Due to its flexibility, among other benefits, ChatGPT can serve as a reliable companion for your WordPress project. For example, the model can help you generate content ideas, provide automated support, automated chat responses, and offer custom code snippets, among other benefits.

In this article, we share how to integrate ChatGPT into WordPress and how this incorporation can help you with your website.

Read also: How to Create Scroll-Over Interactive Elements in WordPress

Why Integrate ChatGPT into WordPress

There are numerous reasons why you would want to integrate ChatGPT into WordPress. Depending on your needs and website niche, options are quite abundant.

24/7 Automatic Customer Support. ChatGPT is capable of answering various questions, troubleshooting technical issues, and directing users to different departments. The model is reliable in such a position, as it becomes more and more advanced as time passes, and also it can give precise answers to precise questions, especially as it gets to know your website, its aim, and its structure.

Content Generation and Content Ideas. At its core, ChatGPT is a language model that is specially programmed to understand and generate human language. In the context of online blogs and content-heavy websites, this is good news, as ChatGPT can effortlessly give you content ideas, generate drafts, make content pillars, and suggest how to use keywords.

ChatGPT can become a technical assistant for your WordPress website. You can ask the model to help you tweak various WordPress functions, ask for advice, or even generate code snippets on the spot. This is a great way to use ChatGPT on your website, because it can speed up technical work on your website and give you invaluable help in terms of technicality, especially if you are not a tech-savvy person.

Help with SEO. You can use the ChatGPT integration to get a more detailed evaluation of your SEO efforts and more adequate suggestions for improvement. In this context, the chat can make suggestions for using keywords, help you with keyword research techniques, help you avoid keyword stuffing and keyword cannibalization, give you ideas for readability, and even suggest SEO-friendly titles for your web pages, articles, and products.

How to Integrate ChatGPT into WordPress

By far, using a plugin is the simplest way of integrating ChatGPT into WordPress. This is because plugins are generally safe to use and designed in such a way that makes the integration process as smooth as possible. There are numerous plugins you can use to integrate the model, and some of the most popular ones are:

AI Engine. This is a popular WordPress plugin that can help you not only with ChatGPT integration, but also set up how it functions on your website and what it should do once it is incorporated. AI Engine focuses on chatbot integration, generating content ideas and drafts, and image generation.

ChatBot for WordPress. As the name suggests, this plugin is especially designed to incorporate ChatGPT as a chatbot on your website. Along with helping you with customer support, ChatBot for WordPress also provides you with chatbot templates for different cases, strong WooCommerce, and third-party integration.

ContentBot AI Writer. This plugin can help you use ChatGPT as a content generation machine and can help you create blog posts, titles, and any copywriting on your website. ContentBot AI Writer supports different writing styles and also provides you with scheduling capabilities for your publications.

Regardless of which plugin you choose to use, the integration process is generally the same for all of them – you need to install the plugin, connect the OpenAI API key to the plugin, set up functionality, and you are good to go. Here’s how to do that in detail.

For this demonstration, we will be using AI Engine; however, the process is similar for all other plugins.

First, you need to install the plugin.

Then, you need to get your unique API key from OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT). To do so, first register on their website and then head to their API key page and follow the instructions to create a unique key. Once the process is complete, you will have the chance to copy the generated key. Do so:

Then, head back to the WordPress dashboard, open the plugin’s options page, and head to the Settings tab:

Once there, paste the API key you copied from the OpenAI website within the API Key section:

Then, via the plugin’s settings, customize the behaviour of ChatGPT – set up responses, tasks, front-end appearance, and other details via the Chatbots tab:

Once you are ready with the setup, you can put the chatbot on all your pages, or only selected ones. Should you wish to include on all your pages, within the Chatbots tab, head to the Site-Wide Chatbot drop-down menu and select Default:

Should you wish to display the chat screen on only specific pages, then head to the plugin’s options page and open the Chatbots tab. Once there, copy the small code snippet that appears at the top of the tab:

Once you copy the code, via the WordPress dashboard, head to Pages->All Pages:

Then, select the page you wish to insert the chat window into. Once you open the Edit page, insert  a Shortcode block:

Now you have managed to incorporate ChatGPT into WordPress by using a plugin.

Conclusion

Integrating ChatGPT in WordPress is quite a simple process and involves only a few clicks here and there. Adding the aid of such a tool can help you in numerous situations, such as adding automatic chat responses, generating content ideas, helping with on-page SEO, helping you with technical issues on your website, and many more.

