How to Link to External Links from the Post Title in WordPress
How to Add External Links to Post Title in WordPress
if you want to add an external link
as post title in WordPress? Sometimes you may just want to share a link with
your users. Instead of sending them to a post, you may want the post title to
link to the other website. In this article, I’ll show you how to do so.
Method 1: Linking Post Title to an
External Link in WordPress using Plugin
HOW
TO ADD
EXTERNAL LINK
To WordPress
post Title
This method is easier and is
recommended for beginners.
First thing you need to do is
install and activate the Page Links To plugin.
Upon activation, simply create a new
post or edit an existing one. You will notice the new ‘Page Links To’ meta box
below the post editor.
Click on ‘A custom URL’ to add the
link you want to add to post title. Now you can save or publish your post.
That’s all. The post title will now
link to the custom URL you provided.
It is not necessary to use it for
external links only. You can also use it to send users to different posts and
pages on your WordPress site.
Add
External Link to Post Title Using Code
This method requires you to add code
to your WordPress site. You can use this method if you are comfortable
with pasting snippets from web into WordPress.
function
print_post_title() {
global $post;
$thePostID =
$post->ID;
$post_id =
get_post($thePostID);
$title =
$post_id->post_title;
$perm = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_keys = array();
$post_val = array();
$post_keys =
get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);
if
(!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as
$pkey) {
if
($pkey=='external_url') {
$post_val =
get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val))
{
$link = $perm;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $perm;
}
echo '<h2><a
href="'.$link.'" rel="bookmark"
title="'.$title.'">'.$title.'</a></h2>';
}
This code looks simply looks for
a custom field containing your custom URL. If the post has the custom
field, then it outputs the post title linked to your URL.
The next step is to replace your theme’s
default display of post title with this function. You will find it in
archives.php, content.php, category.php and other templates. It would look
something like this:
<?php the_title(
sprintf( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="%s"
rel="bookmark">', esc_url( get_permalink() ) ),
'</a></h2>' ); ?>
You
need to replace it with this code:
<?php
print_post_title() ?>
The code part is over, now you need
to add the external URL to the post. Simply edit the post or create a new one.
On the post editor page, look for the custom fields meta box.
If you cannot see the custom fields
meta box, then you need to click Screen Options in the top
right corner of the screen. This will bring down a menu where you need to check
the box next to ‘Custom Fields’.
You will find the custom fields meta
box below the post editor.
Click on ‘Enter New’ and
then enter external_link in the ‘Name’ field and the link you
want to add to post title in the ‘Value’ field.
You can now save or publish your
post. That’s all, your post title will now be linked to the link you added in
the custom field.
Next time you need to add a link,
you just need to select the external_url custom
field from the drop down menu and enter your external link in the value field.
We hope this article helped you learn how to link
to external links from the post title in WordPress
Please use this space to share your thoughts or to leave a comment. Thank you again for showing interest in my work. I look forward to reading what you have to say.