You may also archive many tables into a single .zip file to export them all at once.
• Step 5: Once you’ve completed it, go to the bottom of the page and click the “Download Export File” option to retrieve your data.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned about the TablePress Plugin of WordPress. This article also provided information on WordPress, its key features, and the different ways of using the TablePress plugin.

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