Automating WordPress with PHP, CSS & AI
Today, I spent some time diving into the programmability of WordPress, and I love it.
I had GPT generate the PHP for my child theme to add affiliate banners to my informational posts. Sure, there are probably plugins that could do this in a fraction of the time—but I have a trust issue with devs. Plugins can get abandoned, or worse, released as “freemium,” where the free version is barely usable unless you pay for the upgrade.
So I handled it myself with the help of AI. And now I have banners automatically inserted at 20% and 50% (eventually another at 80% when I find a decent program) of each post’s content length. Every future post—except those in my review category—will display these banners without me manually adding them each time.
The banners aren’t perfect yet (one’s a gif in WebP format, another’s static), but it’s a bit of a relief knowing that even my search traffic posts—which exist mainly to funnel readers to my money pages—have the potential to present affiliate products that might actually be of interest to visitors.
It’s a reminder that if you don’t try, you’ll never know.
What’s your best WordPress automation cheat?
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Recent Comments
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Hi Robert. Thanks For Your Post. I Used Use WordPress, But I Didn't Try WordPress Automation Cheat Yet. I Will Go See It Soon. Thanks😊😊
Hi, and thanks for your comment. "WordPress Automation Cheat" isn't a thing. (Apologies if that was confusing.) What I'm talking about is an edit to the WordPress themes the site is built with.
The "cheat" part is adding code to the theme to do almost anything you can imagine. With AI, you don't need to know how to code to make chnages you want across the website. Tell GPT what you want your website to do, and it'll give you the code and instructions on which files to edit.
Another tweak I did with PHP was to display random blog posts on the home page instead of the most recent posts. That way, older posts get resurfaced instead of buried.
These are the things I do for fun. Nerd alert 😀
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I'm curious, have you had any experiences with PHP or HTML before that helped you to dive into the programmability?
I understand AI can handle it but without basics I didn't bother to try.
Paul.
Hey Paul, thanks for asking. I wouldn’t call myself a coder… Before, I'd only made small edits, like swapping out “Leave a Reply” for “Join the Conversation.” But over time I got more comfortable tinkering.
HTML and CSS are where I first built confidence. Back in the Squidoo days (if you remember that site), people were doing creative things with their formatting.
I wanted to figure it out, so I taught myself the basics and eventually started helping clients with little things like custom callout boxes for their CTAs. That gave me enough grounding to know where it’s safe to experiment and what parts of themes to steer clear of.
So when I got thinking of automating banner placement on the site, I wasn’t starting from zero… I just had enough background to know that what I wanted was achievable if GPT could handle the PHP. That’s the tricky bit. I definitely wouldn’t go near functions.php file without a child theme or a backup though. 😅
What about you… have you ever tinkered under the hood, or do you prefer to stick with plugins?
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I totally get what you mean.
I wouldn’t call myself a coder either, but I’ve done my fair share of tinkering. Mostly with HTML. Didn't have a chance with CSS. HTML only when it comes to customizing layouts or tweaking the appearance of my blog posts.
I have crossed my fingers on PHP because I’m cautious like you.
I’ve been relying more on plugins for functionality, but I’m definitely interested in learning little bits of code here and there so I can make small customizations without having to depend entirely on plugins.
It’s cool how you figured out a way to automate banner placement using GPT — that sounds super efficient! I might try something similar one day.
Paul.