How to Create Your First Table with the TableCrafter Wizard

Updated July 2026 • 5 min read • By Fahad Murtaza

The TableCrafter wizard walks you through five short steps to turn a data source into a working WordPress table. No shortcode attributes to memorize, no builder panels to figure out first. If you have TableCrafter installed and a data source ready, this guide gets you to a live table in under ten minutes. WordPress powers 43% of all websites globally (W3Techs, July 2026), and TableCrafter bridges the gap between the data you collect and the tables your users need to see, no custom PHP, no dashboard access required for viewers, and no per-row limits on the free tier. The free version on WordPress.org supports CSV, JSON, Google Sheets, and Excel. Pro adds Gravity Forms, Airtable, Notion, WooCommerce, REST APIs, inline cell editing, export to CSV/PDF, role-based column visibility, and auto-refresh. Every table embeds on any page with a [tablecrafter] shortcode or the native Gutenberg block. Conditional logic fields in Gravity Forms are used by 73% of complex form builders (Gravity Forms user survey, 2024).

What Do I Need Before Starting?

Make sure you have:

• TableCrafter installed and activated (version 7.8.1 or later for the wizard)
• A data source ready — a JSON/REST API URL, a Gravity Form with entries, a public Google Sheet, or another supported source
• Administrator access to the WordPress admin

The wizard does not require the Pro license. All five steps are available in the free version for the JSON, Google Sheets, and CSV sources. Gravity Forms integration is available when Gravity Forms is active on the same site.

This configuration interacts with any caching or CDN layer active on your WordPress installation. If you use WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, or a CDN such as Cloudflare, flush the page cache after making this change to ensure the updated configuration is reflected in the cached HTML served to visitors. TableCrafter's server-side output is regenerated on the next uncached request.

How Do I Open the Table Creation Wizard?

In the WordPress admin sidebar, go to TableCrafter → Create with Wizard. The wizard opens full-screen with a five-step progress bar across the top. You start at Step 1 automatically.

If you do not see "Create with Wizard" in the sidebar, make sure TableCrafter is activated under Plugins → Installed Plugins. The wizard is part of both the free and Pro versions. If the sidebar entry is visible but clicking it results in a white screen or 403 error, confirm that your WordPress user account has the "manage_options" capability (the default for Administrator role) — the wizard requires administrator access to read your installed data sources and form connections.

The wizard's five steps are: (1) select a data source type, (2) connect the source and fetch a column preview, (3) configure column display settings, (4) set access permissions, and (5) name the table and generate the shortcode. You can navigate back to earlier steps using the progress bar at any point before the final step generates the configuration.

Step 1: How Do I Pick your data source?

The first screen shows a grid of source cards. Click the card for the source type you want to use:

• Gravity Forms — displays entries from any active Gravity Form on your site
• JSON / REST API — connects to any URL that returns JSON, including REST APIs, JSON files, and internal endpoints
• Airtable — connects to an Airtable base via its API
• Notion — pulls rows from a Notion database
• WooCommerce — reads products or orders from your WooCommerce store
• Google Sheets — connects to a public or API-key Google Sheet

Click the card once to select it (it gains a highlighted border), then click Next. If you click the wrong card, just click a different one — only one source can be selected at a time.

After completing this step, verify the result by viewing the page as a logged-out visitor in an incognito window. This confirms the table behaves correctly for public visitors rather than reflecting admin-level permissions that may hide configuration issues during initial setup. Check both the rendered output and the browser console for any JavaScript errors.

Step 2: How Do I Connect to your source?

This step changes depending on which source you selected. The two most common paths are covered in full below.

If you chose JSON / REST API

Enter the URL of your endpoint or JSON file in the URL field. For example:

https://dummyjson.com/products

Two optional fields appear below the URL:

• Auth headers — if your API requires authentication, enter your headers here, one per line, in Key: Value format. For Bearer token APIs, enter: Authorization: Bearer your-token-here
• Data path — if your JSON wraps its data inside an object (which most APIs do), enter the dot-separated path to the array. For the DummyJSON example above, the products array lives at products, so enter products in this field.

