This week I’m taking a look at one of Catalyst Theme’s smaller but still very useful features which is the ability to utilize the right hand side of the Navbars to include additional content.
This can be put to a variety of uses and one of the more standard is explored below.
Once you’ve designed and built a WordPress website, chances are that you’ll add more and more content to it over time (unless you specifically want a static site).
You’ll also more than likely want that content to be seen by as many people in your target audience as possible. So once visitors have discovered your site, you need to keep them engaged over time, and for them to keep coming back as you add that new content to your site.
One of the ways you can maintain that engagement with visitors is through encouraging them to subscribe to the RSS and email subscription feeds and/or other social media connections for your site.
Catalyst Theme caters for this very easily with the option to include different types of “extra” content on the right hand side of either, or both, Navbars in addition to the usual Page navigation tabs.
Additionally Catalyst Theme includes ready made features for some of these “Extras” such as buttons and links for subscription feeds.
This functionality can be found in Catalyst Core Options > Navbar settings as shown here where Blog Feeds (RSS and Email) and/or Twitter ID can be selected for inclusion on the Navbars with the actual link details added in the fields below.
Catalyst Navbar Right Display Options
You can get the link information for the RSS feed subscription just by clicking on the RSS button in the browser while the site is displayed – like this for example (the button style and location may vary depending on the web browser in use).
When you click on that button, it will display the content of the feed itself and the URL for that feed.
Just copy that URL into the RSS Subscription link field in the Catalyst Navbar settings shown above.
You can also use tools like Google’s FeedBurner to provide you with greater details of your subscriber numbers and their growth over time etc. To take advantage of this, all you need to do is enter the WordPress feed URL (as per the one shown above) into Feedburner (you’ll need a Google account to do this).
This will generate a Feedburner version of the feed URL which should now be the RSS Subscription link entered in the Catalyst Navbar settings instead.
Feedburner also allows you to create a link to “Subscribe by email” too which can similarly be added to the Navbar settings in Catalyst.
A full step-by-step walkthrough of generating these links using Feedburner is included in the Catalyst Theme Cheat Sheet available for download in the Catalyst Forum.
With or without the use of Feedburner, in either case the result is an additional option to encourage visitors to your site to engage, and remain engaged, with your site as shown above.
The Navbar Right areas can be put to a wide variety of uses as Catalyst Theme provides ready made options like those described above as well as the ability to include text and html for total content flexibility.
Have fun.
David.
David Pritchard is the author of the Catalyst Theme Cheat Sheet that helps users make the most of Catalyst Theme. Licenced Catalyst Theme users can get their FREE copy of David’s 250+ page guide in the downloads section of the Catalyst Theme forum. David also has a site with guides to using Catalyst Theme, WordPress, SEO, internet marketing techniques and other topics at http://www.FastStepInternetMarketing.com