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In this article, we share how to create scroll-over interactive elements in WordPress.

What Are Scroll-Over Interactive Elements

Scroll-over interactive elements are features that trigger a certain action when the mouse cursor hovers over a given element on your website. These actions can take various forms – buttons may become slightly larger, colors may change, or additional content may be revealed, all with just a hover over the element.

Read Also: How to Customize the Scrollbar in WordPress

Why Should You Use Scroll-Over Interactive Elements on Your Website

As mentioned, there are numerous benefits to using scroll-over elements on your website. Here are only some of them:

• Increased engagement – hover effects can encourage visitors to engage with your content, as such effects make the browsing experience fun and interactive.
• Scroll-over effects guide users, so navigation on your website is easier and more intuitive.
• Highlight important elements – hover effects can help your site visitors notice important details faster.
• Modern style – hover effects contribute to making your website look polished, sharp, and modern. Features that site visitors enjoy.

How to Create Scroll-Over Interactive Elements in WordPress

There are three main ways you can create scroll-over interactive elements on your WordPress website:

• By using a WordPress plugin.
• By using the scroll-over features of your WordPress theme.
• By adding code manually.

In the following paragraphs, we share how to add such elements with all three methods.

How to Create a Scroll-Over Interactive Element with a WordPress Plugin

You can create various scroll-over effects by using WordPress plugins. Simply browse the vast plugin library and install a plugin that fits your goals best.

Our suggestions for such plugins are:

• Image Hover Effects Ultimate – great for adding image grids and hover reveals.
• Tooltipy – as the name suggests, this plugin focuses on adding tooltips to texts, icons, and other elements.
• Shortcode Ultimate – although not a scroll-over effect plugin, this one allows you to add hover animations.

Read also: Best WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Plugin

Although each plugin comes with individual settings and mechanics, we share a general approach towards creating a scroll-over effect by using plugins:

1. After you install a plugin, open its options menu.
2. Choose a type of layout you wish to create – grid, carousel, slider, etc.
3. Choose a type of effect you want to create – changing colors, changing size, revealing more text, etc.
4. Add more details via the plugin’s options, should it have this feature.
5. Once you are finished with creating the hover effect, the plugin will generate a short code.
6. Copy and paste this code into a post, page, widget, button, or other element you wish to be affected by a hover motion.
7. Done!

How to Create a Scroll-Over Interactive Element with a WordPress Theme

Various themes and theme builders come with scroll-over settings. When browsing for a good WordPress theme, keep in mind the hover feature, should you wish to add such effects without coding. Here are 3 suggestions:

• Elementor
• WPBakery
• Beaver Builder
• Divi

Depending on the theme you install, the options and mechanics can vary; however, the general approach remains the same. Here’s how it might go:

1. From your WordPress dashboard, head to the theme settings.
2. Select a section you wish to edit – it can be a button, a widget, a text box, or anything else.
3. Open the theme options for this particular element and search for options such as Motion Effects, Hover Effects, or similar (names vary depending on the theme).
4. From these options, choose the hover effects you wish to apply to the element – growing, shrinking, changing color, revealing more text, etc.
5. Then, adjust the speed and delay of the hover effect, should such options be available, and should you wish to edit them.
6. Click Apply/Save/Update (names depend on the theme).
7. Done!

How to Create a Scroll-Over Interactive Element by Adding Code Manually (ADVANCED)

If you feel comfortable working with code, you can add scroll-over interactive elements by manually generating such effects. This method is more technical, but also allows for full control over the effect and the element it surrounds.

One way of creating a scroll-over effect with code is by adding CSS code to WordPress. You can do so by following these steps:

Step 1: Identify the target element

Via the CSS selectors, target the specific element you wish to apply hover effects to. These can be an element type, a class, or an ID.

Step 2: Define the hover effect styles

Within the CSS rules, add :hover pseudo-class after the selector, so you specify the style that should be applied on hover. There’s a lot you can customize here:

• Colors
• Background colors
• Font size
• Borders
• Opacity
• Shadows

Step 3: Add the CSS snippet to WordPress

First, log in to the WordPress dashboard.

