Easy Table of Contents

Description

Easy Table of Contents is a user-friendly plugin that allows you to insert a table of contents into your posts, pages, and custom post types. It automatically generates the table of contents by parsing the content for headers, making it easy for users to navigate through your content.

This plugin supports various page editors and offers many customizable options, including themes, bullet formats, and the ability to selectively enable the TOC on a post-by-post basis. You can also use a widget to display the TOC in your theme's sidebar, ensuring it remains visible as users scroll down the page.

With the Pro version, you gain access to additional features such as a Gutenberg block, Elementor widget, sticky TOC options, and enhanced customization capabilities. This makes it easier to create a professional-looking table of contents that meets your specific needs.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Easy Table of Contents plugin.

Table Of Contents

Toc

content navigation

Screenshots

FAQ

You first stop should be the Table of Contents settings admin page. You can find this under the Settings menu item.

You first and only required decision is you need to decide which post types you want to enable Table of Contents support for. By default it is the Pages post type. If on Pages is the only place you plan on using Table of Contents, you have nothing to do on the Settings page. To keep things simple, I recommend not changing any of the other settings at this point. Many of the other settings control when and where the table of contents is inserted and changing these settings could cause it not to display making getting started a bit more difficult. After you get comfortable with how this works… then tweak away 🙂

With that out of the way make sure to read the How are the tables of contents created? FAQ so you know how the Table of Contents is automatically generated. After you have the page headers setup, or before, either way… Scroll down on the page you’ll see a metabox named “Table of Contents“, enable the Insert table of contents. option and Update and/or Publish you page. The table of contents should automatically be shown at the top of the page.

The table of contents is generated by the headers found on a page. Headers are the <h1>,<h2>,<h3>,<h4>,<h5>,<h6> HTML tags. If you are using the WordPres Visual Post Editor, these header tags are used and inserted into the post when you select one of the Heading n options from the formatting drop down. Each header that is found on the page will create a table of content item. Here’s an example which will create a table of contents containing the six items.

<h1>Item 1</h1> <h1>Item 2</h1> <h1>Item 3</h1> <h1>Item 4</h1> <h1>Item 5</h1> <h1>Item 6</h1>

You can also create “nested” table of contents. This is difficult to explain so I’ll illustrate building on the previous example. In this example a table of contents will be created with the same six items but now the first three will each an child item nested underneath it. The indentation is not necessary, it was only added for illustration purposes.

<h1>Item 1</h1>     <h2>Item 1.1 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 2</h1>     <h2>Item 2.1 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 3</h1>     <h2>Item 3.1 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 4</h1> <h1>Item 5</h1> <h1>Item 6</h1>

You are not limited to a single a single nested item either. You can add as many as you need. You can even create multiple nested levels…

<h1>Item 1</h1>     <h2>Item 1.1 -- Level 2</h2>         <h3>Item 1.1.1 -- Level 3</h3>         <h3>Item 1.1.2 -- Level 3</h3>         <h3>Item 1.1.3 -- Level 3</h3>     <h2>Item 1.2 -- Level 2</h2>       <h3>Item 1.2.1 -- Level 3</h3>       <h3>Item 1.2.2 -- Level 3</h3>       <h3>Item 1.2.3 -- Level 3</h3>     <h2>Item 1.3 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 2</h1>     <h2>Item 2.1 -- Level 2</h2>     <h2>Item 2.2 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 3</h1>     <h2>Item 3.1 -- Level 2</h2>     <h2>Item 3.2 -- Level 2</h2> <h1>Item 4</h1> <h1>Item 5</h1> <h1>Item 6</h1>

You can nest up 6 levels deep if needed. I hope this helps you understand how to create and build your own auto generated table of contents on your sites!