How to Highlight New Posts for Returning Visitors in WordPress

Are you questioning how to spotlight new posts for returning guests in WordPress?

Showing off the posts that had been newly printed in your web site is a method to maintain your readers up to date and ensure they don’t miss out in your newest content material.

In this step-by-step information, we are going to present you ways to spotlight new posts for returning guests in WordPress.

Why Highlight New Posts on Your WordPress Site?

Highlighting new posts in your WordPress web site helps returning guests simply discover your new content. This means, they gained’t miss out on any contemporary info or updates you’ve added to your weblog.

Labeling new posts improves the consumer expertise in your WordPress web site. When a returning customer reaches your web site, they will simply spot which posts they haven’t learn but, saving them lots of time and increasing your pageviews.

A very good consumer expertise in your web site not solely retains guests comfortable but additionally helps with search engine marketing. When your web site is straightforward to use, it improves your search engine rankings and will increase the probability of tourists discovering your content material.

With that in thoughts, let’s see how one can spotlight new posts for returning guests in WordPress.

We will present you two strategies: one with a WordPress plugin and the opposite with code. You can leap to a particular methodology utilizing the short hyperlinks under:

Method 1: Highlight New WordPress Posts With a WordPress Plugin

This first methodology makes use of the Mark New Posts plugin. We suggest it for full learners as a result of it’s quite simple. This plugin will add a label to present which weblog posts your web site guests haven’t seen but.

Firstly, you want to set up and activate the Mark New Posts plugin. If you want steerage, see our step-by-step information on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, go to Settings » Mark New Posts from the WordPress admin area. You will now see the plugin’s settings web page.

What you need to do now could be choose the place to show the ‘New’ label. You can choose After publish title, Before publish title, or Before and after publish title.

We discover that including the label after the publish title will appear like a notification and seize customers’ consideration essentially the most, in order that’s what we’ve chosen.

Next, you want to select what the marker appears to be like like in the Marker sort setting. The choices embody “New” textual content, “New” textual content legacy, Orange circle, Flag, Picture, or None.

Be certain to discover every choice to see which one appears to be like greatest along with your web site design.

Another setting you may configure is the background color for the brand new publish’s title. If you allow this, then when a reader visits a brand new publish, they’ll see that the publish title part has a background coloration. We didn’t discover this setting essential, so we disabled it.

In the ‘Consider a post as read’ setting, you may select when to flip off the brand new publish label: after it was opened, after it was displayed in the record, or after any net web page of the weblog was opened.

We counsel going with ‘after it was opened.’ This implies that if a customer hasn’t learn a number of posts and opens one, then the brand new publish label for the opposite articles gained’t disappear.

Next, you may choose what number of days the publish ought to keep highlighted as new, present all current posts as new to new guests, and disable the brand new label for custom post types.

The final two settings are fairly superior.

One is to ‘Allow outside the post list,’ which implies you may spotlight posts outdoors of the loop, like in widget-ready sidebar areas. Be cautious about enabling this setting, as it could create undesirable WordPress errors.

The different is ‘Use JavaScript for showing markers’, which is simply really useful if the plugin shouldn’t be suitable with the theme or different plugins getting used in your weblog. In most instances, you want to maintain this setting disabled.

Once you might be executed configuring the plugin settings, simply click on ‘Save.’

And that’s it! Go forward and go to your web site in incognito mode to see if the brand new labels for current posts are dwell.

Here’s what it appears to be like like on our demo web site:

Method 2: Highlight New Posts by Adding Custom Code

Are you sad with the brand new publish label choices given by the earlier plugin? If so, then you may spotlight new posts using custom code as an alternative.

For learners, this methodology could seem intimidating. But don’t fear as a result of we are going to use the WPCode plugin to safely insert code snippets in WordPress with out breaking your web site.

WPCode additionally makes it simple to handle a number of customized code snippets, which shall be useful in our case since we shall be utilizing a couple of.

The very first thing you want to do is set up WPCode in WordPress. For setup directions, go forward and take a look at our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, go to Code Snippets » + Add Snippet out of your WordPress dashboard. After that, choose ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ and click on the ‘Use snippet’ button.

Now, let’s add a title to your code snippet in order that it’s simpler to discover it afterward if wanted. For this, you may title it one thing like ‘WordPress Last Visit Title Modifier.’

Then, choose ‘PHP Snippet’ in the Code Type dropdown.