From there, head to Appearance -> Customize via the sidebar on the left:

A new page should open. Once it loads, click Additional CSS, usually located at the bottom:

Paste your CSS code here:

Conclusion

Scroll-over interactive elements are not only an effective tool to engage your website visitors, but also contribute to a more stylish and modern-looking website. There are various ways to add hover effects on your WordPress website – by using a plugin, via the options of your theme, or manually adding code for maximum control and customization.

The post How to Create Scroll-Over Interactive Elements in WordPress appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

Now, if you are reading the present article, you probably are looking for a plugin that will give you back the previous generation WYSIWYG. In the following tutorial, we’ll help you find the best WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Plugin.

WordPress WYSIWYG Editor: What is it?

Here is a short Definition of WYSIWYG:

WYSIWYG is an acronym that stands for “what you see is what you get”. Most often than not it refers to a user interface that allows users to view the content that they are creating/editing in a manner that is very similar or identical to the end result. A WYSIWYG, by definition, promises for the user to be able to directly manipulate the layout of a document, without having to remember the names of the layout commands.

Related: How to Format Text in WordPress (using the WYSIWYG)

What is the Best WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Plugin

If you want to return to the WordPress WYSIWYG Editor but continue to use the latest version of WordPress, the best solution is to install a plugin. Doing so, will not put your website at risk, which is, along with the new features, the main reason for one to keep one’s WordPress installation updated to the latest version.

The best plugin to keep using the WordPress WYSIWYG Editor is Classic Editor. The plugin is both developed and maintained by the WordPress Contributor Community. This fact alone is at the very least a good signal for the quality of the plugin.

In short, this plugin restores the WordPress WYSIWYG and lets you choose between it and the Gutenberg Block Editor. If you are to uninstall the plugin the Gutenberg Block Editor will be once again at your disposal. Thus, the changes that the plugin makes to your website are not permanent, nor dangerous.

What Makes the Classic Editor the Best WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Plugin

The above-mentioned Classic Editor is one of a number of plugins that will restore the WordPress WYSIWYG on your website. Yet, it surely is the best one, at the very least because it was developed by people, involved in the WordPress community. For one, they know what new features the CMS will present in the following versions, and therefore, how the newly added code might interfere with the plugin itself.

Related: The Latest WordPress Versions

Granted, there are a lot of plugins that not only promise to restore the WYSIWYG Editor but also to add new features to it. Still, you might want to go with the Classic Editor as it guarantees you the editor will work properly. As you can see, by now, the plugin has more than 5 million installations and an overwhelmingly positive evaluation of 5 stars.

If you are looking for the best plugin to restore the Classic Editor in your WordPress website, don’t hesitate and install the Classic Editor.

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Of course, the users are comfortable with the same old scrollbar on every website, as they are using the same browser. Still, if you customize the scrollbar of your WordPress website, the efforts won’t go unnoticed.

Although this will hardly help your website become more popular, it is still something that you need to take care of, as the visitors will surely notice it, and the custom (well-made) scrollbar will convey professionalism on your side.

Issues That Might Occur While Customizing the Scrollbar

As of now, CSS does not come with a ruleset that would let us customize the scrollbar. Yet, there are some so-called pseudo-elements, which will do just fine.

What is more, when you are editing the CSS of a website, especially the pseudo-elements, bear in mind that you need to test your website on various devices and browsers, as the different browsers render the code differently.

Sometimes, Chrome might show something that Safari won’t show (or will show differently).

Thus, either check whether the visitors of your website are using predominantly a specific technology (say Desktop device and Chrome as a browser), and optimize for them, or try and optimize for everyone. The latter is, of course, recommended.

Now, let’s find out how to add a custom scrollbar to WordPress.

Add Custom Scrollbar Without Plugin

To customize the scrollbar of your website, without using a plugin, you’ll have to go to the admin panel of your WordPress.

Once here, go to Appearance – > Theme Editor

NB! If you are going to add a custom scrollbar to your website by using CSS, or your intent on making any other changes in the Stylesheet.css (that is to add custom CSS), we urge you to create a child theme. Doing so will prevent you from losing any of the changes that you’ve made to the file when the theme is updated.

