This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Dropdown Content

Description

Use a shortcode to define a drop-down form field, and shortcodes to define blocks of content that will be displayed when a specific entry is selected.

Usage

To add a content dropdown to a post, you can either select the Content Dropdown icon from the TinyMCE editor, or enter the shortcodes manually.

[dropdown name="controlName" class="customClassName"] - both `name` and `class` are optional; `name` will default to `dropdown-content`
  • the name is used to identify which content sections are targetted by this dropdown; if there is only one dropdown on a page, it is optional; if there are multiple dropdowns on a page, each will need a unique name
  • class can be a space-separated list of class names, or just a single class name
  • only [dropdown-option] shortcodes may be inside this shortcode

    [dropdown-option value=”someValue”] – the value field is technically optional, but is required if this option is meant to make a content block visible

  • must be inside a [dropdown] shortcode

    [dropdown-content name=”controlName” value=”someValue”] – if the name matches a dropdown name, and the value matches the value of an option within that dropdown, then this content will be displayed when that specific option is selected.

  • again, name is technically optional, but must match a [dropdown] name (also defaults to dropdown-content)

  • value is required, and must match a value for a [dropdown-option]
  • can be anywhere on the page

Example

Copy and paste the following content to see the plugin in action

[dropdown]
[dropdown-option]Select one…[/dropdown-option]
[dropdown-option value=”option1″]First option[/dropdown-option]
[dropdown-option value=”option2″]Second Option[/dropdown-option]
[/dropdown]

[dropdown-content value=”option1″]Content for the first option.[/dropdown-content]

[dropdown-content value=”option2″]Content for the second option.[/dropdown-content]

Those were all using the default values from the plugin. Let’s change it up a bit.

[dropdown]
[dropdown-option value=”option1″]The First[/dropdown-option]
[dropdown-option value=”option2″ default=true]The Second[/dropdown-option]
[dropdown-option value=”option3″]The Third[/dropdown-option]
[/dropdown]

You’ll notice below that the second option will be displayed by default for you.

[dropdown-content value=”option1″]Some different content for the second first option.[/dropdown-content]

[dropdown-content value=”option2″]Some different content for the second second option.[/dropdown-content]

[dropdown-content value=”option3″]Some different content for the second third option.[/dropdown-content]

Screenshots

  • The Test 3 option is currently selected
  • Now the Test 2 option has been selected and the content below the dropdown has changed

Installation

The plugin is simple to install:

  1. Download the plugin, it will arrive as a zip file
  2. Unzip it
  3. Upload dropdown-content.zip directory to your WordPress Plugin directory
  4. Go to the plugin management page and enable the plugin

FAQ

What is actually happening?

There is a tiny bit of Javascript that watches these generated dropdowns for the change event, and simply adds the class dropdowncontent-content-selected to the content block that has the same value as the selected option.

How do I override your CSS?

Only three classes are used: dropdowncontent-dropdown for the dropdown control itself and has no default styling, dropdowncontent-content which has a single rule (display:none;) for content blocks, and the dropdowncontent-content-selected class which has a single rule (display:inherit;) for selected content blocks. Feel free to override those styles however you like in your own stylesheets.

Can I style the dropdown box itself?

Absolutely! It is a normal SELECT box and can be modified by any CSS or Javascript you like. You can target the default dropdowncontent-dropdown class, any custom class you add to the shortcode, or the field name (which defaults to dropdown-content but can be modified by the shortcode).

What kind of content can be in the content blocks?

Anything! By default, though, since the blocks are given display:none; as their default rule, things like maps or other Javascript targets that require a visible container may not work quite as expected. To account for that, there are two custom jQuery events attached to elements with the dropdowncontent-content class and will fire in this order:

  1. dropdown-content:unselect will fire when a dropdown option is unselected and $(this) will refer to the previously selected content block; the previous value and name fields can be found with $(this).attr('data-dropdowncontent-value') and $(this).attr('data-dropdowncontent-name')
  2. dropdown-content:select will fire when a dropdown option is selected, and $(this) will refer to the newly selected content block; the current value and name fields can be found with $(this).attr('data-dropdowncontent-value') and $(this).attr('data-dropdowncontent-name')

Reviews

Agẹmọ 10, 2019
Thanks for this plugin. It’s super simple to use and it works perfectly!
Èrèlé 8, 2018
I needed a dropdown that could change the content shown on my page depending on the value selected. This plugin did the job beautifully
Ọ̀wàrà 30, 2017 1 reply
Hi, I have recently added a plugin to my site. I really like the plugin and it works fine. Q: I would like to add a custom link from my footer to the selected dropdown list opened. Please If you can help on that, thank you
Èbìbí 11, 2017
Thank you for creating this plugin. I found it easy to install and it’s exactly what I needed for the front end of my project. I haven’t had any problems with it and it is working really well.
Read all 5 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Dropdown Content” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Dropdown Content” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

v1.0.2 2016/09/23

  • fixed content block custom event delegation

v1.0.1 2016/09/23

  • updated documentation
  • added screenshots
  • added FAQ entries
  • added custom jQuery events to Javascript
  • now uses delegated listener in case dropdowns are hidden on page load or loaded via AJAX
  • removed references to “visible” in code and documentation, replaced with “select” instead

v1.0.0 2016/09/22

  • First public release