After that, you may copy and paste the code snippet under:

// Define a perform to modify publish titles based mostly on the final go to
perform wpb_lastvisit_the_title($title, $id) {

    // Check if not in the loop, a singular web page, or a web page publish sort; if true, return the unique title
    if (!in_the_loop() || is_singular() || get_post_type($id) == 'web page') return $title;

    // Check if no 'lastvisit' cookie is about or whether it is empty; if true, set the cookie with the present timestamp
    if (!isset($_COOKIE['lastvisit']) || $_COOKIE['lastvisit'] == '') {
        $present = current_time('timestamp', 1);
        setcookie('lastvisit', $present, time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 7, COOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN);
    }

    // Retrieve the 'lastvisit' cookie worth
    $lastvisit = $_COOKIE['lastvisit'];

    // Get the publish date of the publish (in Unix timestamp format)
    $publish_date = get_post_time('U', true, $id);

    // If the publish was printed after the final go to, append a brand new span to the title
    if ($publish_date > $lastvisit) $title .= '<span class="new-article">New</span>';

    // Return the modified or authentic title
    return $title;
}

// Add a filter to apply the 'wpb_lastvisit_the_title' perform to 'the_title' hook with precedence 10 and a pair of parameters
add_filter('the_title', 'wpb_lastvisit_the_title', 10, 2);

What this snippet does is modify WordPress post titles based mostly on a consumer’s final go to.

It checks if the page is a blog post or not, and if not, then it can show the unique title as is. But if it’s a weblog publish, then the title shall be modified.

Then, the snippet ensures the lastvisit cookie exists. If it doesn’t, then the code creates it and units it to the present time. The perform then compares this lastvisit time with the publish’s publish date and provides a ‘New’ label to the title if the publish is newer than the final go to.

Once you might have inserted the code snippet, simply scroll down and choose ‘Auto Insert’ for the Insert Method.

Other than that, be sure that to select ‘Frontend only’ for the Location. This means the code will solely run on the a part of your WordPress blog that guests work together with and never in your admin panel or different locations.

With that executed, you may make the code ‘Active’ and click on ‘Save Snippet.’

Now, repeat the step to add a brand new customized code snippet. This time, the code will model the ‘New’ label that’s added to current publish titles based mostly on the final go to of a consumer.

So, you may title it one thing like ‘Post Title New Label Style’ and the Code Type ought to be ‘CSS Snippet.’

You can then copy and paste the next traces of code into the Code Preview field:

/* CSS to model the "New" label in weblog publish titles */
.new-article {
    background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green background coloration */
    coloration: #ffffff; /* White textual content coloration */
    padding: 2px 5px; /* Padding across the label */
    margin-left: 5px; /* Adjust the margin to your desire */
    border-radius: 3px; /* Rounded corners for the label */
    font-size: 12px; /* Adjust the font measurement to your desire */
}

This code snippet primarily customizes the ‘New’ publish label utilizing a customized background coloration, textual content coloration, padding, margin, border radius, and font measurement.

Feel free to alter these parts to your preferences as you go alongside. Just be sure that to use hex coloration codes or RGB values for the background and textual content colours.

In the Insertion part, choose ‘Site Wide Header’ because the Location. After that, make the code ‘Active’ and click on ‘Save Snippet.’

And that’s it! To see if the code works, you may publish a new blog post and go to your web site in incognito mode.

If the code is profitable, then you need to see a ‘New’ label subsequent to your current publish titles.

Bonus Tip: Help Users Discover Relevant Content With Internal Links

Besides highlighting new posts for your returning guests, there are a lot of different methods to maintain your readers engaged.

Ideally, you need guests to try not only one however three or extra weblog posts in one sitting. This exhibits that they’re having fun with your content material and are collaborating in the neighborhood you might be constructing.

However, typically, it may be arduous for readers to discover content material that’s related to their pursuits. That’s the place inner linking comes in.

Internal hyperlinks are links that direct customers to different pages or posts in your web site.

You can use them straight inside your weblog posts. Or you may create a piece below the publish to show which blog posts are currently popular amongst your readers.

If you aren’t certain which inner hyperlinks to use in a weblog publish, then All in One SEO (AIOSEO) has a hyperlink assistant characteristic that can provide you some concepts.

For extra details about inner linking, see our ultimate internal linking guide for SEO.

We hope this text has helped you find out how to spotlight new posts for returning guests in WordPress. You can also need to try our WordPress SEO checklist for beginners and easy ways to increase your blog traffic.

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