Also, keep in mind that these changes be visible only to visitors of your website that are using browsers with the WebKit rendering engine. The most famous among them are Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

To customize the scrollbar of your WordPress website, add the following CSS code at the bottom of the stylesheet.css file, that you’ll start editing when entering the theme editor:

/* total width */
body::-webkit-scrollbar {
width: 8px;
}
/* scrollbar itself */
body::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
background-color: #d24b49;
border-radius: 30px;
border: 0px solid #fff;
}
/* changes the color of the scrollbar on hover */
body::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:hover {
background-color: #ad343e;
}

These are the colors of our scrollbar. To make your scrollbar more suitable for your website, change the hex values to these of your website’s main colors.

How to Add Custom Scrollbar to WordPress with a Plugin

Adding a plugin to WordPress is usually a simple and fast path to any customization that you need. Not surprisingly, such is the case with scrollbar customization.

We recommend you to use the Scrollbar plugin as it is light, fast, and easy to understand.

Once you’ve installed and activated the advanced scrollbar plugin, go to the new option in the scrollbar menu Scrollbar Wp.

You’ll be redirected to the options page of the plugin, which looks like this:

Here you can modify every aspect of your website’s scrollbar. And a nice touch, that I personally love is the Auto Hide Mode at the bottom. By using this mode, you’ll get your website just a little bit more pixels. Although this won’t change the perception of your website, it certainly is a nice touch.

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Say, you have a business partner, or another associated website that you want or need to have a link to in the main menu of your website. Even though you want to let the traffic flow in the direction of that website, you definitely don’t want users to get lost on the other or any other following website and this way to completely forget about your existence, right?

This is one of the reasons you may need to know how to make a WordPress menu to open in a new tab.

The operation is quite frankly an easy one, but you’ll need to write a bit of HTML. Don’t get scared; it is easy. And what is more, we’ll write the code for you, so you can simply copy the string, change the destination and the name and use it, as it is.

Let’s don’t waste any more time.

How to Make WordPress Menu Open in a New Tab?

We already know how the WordPress menu works, thus, we won’t cover that part, but if you need a refreshment, you can always go back to our article on the topic.

Making your menu open in a new tab is really easy. All we need to do is to turn on the Link Target option, and then tell WordPress which links we want to be opened in a new tab. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s go step by step.

The first thing you need to do in order to be able to take the actions needed to make the menu item to open in a new tab is to enter the WordPress Dashboard.

Once in the WordPress admin panel, go for the Appearance option in the sidebar menu, and hover it with the mouse pointer.

A submenu will open, and we are going for the Menus option.

The page that will open is one that we are familiar with, as we’ve already created WordPress menus.

Here, on the left, we can see a menu-like box, that offers us many different ways to add a menu item.

Now that we know where to look, we can search for the option that you need. The latter depends on whether you are going to add an external link in the menu of your WordPress website or just another of your already published pages.

Whichever the case, create your menu, as you would anyways. Put the items in the order you need them to be and remove any unnecessary items. Create your nests (submenus), and don’t forget to click the Save Menu button, two of which are convectively situated under and above the menu items that you are adding.

Once the menu is ready, look at the top of the page, and search for the Screen Options button. Once you click it, it will trigger a dropdown-like menu to reveal itself.

When you click it, and the dropdown emerges, we need to look for the Link Target option, and to make sure that it is checked.

Now scroll down to the menu, and find the item that you need to open in a new tab. Open it by clicking the arrow in the right corner, and look for the Open link a new tab check box.

Save the menu, and check to see whether the link works correctly.

This is how to make the WordPress menu open in a new tab.

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How to Change the Timezone of Your WordPress Website

As always, we’ll follow a few steps to achieve the wanted result. Obviously, the first thing we need to do is to enter the admin panel of WordPress. And here are the steps to follow:

1. Go to your WordPress Settings area.

Now that you are in your WordPress dashboard click on the Settings, then click General.

2. Select the Correct Timezone

When you click on the General button, a new page will load. Scroll down until you see the section labeled Timezone.

By default WordPress is using the Coordinated Universal Time + 0, a.k.a. UTC+0.  

Here you should choose the UTC + X, which corresponds with your country’s(or city’s) timezone.

Under the dropdown menu, where you choose the time, you can see the current UTC time.

3. Save Changes

When everything is set and done, you should not forget to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. If you fail to do that, your changes won’t be saved, and your timezone settings won’t be saved.

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Let’s talk about the comment section. You might want to protect your default comment section from spam or to disable it entirely.

What is more, you can choose a different solution for people to be able to comment on your content. If you want to add Facebook comments under your articles, instead of WordPress’ default comments, you can do that.

