Select a Table from a List of Tables on the Page

I have a page that has a clickable map of the US and also an alpha list of the states, each brings up a separate table for each state. And it works great. Have a look at https://usislands.org/island-directory/

Ted

Thank You w8tts, the website looks good and does describe the scenario, however, as stated i am trying to avoid having 50 pages to display the data. That is not my goal – but would be my second choice when the tables get too large.

As displayed in your site, but the data changes with a onclick selection of the viewer on the same page. Unless of course, someone can convince me that 50 pages is a better choice than one page – from a SEO standpoint or web design structural advantage.

Thank You again.
DL

Dee,

I think it will depend on how much maintenance you do on the data. Our state data contains more than 5,000 rows and there is one state with only 3 rows and one with 500+ rows. We’ve found that it’s easier to maintain the data on an individual state basis.

As far as an SEO standpoint, that I can’t answer.

Ted

Ted,

After more thought – are your state pages dynamically created or manually? Does the onclick action create the page through PHP or did you have to create “new page” in the WP admin panel? I would consider individual pages if they were dynamically created from the main list page. My PHP is not that good… yet… will look into it today.

Currently my state tables are individual tables – and yes, i agree individual state tables is the preferred method for the mentioned reasons. In addition, one error/corruption can inhibit all data from being displayed rather than one state.

Thank You Ted
Happy Holiday!

We originally had hard coded HTML pages, one page for all states. Then we contracted to have our web site converted to WP to make it more useful to mobile devices. And we also decided to go with separate pages for each state, and the HTML code was just copied from the one page into the new pages. I’m not sure if the conversion from HTML to WP was through PHP or not. But pages I’ve added have all been through the WP admin panel.

At times the maintenance to the new WP pages could be a nightmare due to WP’s clunky editor. A short time ago I found TablePress, and tried converting a few pages to tables, and liked what I found. So I’ve now converted everything from hard coded HTML into tables.

Ted

TablePress is great – Thank You Tobias

If I have to, when the time comes, i will create a page for each – either manually through WP or a Plugin (if there is one that works) or dynamically if I get help or figure it out through a forum (WP,Stackoverflow, etc.). making the pages would be easy – 50 clones with a different Shortcode on each.

As far as table maintenance – I created a CSV file of the data I want to present – use that as a maintenance/upkeep table then replace the existing one on the website. That way I am not online for extended time and can use spell check or any other features in my editor – spell check, color coding for future changes or deletions – and my master database has data not included on the website, but is still very useful if needed, but would only inflate the online database with irrelevant information.

Thank you

Hi,

thanks for your question, and sorry for the trouble.

Unfortunately, I’m not aware of a directly usable solution for such AJAX loading here, sorry ?? TablePress can only provide the tables, so that having a separate page for each (which you can then use in an AJAX request) should be the best solution.

Regards,
Tobias

Appreciate your response and thank you – that should save me time for looking for a solution I probably would not achieve. A page a table it will have to be when the tables get larger.

Thank You

Hi,

no problem! Always happy to help!

Best wishes,
Tobias