We encourage you to make connections from other people, pages, and resources on the web to your site. Here are three ways to do it:
Add a link
A hyperlink is a way for your reader to click somewhere on your page and go to another page. To do it in WordPress is simple!:
- Copy the URL of your destination page
- Select some text in your editing window
- Click the link icon (looks like a chain) in the toolbar
- Paste the URL, optionally with a title (improves accessibility) and optionally checking the box to open the link in a new window/tab. If you simply want to link to a post or page on your own website, click Or link to existing content.
Add a feed
(For more information, see here.)
An RSS (really simple syndication) feed is a standard way to provide timely updates from one website to another like the most recent news items or posts on the external website, the most recently uploaded images or data, etc. Many pages include a little RSS icon, and larger websites (e.g. the New York Times) typically have a whole page devoted to their various feeds. Another, far more flexible option is to use Google Alerts: just enter “RSS feed” under Deliver to.
The end product you want is the RSS feed URL. For example, the New York Times U.S. home page feed is at http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml. You can use the RSS widget to display content in a sidebar and HungryFEED to display it in a post or page.
Using the RSS widget to display feed in a sidebar
- Get the feed URL (see above).
- Go on your dashboard to Appearance > Widgets, and add the RSS widget to the sidebar where you want the feed to show up.
- Paste the feed URL, give it a title (optional), and state how many feed items you’d like to display. Then click Save and have a look at the widget on one of your pages! You can readily come back and make changes as necessary.
- If you’d like to include several feeds on your pages, then drag the RSS widget to your sidebar or other place multiple times.
Making a Twitter feed works a little bit differently.
Add an embed
An embed is a way to show a page from one website to your post or page. This page could be a GoogleDoc, a Flickr slideshow, a YouTube video, etc. Here are some general instructions:
- For many websites (YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, etc.) WordPress will automatically embed the content on your post or page if you add a URL on its own line (not linked). See the important note below! You can extend this functionality with the Jetpack Shortcodes module: just activate it on your site.
- For Google documents and sheets, the iframe plugin below works; see here for how to publish and obtain iframe code for a Google document.
- For a variety of files (PDF, Microsoft Word, etc.) that you upload to your media library, you can embed them via the (unfortunately confusingly named) Google Doc Embedder plugin…which, by the way, does not embed Google Docs!
- For other websites, you’ll need to grab the embed code, which differs from site to site. It basically looks like this: <iframe src=”URLGoesHere” otherParametersGoHere></iframe>. (See important note below, making sure to use https://.) However, you can’t paste this code directly onto your post or page! Here’s what you’ll do:
- Activate the iframe plugin on your site. The iframe plugin allows you to display most content on a WordPress post or page. (If you are not an admin on your site [e.g., a course site] this doesn’t apply; please ask the admin to activate it, or go ahead and give it a try as it may already be activated!)
- You’ll need to understand a bit about WordPress shortcodes. A shortcode is a piece of executable code you enter in square brackets; this is a really common way to add functionality to a post or page.
- Now, paste the embed code into your post or page (sometimes easier in the Text vs. Visual editor), then edit it as per the iframe plugin shortcode specifications. It’s pretty simple: just replace "<iframe>" with “[iframe " (i.e., the start of your shortcode) and replace "></iframe>" at the end with "]" (i.e., the end of your shortcode). If you’ve done it correctly, in most cases the embed code will work on your post or page.
- Important! All sites you embed must be secure (https://, not http://), or they won’t work. If the above methods don’t work, check to see if you’re using https://, and if not just add the s—this works for many servers.
There, you did it: links, feeds, and embeds! Three great ways to build connections and enrich the content of your website, post, and/or page.