You can also add Disqus’s Comment solution if you choose to.

Why Change the Default Comment Section of WordPress

One of the main reasons that people decide to detach from WordPress’s default comment section is how vulnerable it is to spammers that don’t care about your content and one thing and one thing only – the meaningless, nofollow, link that they could get, should their comment be approved.

Although these links have little to no value, it is still an option for small-sized websites to get some traffic. They hope that people that are engaged with the content will somehow click on their link (located in their name).

The worst of all is that there are bots that crawl the internet, looking for websites with open comment sections in which to leave their link(s).

And while there is an easy solution to the bot problem – adding a Captcha – you can’t always distinguish a real human from the one that wants to leave a link below your article.

And while our WordPress Hosting plans come with spam protection for your emails, there is no real solution to the spam problem in the comment section.

Why Choose Disqus as Comment Section Solution

For starters, Disqus has a free plan. Meaning, except for some time, adding Disqus to your WordPress website won’t cost you anything.

But what is more important, even the free version of the plugin has integrated Analytics and Moderation tools. People can react to comments, as well as your content with the well-known smiley faces, thumbs up, and hearts in the eyes.

And of course, the Spam Filters. If you are seriously interested in getting to know Disqus and what it offers, click here.

Yet, in short, you need to know that Disqus’s comment section supports rich media, meaning people can leave images and videos in their comments. The comment section is getting updated in real-time, which is very important because if people have a heated discussion, they might forget or neglect it, should they wait an hour or two for the section to be updated.

On top of all that, Disqus is responsive and works on Desktop as well as it works on Mobile. It is nicely visualized even in Google AMP.  And most importantly, the section is highly customizable, so it can adapt your site’s look and feel.

How to Add Disqus to WordPress Website

The first thing you have to do, to add Disqus to your WordPress website is to go to their website and create a Disqus account.  You can do so with your Google Account or another email. Once, you got your account; you will be redirected to the so-called intent page. There the website will ask you what you want to do.

Are you going to use the registration to comment on websites that are already using Disqus, or you are about to install it on your website?

Choose the I want to install Disqus on my site option.

You’ll be redirected to the create a new site page, where you’ll need to fill in all the necessary fields.

When everything is as you want it to be, click the Create Site button at the bottom of the form.

On the next page, the site will offer you to Select a Plan. Their free plan is called basic, and it is the first form of three options. You can either choose the free option or go with the one that suits you best.

Those of you that are a bit more observant might see that (when on the site, as it is not visible in the image)below the Plus Plan has a free offering as well. The condition in which you might use it is not to run any ads on your website. If that is the case, you’ll probably want to choose the Plus Plan, instead of the Basic one.

Make your choice, and let’s continue.

The next step is to Choose a Platform.

As this is a WordPress tutorial, we are going to choose WordPress.

Now, you’ll be redirected to a guide on how to install the WordPress Plugin, which you’ll do in absolutely the same manner as any other plugin.

1. Go to your WordPress admin panel
2. Go to Plugins -> Add New

3. Search for Disqus, and install the plugin, provided by Disqus.

4. Install and Activate the Disqus Plugin.
5. A Disqus option will show up in the left panel of your WordPress admin.
6. Click it, and copy the so-called Installation Token to your Disqus profile on their website.

Now what is left for you is to configure Disqus to your liking.

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Facebook Pixel is similar to Google Analytics, only it is for Facebook ads. Using it will allow you to better target your audience and evaluate the effectiveness of your ads.

Getting Facebook Pixel up and running with WordPress is way trickier than it is to add Facebook like Box. We figured that adding the pixel might overwhelm you, as it is an operation that requires some technical skills. Although we acknowledge that, we believe that after you read this article, you’ll know how to add the Facebook pixel to a WordPress website.

How to Add Facebook Pixel to WordPress

You can add the Facebook pixel to WordPress in one of two methods – you either do it manually, or you use a plugin that allows you to add code in your website’s header.

The correct way and the one that will less affect the speed of your WordPress is the manual, as the plugins, as little as it is, are weighing down any WordPress, and you, most often than not, should do what you need, without using them.

To add Facebook Pixel to WordPress, you’ll need two things:

• Create a new Facebook Pixel, using the Facebook Business Manager (if you haven’t already)
• Insert the code that Facebook pixel will present you into the <head> section of your WordPress website.

