As you develop your WordPress website, you need to add additional functionality. How do you add it? You can write custom code that you add to your theme in the functions.php or create a custom site-specific plugin.

Both options allow you to add the code to WordPress. Where you choose to add the code affects how it functions.

Theme or Site-specific plugin?

Is the code you are going to add specific to how the theme or do you want it to work even when you decide to switch themes? If the enhances to your theme, you want to add your code to the functions.php. This code only works when you are using this theme. If this code needs to work no matter what theme you have installed, than you need to create a site-specific plugin.

What type of code do you add to a site-specific plugin?

• Widgets
• Shortcodes
• Custom post types
• Custom code snippets

Steps to create the plugin

The steps for creating a site-specific plugin are the same for any plugin.

1. Create a new folder for your plugin. Use the format of yourwebsitename-plugin.
2. Create a new file. Use the name of yourwebsitename-plugin.php.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Site Plugin for yourwebsite.com
Description: Site specific code changes for yourwebsite.com
*/
/* Start Adding Functions Below this Line */


/* Stop Adding Functions Below this Line */
?>

3. Add your code to your plugin file.
4. Upload code including the folder to your website.
5. Activate and test.

 

With your site-specific plugin, you can add new features or functionality to your website by adding the code to your plugin. By adding the code to your plugin, you keep your code separate from your theme. When you need to add a new code snippet or upgrade your theme or WordPress, you won’t break your website.

Related Post

• 5 Places to Get WordPress Snippets

How do you get ideas for your blog? Some ideas are easier to write about than others. Other times, you can’t think of anything. What can you do? You can use a blog post title generator. Post Title Generators can give you ideas to help get you writing.

What kind of generator are you going to use? You can use a generator that allow you to enter topics and return a list of post titles for you. Or you can use a fill in the blank post generator. They may ask you for a topic or ideas that fits within the provided sentence and then give you one or more suggestions.

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator asks you for three nouns and generates 5 potential blog topic posts. If you don’t like the results, you can enter different nouns.

 

Tweak Your Biz – Title Generator

Tweak Your Biz – Title Generator is simple. You enter a topic. Select whether it is a noun or a verb. Click on Submit and it generates post titles separated by categories. If you like the list, you can copy, print or download your titles from the available box that provides them all.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator

Portent’s Content Idea Generator ask you for a subject. It generators one content idea. You can enter the same subject as many times as you like until you get an idea that you like.

The Blog Post Ideas Generator

The Blog Posts Generator by Build Your Own Blog gives you one idea. You don’t enter a topic idea. Instead you click the Generate Blog Post Idea button and you get an idea to start from.

When I tried out the tool, I got:

• How to Survive Your First…
• Top X _____ Mistakes You Must Avoid
• How to _____ Like a Boss
• How To Solve The Biggest Problem you had with…
• Creative Ideas to Help You…

Blog About by Impact

Blog About By Impact gives you a theme to start with. You can start with their suggested theme or hit the refresh button to get another theme. If you like the theme, you click on Next.

It takes you the post ideas section. You get an idea that you can fill in the blank. If you like the results, click on the heart to add it to your writing list. Then, you get another post title to complete. When you have a list of ideas that you like, you can email them to yourself.

As you continue to write in your blog, you may find that getting ideas for it can be a challenge. Blog Post Title Generators can help you to create ideas that you want to write about. Whether you like getting a list of ideas or a fill in the blank style, they can be a useful tool to add to your blog writing routine.

Have you used a blog title generator?