Introduction
If you have ever tried putting up a table on a WordPress site, you know the amount of effort that is required to get it right. Entering HTML tags, embedding them at the right places into your text and making sure that it fits in with other text on the page is a magnanimous task and needs an expert to get it right. But what if a simple tool could do all this technical job for you and let you take care of the content on your site. wpDataTables, from Touchmesoft, is the tool that frees you from the tangle of HTML codes and lets you create tables in just about three clicks.
Apart from giving you the freedom of not having to bother yourself with code, wpDatatables also gives you the freedom to use a variety of data sources to work with. You could have just compiled some data in an Excel sheet in a jiffy or downloaded a report from the SQL server of your company database, a CSV file, or a serialized PHP array, you can easily embed all these types and more into tables created using wpDatatables. All you need to do is specify the type of data you will be working with and the tool will do the rest for you.
Installation and Configuration
Installing wpDataTables is just like installing any other tool on WordPress. Once you install and activate it, managing the plug in is an easy task that can be handled from the Admin panel/ Dashboard of the website in WordPress. You sort data, take care of pagination and save data to different files all with the tool and even convert data into graphical form such as pie or line charts with equal ease using the tool. Once you are done with this, the plugin will give you a short code that you can put in your WordPress post and the data you wish to see will appear in a neat table on your page.
If you are worried that your data sets are usually very large, running into thousands of rows and difficult to work with and may impact the page loading times of your site, wpDataTables also lets you carry out Server side processing for all MySQL data so that only data that required is fetched from the server and you need not load your page with excessive information. You can rest assured that at all times the data that will be displayed will follow your guidelines of pagination, advanced filtering etc. that you can pre-set.
Why WPDataTables?
One major advantage of using wpDataTables is the ability to edit the MySQL tables’ front end. With a small little setting in the Admin panel, you can give your users the option to edit the displayed tables where they can add or remove rows, change data in the table without having to give them direct access to your database.
With all the flexibility being offered with the data, wpDataTables also lets you choose how to display your tables across different devices. While you might not have a problem displaying lots of columns on a wide screen of desktop and laptop, swiping across the screen on a tablet or a smartphone to access data can be quite irritating for your users and customers. wpDataTables has an innovative solution to this problem and lets you decide which columns to display on a smaller device. While all the data is just right there, depending on the device that user might be using, the data will automatically be displayed in a compressed format, displaying only important columns that you choose.
The tables created using this tool are completely flexible and have been extensively tested on a wide range of WordPress themes. You don’t need to add or edit CSS files to get the font and colours to match your site. Through the Admin Panel itself, you can adjust these features instantly and without any hassle. Plus, you can design your table and preview it before it goes live on the site. So, you sort out any tiny niggles before anybody else sees it.
Demo, Pricing and Conclusion
This nifty tool works for a wide range of data types such as catalogues, pricing charts, database management needs, tracking progress etc. and can be purchased for a nominal one-time fee of $28 for a single licence. This regular license fee includes a lifetime supply of updates and help whenever you need it. The company has already prepared extensive documentation which thoroughly explains all the features and elements of the tool along with a list of frequently asked questions. You can even have a look at it before you buy the tool.
If you are a bit lazy (like us) about reading, then you can also opt for the video tutorials (shared below) that cover the basic and most essential bits of the tool. In you are more of a try-it-before-I-buy-it kind of person, you can check the front end and back end demos of the tool which are also freely available or spend us some on the Sandbox Demo Site before you purchase. And if you like the tool so much that you would like your clients also to use it, you can buy the extended licence at $140.
So, do give wpDataTables a try and get customized and responsive tables for your WordPress site today.