We’ll do this in two simple steps.

Step 1: Create a new Facebook Pixel via Facebook Business Manager

Go to your Facebook Business Manager, and once there, look for the Events Manager.

When the page loads, you’ll see the following data source options:

If you haven’t already, create your Facebook Pixel by clicking the get started button.

A box should appear that asks you for a name – then all you need to do is click Create.

After that, you should see some options for how to add the Facebook pixel to your website. Choose the Manually Install the Code Yourself option:

That should display the Facebook Pixel tracking code:

Now, don’t close that tab, while you go to your WordPress website.

Step 2: Add Facebook Pixel tracking code to WordPress <head> section

The method you’ll use to add your Facebook pixel depends on a large number of variables.

If you haven’t created a child theme, you should be able to edit the header.php file by using the Theme Editor:

1. Login to your WordPress admin panel
2. Hover over the Appearance option in the sidebar menu.
3. Click the Theme Editor option at the bottom of the pop-up menu.
4. Look for the php file, and open it
5. Add the Facebook Pixel code just above the closing head tag – </head>

If, however, you have created a child theme, depending on the theme you are using, you may be able to add code to your header. This option should be available somewhere in the theme customizing page. As some themes have their own, backend, customization page, search for it.

On the other hand, if the theme that you’ve chosen doesn’t allow you to add a code in the header, you can use a plugin.

We recommend you to use the Header Footer Code Manager, as it is easy to use a lightweight plugin.

If you don’t know, here is how to install a WordPress plugin.

Test whether your Facebook Pixel is Working

Now that we’ve added Facebook Pixel to WordPress, you need to do one more thing:

Make sure Facebook Pixel is actually working!

Doing so, we can achieve by installing the  Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome extension. Install and activate the extension. Then visit your website. If there is an active Facebook Pixel on the website, you should see something like this, should you click on the extension:

Now you know all about how to add Facebook Pixel to WordPress.

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In this tutorial, we’ll find out what exactly is a Gravatar how it works, why it exists, and most importantly how to add a custom gravatar to your WordPress website.

What is Gravatar?

As we’ve mentioned a few sentences ago, Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. But what exactly means “Globally Recognized”?

As WordPress is the most used CMS, it only makes sense for all the profiles, authors, and webmasters to be more or less interconnected. Especially when we engage with each other, leaving comments below the articles of our fellow webmasters.

But you already know that when you want to engage with a specific website or a forum, for example, you need to create a registration and add your avatar which is valid only in that forum, only for that profile.

And here is where the problem comes, should you create a separate profile for each and every website where you want to leave a comment below one specific article? Giving that question a moment, you’ll find out that if you (or your website visitors) should create a profile on your website, just to leave a comment below one article that they’ve landed on by chance, will probably discourage most of them to leave any comment at all.

Here is where the Gravatar comes to help.

You can leave as many comments as you wish, below as many articles, disseminated on as many WordPress websites, as you wish, and by using the same email, you’ll have the same Gravatar on each of them. You’ll be the same person on each and every WordPress website, without creating a profile for each of them. One at a time.

Can I have a Gravatar, Without a WordPress Website?

In a word, yes. You can have a Gravatar that is not linked to a WordPress website. This means that you can have a Gravatar, even if you don’t own a WordPress website.

Although, if you haven’t created your WordPress website, we would highly encourage you to check out our WordPress Hosting, which you can get at a price that makes it fundamentally wrong not to give your ideas a try, you might want to have a Gravatar just to comment on other websites, or you don’t want your Gravatar to be linked to a website that you have.

But to do so, you need how to add a Gravatar to WordPress. If you don’t own a website, you’ll follow the exact same steps.

WordPress Gravatar Size

By default, the images that Gravatars are using are 80px by 80px.

Whether you have a WordPress website or not, if you want to have a Gravatar, you’ll have to use these dimensions for the best results.

How to Add Custom Gravatar to Your Profile

If you go to your WordPress website’s admin panel, and navigate your self to Settings -> Discussion, not only, you’ll be able to disable the comments on your website, but should you scroll down to the bottom of the Discussion Settings Page, you can choose a default image for users that don’t have a Gravatar. This includes your profile, of course.

To add a Gravatar to your email, you need to navigate yourself to Gravatar’s website. Once there, click the Sign In button, conveniently located in the right end of the main menu of the site.

