WordPress – Create an instant link to Wikipedia

I’m often wanting to create quick and useful links to Wikipedia. Obviously, you could add a link manually each time, but wouldn’t an automated system be so much better?

Well, crack open your functions.php file within your theme folder and added the following code…

add_shortcode('wikilink','add_wikilink');
function add_wikilink($paras="",$content="") {
    return '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'.str_replace(" ","_",$content).'" title="Look up '.$content.' on Wikipedia" title="Look up '.$content.' on Wikipedia" target="_blank" rel="notarget">'.$content.'</a>';
}

Then, simply add the shortcode [wikilink] around any word/words that you wish to look up on Wikipedia.

For example….

The [wikilink]HTC Hero[/wikilink] runs the [wikilink]Android operating system[/wikilink].

This would then produce the following output…

The HTC Hero runs the Android operating system.

The links open in new windows (i.e. target=_blank) and I’ve set rel=nofollow – obviously you can change the above code to modify any of this.

Tags: Software, Wikipedia, Wordpress

Category: Web Development, Wordpress