June 16, 2024

Table of Contents Plus Plugin

A powerful yet user friendly plugin that automatically creates a table of contents. Can also output a sitemap listing all pages and categories.

A powerful yet user friendly plugin that automatically creates a context specific index or table of contents (TOC) for long pages (and custom post types). More than just a table of contents plugin, this plugin can also output a sitemap listing pages and/or categories across your entire site.

Built from the ground up and with Wikipedia in mind, the table of contents by default appears before the first heading on a page. This allows the author to insert lead-in content that may summarise or introduce the rest of the page. It also uses a unique numbering scheme that doesn’t get lost through CSS differences across themes.

This plugin is a great companion for content rich sites such as content management system oriented configurations. That said, bloggers also have the same benefits when writing long structured articles.

Includes an administration options panel where you can customise settings like display position, define the minimum number of headings before an index is displayed, other appearance, and more. For power users, expand the advanced options to further tweak its behaviour – eg: exclude undesired heading levels like h5 and h6 from being included; disable the output of the included CSS file; adjust the top offset and more. Using shortcodes, you can override default behaviour such as special exclusions on a specific page or even to hide the table of contents altogether.

Prefer to include the index in the sidebar? Go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the TOC+ to your desired sidebar and position.

Custom post types are supported, however, auto insertion works only when the_content() has been used by the custom post type. Each post type will appear in the options panel, so enable the ones you want.

Collaborate, participate, fork this plugin on Github.

Shortcodes

The plugin was designed to be as seamless and painfree as possible and did not require you to insert a shortcode for operation. However, using the shortcode allows you to fully control the position of the table of contents within your page. The following shortcodes are available with this plugin.

When attributes are left out for the shortcodes below, they will fallback to the settings you defined under Settings > TOC+. The following are detailed in the help tab.

[toc]

Lets you generate the table of contents at the preferred position. Useful for sites that only require a TOC on a small handful of pages. Supports the following attributes:

“label”: text, title of the table of contents
“no_label”: true/false, shows or hides the title
“wrapping”: text, either “left” or “right”
“heading_levels”: numbers, this lets you select the heading levels you want included in the table of contents. Separate multiple levels with a comma. Example: include headings 3, 4 and 5 but exclude the others with heading_levels="3,4,5"
“class”: text, enter CSS classes to be added to the container. Separate multiple classes with a space.
“start”: number, show when this number of headings are present in the content.

[no_toc]

Allows you to disable the table of contents for the current post, page, or custom post type.

[sitemap]

Produces a listing of all pages and categories for your site. You can use this on any post, page or even in a text widget. Note that this will not include an index of posts so use sitemap_posts if you need this listing.

[sitemap_pages]

Lets you print out a listing of only pages. The following attributes are accepted:

“heading”: number between 1 and 6, defines which html heading to use
“label”: text, title of the list
“no_label”: true/false, shows or hides the list heading
“exclude”: IDs of the pages or categories you wish to exclude
“exclude_tree”: ID of the page or category you wish to exclude including its all descendants
“child_of”: “current” or page ID of the parent page. Defaults to 0 which includes all pages.

[sitemap_categories]

Same as [sitemap_pages] but for categories.

[sitemap_posts]

This lets you print out an index of all published posts on your site. By default, posts are listed in alphabetical order grouped by their first letters. The following attributes are accepted:

“order”: text, either ASC or DESC
“orderby”: text, popular options include “title”, “date”, “ID”, and “rand”. See WP_Query for a list.
“separate”: true/false (defaults to true), does not separate the lists by first letter when set to false.

Use the following CSS classes to customise the appearance of your listing:

toc_sitemap_posts_section
toc_sitemap_posts_letter
toc_sitemap_posts_list

I love it, how can I show my appreciation?

If you have been impressed with this plugin and would like to somehow show some appreciation, rather than send a donation my way, please donate to your charity of choice.

I will never ask for any form of reward or compensation. Helping others achieve their goals is satisfying for me 🙂

Installation

The normal plugin install process applies, that is search for table of contents plus from your plugin screen or via the manual method:

Upload the table-of-contents-plus folder into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

That’s it! The table of contents will appear on pages with at least four or more headings.

