Table of contents

The table of contents builds itself, when the page opens, from the headings inside your article. No separate field, no manual list, no shortcode.

The consequence is worth stating plainly: the quality of the contents equals the quality of your headings. An article with no headings gets no contents list, and that is the correct behavior.

Clicking an entry moves smoothly to that section, the current section is highlighted as the reader scrolls, and nested levels are indented.

#Turn it on and choose the levels

Go to VerbaTheme OptionsSingle PostBody, group Table of Contents.

Heading levels is the control that matters. Only h2 gives a short list of sections. h2 plus h3 gives structure with sub-entries. Adding h5 and h6 only makes sense in very long reference articles, where the alternative is a wall of text.

#How the indenting works

Indenting is measured from the shallowest level that actually appears in the article, not from h2.

So an article written with h3 and h4 reads as a top-level list with sub-entries, rather than starting with a double indent for no reason. It looks like magic until you know the rule.

#When the contents list disappears

If the selected levels match none of the article headings, the block is not drawn at all. The server sees an empty list of entries and returns no markup, so there is no empty frame and no hidden block in the page source. There is also no hint to you that anything is wrong.

#Anchors

If a heading has no anchor of its own, the theme creates one from the heading text. The one case worth setting by hand is two identical headings in the same article, which you can fix in the heading block settings.

#Contents and the reading bar

Different jobs, both fine to have on at once. The bar shows reading progress, the contents list gives navigation.

Can I exclude one heading from the list?

Not directly. Use a heading level that is not in the selected set, or make it a styled paragraph instead of a heading.

Does the contents list help SEO?

It creates internal anchor links and encourages you to write a real heading structure, which helps readers first. Treat the structure as the benefit and the links as a side effect.

Last updated 9 Sep 2026