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How to Create a Glossary in Wordpress

by mikeevee
8 replies
I am looking to create a glossary in Wordpress, for a new Finance site. The terms / definitions will be written by me, so will be unique content.

In terms of layout, does anyone have any advice? I was thinking to put each definition on a separate Wordpress Page, so that people can comment on it or ask follow-up questions if they wish. I could then create another Glossary Index page to link to them.

Does anyone have any advice before I start? Maybe I should use Posts instead of Pages?
#create #glossary #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
    If the glossary is going to be lots of pages, why not offer it in pdf form and use it to get sign-ups to a list?

    You can also do your own page that gives the terms, and then link each of those to a page of their own - pages that won't show up in the menus.
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  • Profile picture of the author davewebsmith
    another option would be to use a rollover tooltip popup to display the information

    Dynamic Drive- Links and Buttons

    some great free code on there

    here is a great example http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...ckytooltip.htm
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Wordpress 3.0 now has the abilit to handle custom content types which means you can set it up so that you can add any content from within the admin panel as you would a post or a page. You add the content type in your functions file and call for it in the template. From then on every time you want to add a glossary item you just add it like you would a post.

      YOu can do it easier old school but it might not giveyou the look you are after. Just giving you an alternative.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBeard
    I have battled with this question for the last 3 years, and I think it comes down to whether you want to try to rank the glossary page for one header term, or whether you want to rank the individual term pages.

    There is also a 3rd option, segment a list of 200 terms into 20 related lists of 10 terms which would be formatted the traditional way as a definition list

    PHP Code:
    <dl>
              <    dt>Coffee</dt>
                <    dd>- black hot drink</dd>
              <    dt>Milk</dt>
                <    dd>- white cold drink</dd>
        </    dl> 
    But then link through from that definition list to an extended definition.

    Take it to another level and have 5 related short definitions on every other extended definition page.
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  • Profile picture of the author thaismr
    Use a new page template, separated from the ones you use on the rest of the site (like contact page or "about me"), so you can change its style and place content where you want to, remove date/posted by and other stuff...
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  • Profile picture of the author mikeevee
    Thanks for the great advice all.

    I am going to try to do it with custom post templates in Wordpress 3. That way it will automatically send my new glossary definitions out to the Feedburner mailing list, which people should like. Kind of a "term of the day" thing.

    If anyone wants to sign up and watch it work, the site is at http://www.lifeofatrade.co.uk/. Nice domain eh? I will start adding the terms this weekend I hope.
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    • Profile picture of the author kos818
      Originally Posted by Jeff Hope View Post

      Another option, here's a plugin called

      My Instant Glossary Pro

      I don't know anything about it though.
      I have quite a share of thoughts about that buddy ;-)
      1. IF your site is in English, it seems to work pretty well
      2. Export and import functions suck great times. I used it on a customers website and the CSV file created by the plugin was so huge and badly formated, that I ignored it and we copy / pasted everything on our own.
      3. Customer support doesn't exist. I have paid for a license, but haven't activated it yet and are still waiting for a response.
      4. The plugin only links to the glossary from pages and posts, but not within the glossary.
      They offer a free trial. So just head over and give it a try. As said, it didn't work out for us, but it seems to be a solid plugin. And the encrypted the source code, so I couldn't adjust anything. I will do one on my own without using an existing plugin to get to my customers requirements...

      Cheers
      Sven
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