Add Featured Posts to WordPress
An abundance of posts on your WordPress site can make it difficult for visitors to discover your most crucial content or “WordPress featured post.” Not only does this decrease visitor engagement with your most important content, but it may also lead to a less satisfactory user experience.
The solution could be to add a featured posts section to your site. This feature displays a list of your most important content in a dedicated section or widget, enabling visitors to easily find it. You can use it to highlight important posts, high-traffic posts, custom post types, major news stories, or any other content you like.
In this article we’ll show you some examples of well-implemented featured posts and walk you through three different methods for implementing them on your site. Let’s get started!
Examples of featured posts
A featured posts section on your site can be an excellent way to drive traffic to particular articles. It also helps users find the main content on your site more easily, improving their experience.
Your featured posts in WordPress should ideally be “pillar content” that remains continually pertinent and encapsulates the fundamental goal of your site. Exceptions do exist, such as when you choose to highlight a notable or recent news story. Nevertheless, the primary objective should be to ensure your WordPress featured post showcases the essence of your website’s content.
An excellent example is the Yoast SEO blog, which features key posts from several categories at the top of the page:
This helps ensure that users find the content Yoast considers most important right from the start.
Adding featured posts to WordPress using the Site Editor
If you want to add featured posts to your own site, you have several options. The first method is to use the site editor. The process is fairly simple: you’ll be including links in a list or a text block.
Step 1: Add a new block to set up a featured post in WordPress
First, head to the page you want to display your featured posts on. Click on the + button in the top-left corner of the editor screen to add a new WordPress block:
Alternatively, you can hover your mouse over the area of the page where you want to add the block, and select the + icon that appears.
Step 2: Add the list block and select the WordPress post you want to feature
When you engage with the + icon, an assortment of available blocks will be displayed. To create a WordPress featured post, you can opt for either the Paragraph block or the List block to curate how you want your posts to look.
In this instance, we’ll proceed using the List function:
Once the block is added, you can click and drag it to the position you want.
To add your content to the block, simply enter the names of the posts you want to feature.
Then you can link the text to your blog post by selecting it and pressing Ctrl +K or Cmd + K:
After that, all you have to do is repeat this process for each post you want to feature.
Step 3: Reuse your featured WordPress post list (optional)
Your WordPress featured post list is now fully set up and operational. To ensure usability across multiple pages without the need to continually reconfigure it, consider saving it as a reusable block. This WordPress functionality is an efficient approach to managing your featured post without engaging in repetitive tasks.
To make the block reusable, click inside the it, then select the three-dot menu and choose Add to Reusable Blocks from the list that appears:
Assign a unique name (such as Featured Posts List) to your reusable block and hit the ‘Save’ button. This freshly created reusable block will now be accessible whenever you wish to integrate a block onto a page.
If you want to insert a WordPress featured post onto a page down the line, just select your newly created block from the list.
If you want your featured posts to appear on every page automatically, you can add the list to a sidebar using a WordPress widget. This process is very similar to using a block: you’ll be using a simple text widget and hyperlinks.
Remember: Not all WordPress themes incorporate a featured post section. However, if your theme lacks this, you can incorporate a WordPress featured post into any widget area on your site to enhance visibility and user engagement.
First, head to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets. Select the text widget option, then choose the area where you want to place it and click on Add Widget:
A new box will appear where you can set the post title and contents of the widget.
Step 2: Add titles for your featured posts
Next, you can add the titles for the posts you want to feature. You can opt for a plain text or list format:
Simply add all the titles for your posts; you can also give the widget a title if you like.
Step 3: Add links
Finally, select the text you entered and add your links:
By leveraging Widgets, the process of adding featured posts is streamlined and simplified, letting you search using your post titles instead of manually copying and pasting URLs.
By successfully implementing your featured post widget, your WordPress website can better highlight key content and improve overall user engagement.
Add featured posts to WordPress with a plugin
If you want a different method that allows you to create more stylized lists of featured posts, you can also use a WordPress plugin to do so.
There are a number of featured post plugin options available.For this example, we’ll use the Display Posts plugin, which uses WordPress shortcodes to help you place your list.
Step 1: Download the Display Posts plugin
Download the plugin from the WordPress Plugin Repository. In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New. Then, look up “Display Posts.” It should be the topmost option.
Click Install, and then select Activate to complete the setup process.
Step 2: Add a text widget
The Display Posts plugin for WordPress leverages shortcodes to showcase a curated list of highlighted posts.
If you wish to incorporate this list into a widget zone, like the sidebar, a text widget will be necessary. To achieve this, go to Appearance > Widgets, pick the Text widget, and place it wherever you’d like your WordPress featured post list to appear.
Step 3: Feature a post using the appropriate WordPress shortcode
Finally, you can insert the appropriate shortcode to display your list. The basic option is the [display-posts] code, which shows a list of your most recent posts:
Incorporating WordPress featured post functionality can significantly enhance the visibility of your chosen content. This plugin also allows you to feature specific posts according to their categories, date ranges, and much more, all by simply modifying the shortcode.
For instance, inserting [display-posts category=”news”] will exclusively showcase posts from the “News” category. This advanced filter option not only optimizes your content presentation, but also helps in attracting the right audience.
Highlighting specific content on your WordPress site is made simple by using the “featured post” function within Display Posts. With this unique feature, you can tag posts as “featured” and use the shortcode [display-posts tag=”featured”] to showcase them.
A comprehensive list of query options is provided by the plugin authors to help you customize the way you display and categorize these featured posts. Take a deeper look at their documentation to explore all the diverse possibilities for showcasing featured posts on your WordPress site.
Keep your site in the spotlight with WP Engine
Having a defined selection of your premium articles is a good idea for any website, irrespective of its niche. Featuring your topmost content on your WordPress site not only boosts traffic and enhances page views on those pages, but also elevates user satisfaction by allowing them to find highly relevant content quickly.
Incorporating a WordPress featured post list is a simple strategy that makes it easy for visitors to find your high-value content.
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