Click Test connection. The wizard sends a server-side request to your URL and shows the result within a few seconds:

• On success: a small preview table appears showing the detected column names and the first five rows of data. Verify this looks right before continuing.
• On failure: an error message explains what went wrong (unreachable URL, auth failure, wrong data path, etc.) so you can correct it and try again.

If you chose Gravity Forms

A dropdown lists all active forms on your site. Select the form whose entries you want to display, then click Next. There is no connection test step for Gravity Forms since the data is local.

Step 3: How Do I Choose your columns?

The wizard lists every field it detected from your source as a checkbox. All fields are checked by default. Uncheck any field you do not want to show as a column.

Two buttons at the top let you Select all or Deselect all in one click. This is useful when your source has many fields and you only want a few — deselect all and then check just the ones you need.

At this stage, the order of columns in the table matches the order they appear in this list. You can reorder columns later in the full builder.

Click Next when your column selection looks right.

The column mapping you define here is stored as a JSON configuration in the WordPress database. You can export this configuration using the TableCrafter export tool and import it to another table or another site. This is useful when replicating a table layout across multiple pages or when migrating a table to a staging environment for testing before going live.

Step 4: How Do I Set display options?

Three options control how the table behaves on the frontend:

• Search bar — off by default. Turn this on to show a live text search field above the table. Useful for tables with more than 20 rows.
• Pagination — on by default. When pagination is on, a page-size picker appears so you can set how many rows to show per page (10, 25, 50, or 100). Turn pagination off only for short tables with a fixed row count.
• Mobile responsive — on by default. This collapses the table into a stacked card layout on screens narrower than 768px so it remains readable on phones.

These settings can all be changed later in the builder or directly in the shortcode, so do not overthink them here. Click Next.

TableCrafter re-fetches this data on each page load by default. If your data source updates infrequently and your site has significant traffic, enable the built-in caching option in the table's Performance tab. This stores the fetched data for a configurable number of minutes and serves it from WordPress transients, reducing API calls to the source and improving page load time for visitors.

Step 5: How Do I Review and create?

The final screen shows a summary of everything you configured:

• Source type and connection (URL or form name)
• Number of columns selected
• Display options (search, pagination, mobile layout)

Read through the summary. If anything looks wrong, click the relevant step in the progress bar at the top to go back and fix it.

When everything is correct, click Create Table. The wizard saves the configuration and, once complete, shows:

The configuration you set here applies to every visitor who loads a page containing this table, regardless of whether they are logged in. Role-specific overrides for columns and rows are a separate layer and do not replace these global display settings. Apply global settings first, then add role restrictions as needed for tables that serve multiple user types.

• Your shortcode — for example, [tablecrafter id="5"] — with a Copy button beside it
• A Customize in builder → link to open the table in the advanced builder for further configuration

How Do I Place the Shortcode on a Page?

Copy the shortcode shown after creation. Open any WordPress page or post and paste it in:

• Block editor: Add a Shortcode block (search "shortcode" in the block inserter) and paste the code inside it.
• Elementor: Add a Shortcode widget to any section and paste the code. The table renders in the Elementor preview.
• Classic editor: Paste the shortcode directly into the text area.
• PHP template: Use echo do_shortcode('[tablecrafter id="5"]'); in any theme template file.

Publish or preview the page and the table will render with your live data.

This step completes the connection between your data source and the TableCrafter table engine. Once saved, the plugin caches the connection credentials in the WordPress options table and uses them on every subsequent page load. If you update the source configuration later — for example, rotating an API key or changing a sheet URL — return to this step, enter the new value, and save again. The table updates immediately on next load without any shortcode changes.

What to do next?

The wizard creates a working table with sensible defaults. Once your table is live, the most common follow-up tasks are:

• Rename column headers — open the table in the builder, click a column, and edit its label. The original field name from the source does not change, only the display header.
• Reorder columns — drag columns into the order you want in the builder's column list.
• Add export buttons — in the builder's Display tab, enable CSV, Excel, or PDF export.
• Set a default sort — in the builder, pick which column to sort by when the table first loads and whether to sort ascending or descending.
• Rotate an API token — if your JSON source uses Bearer token auth and the token changes, update it in the builder under the source connection settings. The shortcode placement on your pages does not need to change.