You can change the default settings and more under Settings > TOC+

Screenshots

An example of the table of contents, positioned at the top, right aligned, and a width of 275px
An example of the sitemap_pages shortcode
An example of the sitemap_posts shortcode
The options panel found in Settings > TOC+
Some advanced options
The sitemap tab

Changelog

2406

Released: 16 June 2024
Revert ‘Do not output CSS/JS on pages not eligible’ introduced in 2402 as it broke some clever edge cases
Fixed XSS issue requiring editor or higher privileges for show/hide text (thanks to wpscan)

2402.1

Released: 22 February 2024
Fixed check for shortcode use (#164)

2402

Released: 21 February 2024
Added option to generate TOC in REST requests, disabled by default (props ballpumpe)
Composer improvements (props mohjak)
Do not output CSS/JS on pages not eligible
Update POT translation file
Update links to help

2311

Released: 7 November 2023
Bump tested WordPress version to 6.4
Do not trigger on REST requests (props steffenster)
Update include mechanism in init.php (props maciejmackowiak)

2309

Released: 19 September 2023
Bump tested version to 6.3.1
Added child_of property to sitemap_pages shortcode (props flagsoft). This lets you output a listing of child pages for a set parent or “current”. Property is optional and defaults to all pages.
Fixed XSS possibility handling nonce while saving options (thanks to Patchstack)
Updated WordPress Coding Standard to 3.0

2302

Released: 9 February 2023
Added toc_brackets CSS class to square brackets around show/hide text
Added a filter to the toc_extract_headings function (props Raymond Radet)
Refactor using WordPress-Extra coding standard

2212

Released: 16 December 2022
Bump tested version to 6.1.1
When using the TOC+ widget, execute shortcodes beforehand (props endcoreCL)
When using the TOC+ widget, abort early when no post for edge cases (props jonas-hoebenreich)
Add start property to toc shortcode to override the minimum number of headings needed to display (props woutervanvliet)
Add no_numbers property to toc shortcode to disable leading heading indexes (props TedAvery)
Fixed XSS vulnerability in toc shortcode, class property (thanks to wpscan)
Fixed XSS vulnerabilities in sitemap_pages and sitemap_categories shortcodes, label property

2106

Released: 23 June 2021
Add compatibility with Rank Math SEO
Bump tested WordPress version to 5.7
Add PHP coding style
Adhere to majority of coding tips

2002

Released: 9 February 2020
Fixed encoding when using %PAGE_TITLE% or %PAGE_NAME%
Bump tested WordPress version to 5.3
Removed all local translations as you can find more up to date ones at translate.wordpress.org
Removed translators links from readme

1601

Released: 5 January 2016
Bump tested WordPress version to 4.4
Add ‘enable’ and ‘disable’ API functions so a developer can better control the execution.
Add Brazilian Portuguese translation thanks to Blog de Niterói
Add Spanish translation thanks to David Saiz
TOC+ widget now adheres to a blank title if none provided. Thanks to Dirk for the cue.
Updated jQuery Smooth Scroll 1.5.5 to 1.6.0
Updated text domain to better support translation packs.

1509

Released: 4 September 2015
Added Hebrew translation thanks to Ahrale
Added Japaense translation thanks to シカマル
Added Greek translation thanks to Dimitrios Kaisaris
Updated jQuery Smooth Scroll 1.4.10 to 1.5.5
Supply both minified and unminified CSS and JS files, use minified versions.
Convert accented characters to ASCII in anchors.
Bump tested WordPress version to 4.3
Fixed: PHP notice introduced in WP 4.3
Fixed: javascript error with $.browser testing for Internet Explorer 7.
Plugin has moved to GitHub for better collaboration.
Help needed: preg_match_all failing with bad UTF8 characters producing no TOC. If you can help, please participate in this issue.

1507

Released: 5 July 2015
Added Danish translation courtesy of Cupunu
Simplified the translation duty by moving the help material to the plugin’s website.
Updated translation file.

1505

Released: 2 May 2015
Huge thanks to Jason for an updated Simplified Chinese translation.
Added collapse property to the toc shortcode. When set to true, this will hide the table of contents when it loads. Example usage: [toc collapse=”true”]
Added label_show and label_hide properties to the toc shortcode. This lets you change the “show” and “hide” link text when using the shortcode.
Bump tested WordPress version to 4.2.1.

