Create a Watchlist of Favourite Posts

The ‘My Favourite Posts’ plugin lets your audience save a list of their favourite posts with one click. They can then login at any time and view their list as well as add/delete items.

Download ‘My Favorite Posts’ Plugin…

When you have hundreds of tutorials, property listings, shopping cart items and other types of blog posts on your website, it becomes more and more difficult to ensure that your readers can find the post they need quickly and easily. This way people can save relevant posts and listings as they browse, then review and link to them again whenever they choose.

Screenshot below shows Watchlist link and saved posts as seen by logged in user.

View Watchlist in Action

1. Register on my website
2. Check your email for your password
3. Login to my website
4. Browse WordPress Tutorials
5. Click on Add this Post to My Watchlist at the top of any post you want to save
6. View the list of posts on your watchlist (top right sidebar)

You can also see this plugin in action on the goodGround Real Estate website.

Setting Up Your Watchlist

1. Upload and activate the My Favourite Posts plugin
2. Add a piece of code to your index.php file where you would like the “Save to Favourites” (or similar wording) text to appear. You can change the wording inside the code.  If you are using Genesis, add your code using the Simple Hooks Plugin.
3. Go to Appearance/Widgets in admin and drag the My Favourite Posts widget into your sidebar. Note that this will only show when users are logged in.
4. Go to Settings/General and tick the ‘anyone can register’ box (leave dropdown as subscriber)

Promoting Your Watchlist

Because only logged in users can see the links to Add to Watchlist and the Favourites widget, you actually need to let them know that it’s there and how to use it. Create a watchlist page with a description of how it works and a link to login. This is always your website address with a /register.php on the end.

View an example watchlist page

Customising Your Login Page

You might also want to customise your login page so it displays your logo instead of the WordPress logo. The easiest way to do this is to replace the logo-login.gif file in the images folder under wp-admin on your website. You will need to do this using an ftp program.

Who’s Created a Watchlist

To see who’s created a watchlist, login to your website, go to users and view your subscribers.