The proper content presentation is essential to cast a good impression on your readers. One of the easiest ways to spice up your content format in WordPress is to use WordPress columns. Columns make your website visually appealing by displaying your website in chunks. If you have a newspaper and magazine style themes, then multiple-column layouts will be perfect for you.
If you’re not a web developer, creating WordPress columns layouts can be challenging. Even for those familiar with CSS, creating columns manually by using HTML and CSS within the WordPress editor is cumbersome.
Fortunately, there are different choices, such as using a WordPress column plugin, or even a WordPress Page Builder to make the entire process drag and drop.
In this article, I’ll discuss the three different ways to format your WordPress content into multiple columns.
1. Create WordPress Columns Using HTML and CSS
The most hands-on method to create columns is using HTML and CSS. Before we start, we want you to be familiar with a few CSS properties like “width,” “padding,” and “float.” Let’s take a look at an instance to create columns.
To make this example simple we have used <div> tags to separate two columns along with inline styling:
<div style=”width:50%;float:left;”>
Your content for your column #1
Your content for your column #1
Your content for your column #1
</div>
<div style=”width:50%;float:left”>
Your content for your column #2
Your content for your column #2
Your content for your column #2
</div>
<div style=”clear:both;”></div>
To add the above code, switch to the “text” mode of the WordPress editor first. Here I’m using CSS float to create columns. Another approach is to use CSS flexbox.
Not everyone is a developer, and even if you are, creating your own markup and CSS each time to format your content can become cumbersome. Fortunately, there are easier ways to accomplish the same thing.
2. Create WordPress Columns Using A WordPress Plugin
There are a few shortcode plugins in WordPress that will automatically add the required markup and CSS for you, wherever you need to add columns to your content. One such plugin is Column Shortcodes.
To install the plugin, the first login to your admin dashboard. Navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for keyword ‘Columns Shortcode’ in the search bar. Install and activate the plugin Column Shortcodes by CodePress as shown in the image below.
As the name suggests, this plugin lets you create a column with the help of shortcode. To create the column, go to the editor page of the page/post where you want the multiple columns to appear. At the top, you can find a new select shortcode button.
When you click the button a pop-up box will appear from where you can select the column width and the column padding. In this case, I want to create two columns to display my content. For the first column select one_half link and for the second column select one_half(last) links from the column shortcode list.
This will insert the opening and closing shortcode tags in your post. Place the opening tag at the beginning of the column and closing tag at the end of the column.
Now after you publish/update the page/post, you should see your new column layout on the front end.
There are a few other shortcode plugins I recommend for creating columns, which are Shortcodes Ultimate and Advanced WP Columns.
3. Create WordPress Columns Using A WordPress Page Builder
If you’re looking for an all-in-one plugin that lets you format and layout your content like a pro, then a Page Builder plugin is probably what you need. These plugins transform your WordPress editor into a powerful drag and drop canvas, to do everything from adding columns, testimonials, countdown timers, and landing pages, with ease.
For a comprehensive review of the best WordPress Page Builders, take a look at this blog post.
Conclusion
Formatting your content into columns is an easy way to spice up your layout and avoid viewer fatigue. However, having too many WordPress columns in an unplanned way can become distracting for your readers. Use your best judgment when content on a blog post or page should be sliced and diced. Good luck!
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