1408

Released: 1 August 2014
Added a human German translation courtesy Ben
Added “class” attribute to the TOC shortcode to allow for custom CSS classes to be added to the container. Thanks to Joe for suggesting it

1407

Released: 5 July 2014
Added Ukrainian translation courtesy Michael Yunat
Added French translation courtesy Jean-Michel Duriez
Empty headings are now ignored, as suggested by archon810
Removed German translation, may have been machine translated, ref
Fixed: Special chars in TOC+ > Settings > Exclude Headings no longer get mangled on save. Thanks to N-Z for reporting it.

1404

Released: 18 April 2014
Bump WordPress support to 3.9
Fixed: Strip HTML tags from post titles for sitemap_posts so those items do not appear under a < heading. Thanks to Rose for reporting it.
Fictitious: This release was powered by three blind mice.

1402

Released: 19 February 2014
Added German translation courtesy Cord Peter
Modify toc_get_index API function to also reset minimum number of headings to 0.
Removing the TOC+ widget from the sidebar no longer requires you to uncheck the ‘Show the table of contents only in the sidebar’ option. It will be reset on removal.
Delay count of headings until disqualified have been removed. Thanks to Simone di Saintjust for raising it.
Using the TOC+ widget, you can now limit the display to selected post types. Thanks to Pete Markovic for the idea.
Updated translation file (extra options added).

1311

Released: 10 November 2013
Added third parameter to toc_get_index API function to enable eligibility check (eg apply minimum heading check, is post type enabled, etc). This has been switched off by default and only affects those using the API. Thanks Jonon for your comment.
Added Dutch translation courtesy Renee
Apply bullet option to TOC+ widget, thanks to Thomas Pani for the patch.

1308

Released: 5 August 2013
Fix javascript issue with minimum jQuery version check (broke smooth scrolling using WordPress 3.6).
Replaced Slovak translation with a human translated version courtesy Boris Gereg.
Remove signature from source when using the shortcode but not allowed to print (eg on homepage).
Add “separate” attribute for sitemap_posts shortcode to not split by letter, thanks DavidMjps for the suggestion.

1303.1

Released: 22 March 2013
New: added Polish translation, curtesy Jakub
Fixed: an issue in 1303 that ignored headings with the opening tag on the first line and the heading text on a new line. Thanks to richardsng for the quick discovery.

1303

Released: 21 March 2013
New: option auto insert after the first heading. Thanks to @thelawnetwork for requesting it.
New: allow headings to be excluded from the table of contents. This is available both globally under the advanced section of Settings > TOC+ and individually with the TOC shortcode. Check out the help material for examples. Thanks to the many of you that requested it.
New: advanced option to lowercase all anchors. The default is off.
New: advanced option to use hyphens rather than underscores in anchors. The default is off.
New: shortcode to list all posts in alphabetical order grouped by first letter.
New: added Slovak translation, curtesy Branco Radenovich.
Add version numbers to CSS/JS files to better support setups that cache these files heavily for timely invalidation. Thanks to boxcarpress for the amendments.
Add CSS class ‘contracted’ to #toc_container when the table of contents is hidden. Thanks to Sam for suggesting it.
With smooth scroll enabled, do not use an offset if no admin bar is present and the offset value is default. This means that public users do not have the offset space at the top.
New help material for developers under the help tab.
Added API function: toc_get_index() lets you retrieve a table of contents to be placed within PHP. Check out the new developer help material for examples.
Allow anchors to be filterable using toc_url_anchor_target to customise further through code. Check the new developer help material for an example. Thanks to Russell Heimlich for the tip.
Adjust CSS and JS registration.
Updated jQuery Smooth Scroll to 1.4.10.
Fixed: When using the widget, addressed an issue where the index with special characters (such as ‘ and “) would not link to the correct spot within the content. Thanks to esandman for raising it.
Fixed: Saving at Settings > TOC+ resets TOC+ widget options. Thanks to Chris for reporting it.

