Inserting Tables into WordPress the Easy Way
Do you know an easy way to insert tables into your blog post? Share your secret, please!
I knew there was a reason I always dragged my feet when I presented the WebDiggin cashflow report for this blog. I mean, I had lots of good reasons to get that post out there. After all, Jan 2008, we saw a profit of $137.84. Feburary pulled in another $58.10 in profit. The reason why it takes me so long to do the report is because I hate doing tables in WordPress. (Heck, I hated inserting tables in blogger, as well.)
The problem with inserting tables into WordPress is that if there is any formating in the tables, when you switch to code mode or save it, it strips everything below the first row. Even when we used the insert from Word option, we didn’t have much luck. It would show up in the visual editor, but the moment we switched to the code mode, we lost the table.
The problem with inserting tables in Blogger is that it adds extra line-breaks either in the table or after the table. Either way, it’s a head-ache.
In the end, what we do is cheat and use third-party software. We copy the table from excel into DreamWeaver before copying the basic HTML code into WordPress. But we wanted to do it a better way, so we did some research…
Alex Rabe has a simple wp-table plugin that allows you to insert tables. It’s nice, because it does allow you to import a CSV worksheet into a table. The big problem, however, is it doesn’t provide you with any options to change the formatting of specific cells, rows, or columns in the table. This would have been the perfect solution, however, unfortunately Alex is working on other projects and doesn’t have time to work on this plugin, so we kept on looking. (We want to be able to show how much money we’ve lost in bright pretty red. It’s our niche spot in this money-making blog world.)
Andrew Ozz has the advanced MCE plugin that includes a table option. Heck, it pretty much turns your Write Post page into a full-blown WYSIWYG text editor. We used it to make our table pretty by adding headings to the table, as well as colouring Feburary yellow to stand out, but… it’s not perfect. You still can’t paste or import tables which means you have to enter them by hand (or do the third-party software trick). And, you can make formatting changes by rows, but not by column, so we had to turn each cell in the Feburary column yellow one-by-one.
Bottom Line: We’re still looking for an easier way to do tables in our blog. Does anyone have any suggestions? How do you deal with tables in your blog?
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April 6th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Maybe just taking a screen grab of your table and inserting an image would solve all problems!
Forest Parks’s last blog post..Experiment update
April 7th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Yeah, we thought about that. The problem is that none of the text in the tables would get picked up by the search engines if it was in a picture. So if someone is looking for CJ, AdWords, and AdSense profits, we want them to find us…
(Lets be real. Right now we’re so low in the ranks, that no one is finding us except people looking for SkypePro Reviews - which did lead to an affiliate commission, but it’s such a low volume search phrase that we haven’t seen a lot of traffic on it. Too bad…
April 19th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I also have the same problem. I have tables that are coloured. they are an output of a program, so they are in a good state. But there are no plugins out there that will bloody work with these. I cant even insert the html code into the post/page code. I hate that. It is the only downfall of wordpress. However, unbeaten and unwilling to change my blog I have managed to insert tables into my blog allowing them to be picked up by search engines. What I do is I create my table in dreamweaver and I save it as a php or html. Then make your post/page and create an sized to match the size of the table.
Another option that I have thought of is using php to do an for that file.
Theres always a way around!
hope this helps
April 19th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
My coding tags didnt show.
The first option was an iframe, the second was a php include file tag. 
April 19th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Hey Dave - I agree - tables are the only downfall of WordPress. (I wonder if it’s any better in the latest version of WP)
We tried saving the table in dreamweaver, and then cutting and pasting the code into our wordpress blog, but that never worked. (We would always loose everything below the first row if there was any formatting in the table.)
Would an iframe work for SEO purposes? I mean, wouldn’t the separate table page get picked up instead of your actual page?
Have you actually tried the PHP method? You mean calling a PHP file with your table from the post itself? That’s a neat idea…
Lately, we’re taking Forest Park’s suggestion and just inserting the table image in our cashflow reports.
We read somewhere that tables aren’t the best for SEO purposes because the table code is long and length and it pushes everything below it to the bottom of your page. (We heard that sometimes the engines don’t always make it to the bottom of the page and that’s why you want your content at the top.)
Are you talking about the tables on your http://www.thisismyempire.com/ page or a different page?
On a side note - nice webpage. How are you driving traffic to that site? (I mean, you could be using your keywords when you leave a comment like web hosting, instead of Dave… Then again, I suppose a lot of bloggers would prefer to comment back to Dave than Web Hosting.)
May 14th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I’m very new at all of this, so I was wondering if the plugin Raw HTML http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/raw-html/ would solve any problems of cutting and pasting a Dreamweaver table into a Wordpress page?
Paul’s last blog post..Notes