WordPress tricks and tips

I have been using WordPress for more than two years. In the course of writing more than 200 columns, I’ve learned quite a lot about this platform. In this column I’d like to share some of the techniques I use to make my blog what it is.

1. Colorize headlines. Most themes set their title (headline) color to black. Sales Letter theme usually uses red. What if you want a different color? You can change it, but you have to use HTML. Fortunately, the headline cell is receptive to HTML code. This is the format to use:

<span style=”color: #0000ff;”>Headline text goes here</span>

Websites use the Hexidecimal chart for colors. Each color is represented by a six-character designator (0000ff, for example). To produce a a colored headline, find the designator of the color you want, and insert it in the formula between the pound/number sign and the semi-colon. The formula is not case-sensitive; the letters can be all capped or lower case.

2. Have multi-level headlines. This step is even easier. Type the break symbol–<br>–where you’d like the breaks to appear. For example,

Relax and unwind<br>in your new<br>3-bedroom home

becomes

Relax and unwind
in your new
3-bedroom home

As with all HTML code, you can include the color command also.

3. Have a prefilled subject line in email prompts. This step involves adding code to the standard email prompting code. To review, the basic code for email (which the editor portion of WordPress typically generates for you) is:

<a href=”mailto:username@yourdomain.com”></a>

Let’s say you want the subject line to prefill to say, Blog post on generating leads

This is the code to use:

<a href=”mailto:username@yourdomain.com?subject=Blog post on generating leads“></a>

Note that we’ve added that one part  ?subject=  after the dot-com. What follows will be the subject line for the email that your visitor sees. Remember to include the quotation mark at the end of this line. (Subject line will not be in bold. I did that for solely for this column.)

4. HTML for a banner ad. Ever wonder how those banner ads are produced? It’s not as difficult as you might think. In fact, I created two for my other business, a travel club. Those are shown at right.

The first part of the process, which I can’t show you here, involves creating your image. That’s up to you. What do you want to say? What image would you like to use? How large should it be?

Once you have created your image, upload it to the library in your blog. Yep, the same library where all those images used for your columns are stored. Find the image, and copy it’s URL to your clipboard (CTRL + C for PC; CMD + C for Mac).

Here is the code you’ll use:

<a href=”http://www.mywebsite.com“>
<img src=”http://myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Mybannerimage.jpg”></a>

The first line is for the destination website; where you want to send people. The second line is the URL of the image you just created. That’s it! Now, paste this into a text widget and test it. You can also send this to someone else’s website, and advertise there.

If you found value in this post, could you do me a favor and share it with others? You may use any of the links below. Feel free to comment, as well. To contact me, send an email.

 

 

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