Spiff Up your WordPress Blog with the Textlink Adder Plugin

Using WordPress for e-commerce? Or, just adding purchase or sponsor links to your post? Then, you need the Textlink Adder Plugin. Adding a plain text link in the middle or at the bottom of a post is just not eye-catching enough for someone quickly scanning through your page. Deep-linking only works if a visitor actually reads your post.

The name of the plugin is a bit of a misnomer as it converts plain text links into spiffy looking links. Actually, there are three link types to choose from: purchase, sponsor, and related. Although, I think that the ‘Purchase Link’ is the most useful. The link graphics are shown below.

Set-up is snap! You upload the Textlink Adder Plugin to your plugins folder and activate it. That’s it. No code snippet needs to be added to your template. It automatically puts the links at the end of your posts. The plugin is easy to use because all the options and data entry is handled from one page (go Manage -> Textlink Adder).

Here is a list of the plugin’s key features

• Choose font colors for your text links to fit your theme
• Choose between link types
• Search through your added text links using their link name or post id
• Three slim graphic images separate the links from your post
• Decide if the link should be marked ‘nofollow’
• Give each text link a personal description
• Show your visitors the url they will be taken to when they click on the link
• Works for both static and dynamic page types
• Choose to show the links only on specific page types (homepage, static, categories, post & archive)

So how does it look? I have added a purchase link for the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, using the Textlink Adder Plugin — see it belowI have designed a link graphic to match the theme of this blog.. You can mouseover the link and see that Amazon preview works perfectly with the purchase link.

It’s probably best to combine the Textlink Adder Plugin links with deep-linking within the post like I have done above. That way, you’re covered for both types of visitors – readers and those that just visually scan the post!

The plugin comes with a cool 80x15px button that is added to the far lower right corner of the link by default. You can turn that feature off as I have done. My preference is to give the plugin author a backlink by adding it to the blog footer.