If you don’t have a WordPress.com registration, you’ll have to create one. Doing so could be done with a Google Account or any other email that you prefer to use.

As you can see, by creating an account with Gravatar, will simultaneously create one for wordpress.com. This means that if you already have a wordpress.com account, you might want to use that one, instead of creating a new one.

Also, the button that Gravatar’s website urges us to click says Sign In, and not Sign Up. Thus, once you are redirected, you’ll want to navigate to the signup page.

NB! The email that you are using now to create an account with Gravatar, should be the same that you used (or plan to use) when you create(d) your WordPress website.

Once your registration is ready add the image that you want to be your Globally Recognized Avatar.

I already Have a Gravatar, How Do I Link it to my WordPress Website?

If you have created a Gravatar before you chose to create a WordPress website, and you want to use it now that you have a site, you just need to create your user with the same email. The Globally Recognized Avatar will be automatically linked to the user, and you’ll have your image, without anything additional.

Related: How to Add Facebook Comments to WordPress

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Of course, the easier it is for your website’s users to go from article to article, the more of your content they will read, and that could only benefit you.

On top of that, the end of your articles, won’t leave the users not knowing what to do and evading feeling unease by leaving your website altogether.

Also, although it won’t be directly, the higher engagement with your content will probably affect the SEO of your WordPress website positively.

What is a Related Post

Put simply, showing a few related posts at the end of an online article is a technique to keep the attention of the people on your website. It is a technique most recognizable in the news media websites, where at the end of each news article about a specific subject, they show the consumers “more about the topic”.

There are two main ways by which the relation between the posts is defined.

1. It could be by category or another taxonomy (like tags).
2. By Keyword.

When showing related posts by taxonomy, in WordPress, this could be either a category or a tag.

For example, if you are writing an article about the president of the USA, the article’s write categorization will probably be under the “politics” category. Then again, if you are showing all the related posts from the category politics, what the consumers will see, is not required to be related to the president of the USA, nor to the content of the present article.

Thus, you might want to use another way to group and filter the related posts below your articles.

Like tags.

The tags in WordPress are a good way to further specify your content.

For example, in the category politics, you might have a sub-category the President of the USA, which in some cases would be perfectly fine. Then again, the President is usually changed in four to eight years. Thus you might want to further specify the articles by adding a tag.  Like “Donald Trump” or “Barrack Obama”.

When you are using tags to show related posts, they are a lot more specific, but on the other hand, they show your users only one type of content, and it might be hard for them (if they only use the related posts to navigate) to read something else.

The other way to have related posts is by the context, or by a keyword. Where the algorithm will automatically try to understand where two or more articles have an overlap. By defining where the overlap is, WordPress will automatically generate similar posts.

Bear in mind, that, depending on your writing style, you might end up with related posts under your articles that are not at all (that much) related.

How to Add Related Posts to Your WordPress Website

As usual, the easiest way to add related posts in WordPress is by adding a plugin.

Probably the best plugin for the job is the Contextual Related Posts, which is not only well known, and frequently updated plugin. What is more, the plugin is highly customizable and will let you show similar posts in any way you want.

To install the plugin, you can either go to Plugins -> Add New, and search for it, or download it from the link above, and then go to Plugins -> Add New, this time uploading it from your PC.

If you are about to search the plugin through WordPress’s plugin search engine, you should expect to see something like this:

Either way, you need to Install and Activate the plugins.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, related posts will automatically be shown below each of your posts. What is left for you is to customize the plugin, so it shows the posts where you want them and the way you want them to be shown.

To do so, you need to go to the Contextual Related Posts’ Settings page.

When you open the plugin’s setting page, which looks like this:

contextual-related-posts-settings image

What is left for you to do is tune the plugin.

Jetpack

On the other hand, if you are using the multi-purposeful plugin Jetpack, you will already have the functionality of showing related posts. What is left for you is to enable the module. Doing so is an easy process. Go to Jetpack -> Settings -> Traffic. From there turn the related posts section on. From here, you can customize the “related posts” as well. Go to Appearance -> Customizer.

There is an upside to using Jetpack instead of another plugin that offers the same solution. Jetpack will have the processing happen off-site, which could enhance the loading speed of your WordPress website.  Of course, you can do that by setting up caching or choosing a powerful WordPress Hosting service.

The point is, that you now know how to add similar posts at the end of your articles.

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