Blogging Tips

Many bloggers do a series of posts that have a similar format or have common elements to all of their posts. Whether its podcast episodes that take a similar structure in their show notes, posts in a topic with a common header or even just a common signature line among all entries, there’s often a lot of repeated content from post to post.

However, with default WordPress, there is no easy way of replicating that content. You can save a draft and copy from it, you can edit an old post and copy from that or you can keep an offline copy of the post and paste that in. Though all of these solutions can work, they are slow, clunky and don’t copy everything that’s needed.

There’s a clear need for a better solution and the Post Templates plugin by Vincent Prat provides exactly that. Not only does it let you create a template for your posts, thus saving the formatting and elements that don’t change, but it also preserves the categories, tags. and other elements that one might otherwise forget to change.

This makes it an absolute necessity for anyone who does recurring posts of any kind or has elements of their post that doesn’t change.

How it Works

Once you install the plugin, it creates both a box on your WordPress 2.7 dashboard and a new category in the column on the left. Using the dropdown on the left, you can create either a new post or a new page template.

To create a template, you treat it as if it were any post. You first title the post as you would want it to appear on your site, edit the content of the post to suit your needs, adding the formatting, headers, etc., categorize it and then tag the post as if you were going to push it ilve. Then, instead of hitting “Publish”, you give the template a name, something short that you can easily remember, and hit “Save”.

Once you’ve got a template saved, you can access it via your dashboard. In the box there (Note: The box defaults to the bottom so you may want to drag it to the top) and you can select “New Post” using that template and it will open up a “New” post that will have all of the saved template data already inserted, including the title, body content, categories, templates and so forth.

If your template needs to change, you can always go back and modify it, saving over the previous version. You can also delete templates if you’re no longer using them.

The end result is that there is no need to copy and paste unchanging portions of a post nor is there a need to remember to categorize/tag a post correctly, Post Templates does it all for you.

Uses

To those that have a need for it, the uses are pretty obvious. If nothing stays consistent from post to post, then post templates probably won’t be of much use. However, if there is anything that you repeat regularly, this plugin can help you make it more efficient and more accurate.

Consider the following cases:

• Podcasts or link lists that require similar formatting
• Adding a signature line or a call to action at the footer of every post
• Correctly formatting header images that are used repeatedly
• Adding disclaimers/disclosures to every post
• Correctly formatting subheads in a post

In short, not every blogger is going to have a use for this plugin but, for those who do, it is going to be something they can’t live without.

Bottom Line

If you have anything that you find yourself constantly copying and pasting into new posts, you need to give this plugin a try, not only does it give your copy and paste a break, but it also your memory. If you don’t have to remember to paste everything in, title it correctly, categorize and tag, you can’t forget it. This will help prevent mis-categorized and untagged posts.

In short, depending on the type of blogging you do, this is one of the few plugins that can not only help you blog faster, but also better.

With quicker posting and fewer mistakes, this is one plugin that is almost virtually guaranteed to make your blog better, without even being visible to the end user.