1211

Released: 17 November 2012
New: allow %PAGE_TITLE% to be used in the TOC title. Note that this also works in the widget title too. When used, this variable will be replaced with the current page’s title. Thanks to Peter for the request.
New: new option to hide the TOC initially. Thanks to Jonas, Jonathan, and Doc Germanicus for requesting it.
New: added ability to customise visited TOC link colour.
New: option to restrict generation to a URL path match. For example, you can restrict to wiki pages that fall under http://domain/wiki/ by entering /wiki/ into the field. The setting can be found in the advanced options. Thanks to Tux and Justine Smithies for suggesting it.
Make regular expressions less greedy. That means you can have multiple headings on a single line whereas before you needed to ensure each heading was on their own line. Thanks to drdamour for raising and providing a fix.
Also make regular expressions match across multiple lines. This means you can have your single heading split across many lines.
Better accessibility: when using smooth scrolling, allow for focus to follow the target, eg tabbing through will continue from the content block you clicked through to.
Better performance: as requested by a few, javascript files have been consolidated into one and both javascript and CSS files are now minified.
‘Auto’ is now the default width which means it’ll take up the needed amount of space up to 100%. The previous default was a fixed width of 275px.
Added the ability to exclude entire branches when using [sitemap_pages] and [sitemap_categories] using the exclude_tree attribute. Thanks to Benny Powers for requesting it.
Wrap index numbers around span tags to enable easier CSS customisation. The spans are have two classes: toc_number and toc_depth_X where X is between 1 and 6. Thanks to Matthias Krok for requesting it.
Moved the ‘preserve theme bullets’ option into the advanced section.
Updated and simplified the translation file.
Fixed: [sitemap_categories] using the wrong label when none was specified. Thanks to brandt-net for raising it. The labels for both [sitemap_pages] and [sitemap_categories] may be removed in a future update as you can insert the title within your content.

1208

Released: 2 August 2012
New: advanced option to prevent the output of this plugin’s CSS. This option allows the site owner to incorporate styles in one of their existing style sheets. Thanks to Ivan and Swashata for suggesting it.
Added Simplified Chinese translation thanks to icedream
Make more translatable by adding a translation POT file in the languages folder. Translations welcome!
Adjust multibyte string detection as reported by johnnyvaughan
Support PHP 5.4.x installations. Thanks to Josh for raising it.
Fixed: -2 appearing in links when using the TOC+ widget. Thanks to Arturo for raising it.

1207

Released: 23 July 2012
New: when smooth scrolling is enabled, allow the top offset to be specified to support more than the WordPress admin bar (such as Twitter Bootstrap). The offset is displayed in the advanced section after you have enabled smooth scrolling. Thanks to Nicolaus for the suggestion.
Allow 2 headings to be set as the minimum (used to be 3). Thanks to Fran for justifying it.
Run later in the process so other plugins don’t alter the anchor links (eg Google Analytics for WordPress).
Do not show a TOC in RSS feeds. Thanks to Swashata for raising it.
Bump tested version to WordPress 3.5-alpha.
Added help material about why some headings may not be appearing.
Added banner image for WordPress repository listing.
Updated readme.txt with GPLv2 licensing.

1112.1

Released: 9 December 2011
Forgot to update version number.

1112

Released: 9 December 2011
New: auto width option added which takes up only the needed amount of horizontal space up to 100%.
Removed trailing – or _ characters from the anchor to make it more pretty.
This plugin’s long name has changed from “Table of Contents+” to “Table of Contents Plus”. The short name remains as “TOC+”.
Fixed: when using the TOC shortcode within your content, your post or article would display the TOC on the homepage despite having the exclude from homepage option enabled. If you also used the “more tag”, then you may have resulted with an empty TOC box. These are now addressed.
Fixed: all anchors ending with “-2” when no headings were repeated. This was caused by plugins and themes that trigger the_content filter. The counters are now reset everytime the_content is run rather than only on initialisation.

