Creative, Fun, Surefire Way to Get the Attention of Blog Authors or Clients

If you have multiple authors on your site (or you build sites for clients), then the following little “trick” might just be the best way possible to get little pieces of information across to them.

This trick (found at wpsnipp) works by filling in the Title Box and/or the Editor Box with predefined text. And so when an author begins to write a post, he/she will see your message for them.

It Gets Cooler

That’s pretty cool, right? Well, it gets even cooler.

You can set this up so that you can randomly insert one of many different strings of text. In this way, the author will see different messages each time he/she goes to write a post. (Well, at least until they run through however many different messages you’ve included. When it gets stale, you can swap them out and include others.)

This could be useful in several ways. You can ….

• Remind authors or clients of import points when writing a title and/or post (such as SEO reminders)
• Give them encouragement
• Lighten the mood with a little humor
• Remind them of site objectives
• Provide links for important information (such as “How to SEO a Post” or “Take Part in the Site’s Writing Contest,” etc.)

A Few Examples

 

 

 

How to Do This

The way to do this is to put the following in your functions.php file (Appearance > Editor > Theme Functions – functions.php).

Replace the strings of text with your own, and add more if you like.

 

add_filter( 'default_content', 'writingEncouragement' );
function writingEncouragement( $content ) {
global $post_type;
if($post_type == "post"){
$encArray = array( "Remember to proofread your posts before publishing.",
"Blog, blog, blog. Don't stop blogging.",
"<h1>Don't procrastinate!</h1>",
"You're good. You're very, very good.",
"Check out <a href=\"http://mysite.com/contest\">this link</a> to see the rules for this month's contest. (Hit Ctrl before clicking the link.)",
"You're \"famous.\" Did you realize that?",
);
$content = $encArray[array_rand($encArray)];
return $content;
}
}
function title_text_input( $title ){
$title = array( "Remember to include KEYWORDS in your title.",
"Grab Their Attention!",
"Can You Spice Up Your Title?",
"Try Writing Your Title Last",
"Top 10 Posts Always Get a Lot of Attention",
);
$title = $title[array_rand($title)];
return $title;
}
add_filter( 'enter_title_here', 'title_text_input' );

 

If you’d like to turn this into your own personal plugin, then you can learn how to do that here.

 

Important Notes

Finally, these are just a few things to keep in mind.

Note 1: If you include more than one string of text for the Title Box or the Editor Box, then the different strings will load randomly. In other words, you can’t be guaranteed that the words in the Title Box will match up with the words in the Editor Box, so you will need to write them with that in mind.

Note 2: Of course if you only have one string of text in either, then that’s what will show up. And so that’s the only way you can be guaranteed of what your authors will see.

Note 3: As mentioned before, you can put as many different strings of text in as you like. Just keep the same format as the code above and add more.

Note 4: The strings of text in the first half will go into the Editor Box. The strings of text in the second half of the code will go into the Title Box.

Note 5: If you’d like to include links or quotation marks, then follow the format of the examples in the code above. The user will need to hit the Ctrl button before clicking the link. You might want to tell them that.

Photo: A lone person seeks to inform the crowd from BigStock

Tags:

• wordpress editor