Using the Featured Articles Plugin

Featured Articles widgetThe Featured Articles plugin supports:

  • Article Management: enable you to put together a set of feature articles, with a short snippet and link for each using Manage, Featured Articles
  • Randomised Sidebar Display: randomly select an article excerpt and display it in the sidebar each time a visitor loads a page
  • Include in Page or Post: display the list of article headings and excerpts in a post or page

Because the Featured Articles plugin displays a snippet from the article (instead of just a link), and because it randomly changes on each page, it gives you visitors more of a chance to see different articles.

To see it in action, have a look at the Stories of Eye Loss in the sidebar of Paul and Jenny’s website, or the list of sample sites at the bottom of the OM4Tourism website.

How to use:

  1. Login to your Dashboard, go to Plugins and activate the Feature Articles plugin
  2. Go to Manage, Feature Articles and create article snippets and links. Give them a common category to create groups of articles. You can include images in snippets.
  3. To Add a Random Featured Article to your Sidebar: Go to Design, Site Design and add the widget into your sidebar. Enter the tag for the articles you want displayed, or leave it blank to display all.
  4. To Display All Featured Articles in a Page or Post: open the page or post for editing, switch to Code/HTML view and type in [FEATURE-ARTICLES].
  5. To Display Featured Articles for one Tag in a Page or Post: as above but use [FEATURE-ARTICLES tag=yourtag] (where yourtag is the tag for the articles you want displayed).

Your feature articles can come from your website, or from another. You can include images in your article snippets, just make sure they aren’t wider than your sidebar.

The Feature Article entry form

This plugin was developed by James Collins. It was derived from Jodi Diehl’s excellent WP-Testimonials plugin – thank you Jodi.