1111

Released: 11 November 2011
New: option to adjust the font size. Thanks to DJ for the suggestion. The default remains at 95%.
New: advanced option to select the heading levels (1 to 6) to be included. Thanks to those that hinted about wanting to achieve this.
New: you can now have the TOC appear in the sidebar via the TOC+ widget. Thanks to Nick Daugherty and DJ for the suggestion.
The TOC shortcode now supports the heading_levels attribute to allow you to limit the headings you want to appear in the table of contents on a per instance basis. Separate multiple headings with a comma. For example: include headings 3, 4 and 5 but exclude the others with [toc heading_levels="3,4,5"]
The TOC shortcode also supports the wrapping attribute with possible values: “left” or “right”. This lets you wrap text next to the table of contents on a per instance basis. Thanks to Phil for the suggestion.
Better internal numbering system to avoid repeated headings. This means that for non-repeated headings, there is no trailing number in the anchor.
Consolidated information about shortcodes and their attributes into the help tab.
Fixed: repeated headings on the same level are no longer broken. For users with international character sets, please report any strange garbage characters in your headings (eg a character ends up being a question mark, square symbol, or diamond). Thanks to Juozas for the assistance.
Fixed: removed PHP notices on a verbosely configured PHP setup.
Fixed: suppress TOC frame output when heading count was less than the minimum required.
Note: when removing the last TOC+ widget, please make sure you disable the “Show the table of contents only in the sidebar” option otherwise your table of contents won’t appear where you’d expect. I will look to address this in the future.

1109

Released: 12 September 2011
Adjusted hide action for a smoother transition.
Apply custom link and hover colours (when selected) to show/hide link in the title.
Renamed jquery.cookie.min.js to jquery.c.min.js to overcome false positive with mod_security. Mod_security would block requests to this file which would break the ability to save a user’s show/hide preference. In some cases, it has also broken other javascript functionality. Additionally, a better graceful non disruptive fallback is now in place to prevent possible repeat. Thanks goes to Shonie for helping debug the issue.
Moved ‘visibility option’ into ‘heading text’.
Fixed: restored smooth scroll effect for Internet Explorer since 1108.2 introduced ‘pathname’ checks.

1108.2

Released: 26 August 2011
New: visibility option to show/hide the table of contents. This option is enabled by default so if you don’t want it, turn it off in the options. Thanks to Wafflecone and Mike for the suggestion.
New: transparent presentation option added.
New: custom presentation option with colour wheel for you to select your own background, border, title and link colours.
TOC display on homepage has been disabled by default as most configurations would not require it there. If you want to enable it, you can do so under a new advanced admin option “Include homepage”.
Make smooth scrolling less zealous with anchors and be more compatible with other plugins that may use # to initiate custom javascript actions.
Minor admin cross browser CSS enhancements like background gradients and indents.

1108.1

Released: 3 August 2011
Anchor targets (eg anything after #) are now limited to ASCII characters as some mobile user agents do not accept internationalised characters. This is also a recommendation in the HTML spec. A new advanced admin option has been added to specify the default prefix when no characters qualify.
Make TOC, Pages and Category labels compatible with UTF-8 characters.
Support ‘ ” \ characters in labels as it was being escaped by WordPress before saving.

1108

Released: 1 August 2011
New: option to hide the title on top of the table of contents. Thanks to Andrew for the suggestion.
New: option to preserve existing theme specified bullet images for unordered list elements.
New: option to set the width of the table of contents. You can select from a number of common widths, or define your own.
Allow 3 to be set as the minimum number of headings for auto insertion. The default stays at 4.
Now accepts heading 1s (h1) within the body of a post, page or custom post type.
Now creates new span tags for the target rather than the id of the heading.
Now uses the heading as the anchor target rather than toc_index.
Adjusted CSS styles for lists to be a little more consistent across themes (eg list-style, margins & paddings).
Fixed: typo ‘heirarchy’ should be ‘hierarchy’. Also thanks to Andrew.
Fixed: addressed an issue while saving on networked installs using sub directories. Thanks to Aubrey.
Fixed: closing of the last list item when deeply nested.

1107.1

Released: 10 July 2011
New: added [toc] shortcode to generate the table of contents at the preferred position. Also useful for sites that only require a TOC on a small handful of pages.
New: smooth scroll effect added to animate to anchor rather than jump. It’s off by default.
New: appearance options to match your theme a little bit more.

1107

Released: 1 July 2011
First world release (functional & feature packed)