Make it easy for readers to cite your posts using the Cite plugin
The Cite plugin, which is automatically activated on your blog but optional to use, offers an easy way to tell your readers how to cite your posts.
To configure Cite, go to the “Cite” menu on your dashboard. You will see a field where you can add a personalized message. This message will be included in posts of your choice and will tell readers how you would like your publications to be cited.
You can write this message in plain text or use HTML tags. You can also include keywords. This is what makes this plugin so useful, as these keywords will mean that certain types of information relevant to the post will be automatically displayed when the message appears.
Here are the keywords you can use:
- {author}: displays the author’s name, as entered using the “Author” menu on the page where you can edit the post. It is therefore important that the content is published by the author’s user account – see the posts “The importance of a structured public signature” and ”
Managing several users on a blog“. - {title}: displays the title of the post, as entered in the “Title” field on the page where you can edit the post
- {sitename}: displays your blog’s name, as stated in the Settings > General menu
- {publication_date}: displays the date when the post was published
- {permalink}: displays the post’s URL
- {date}: displays the date when the post was consulted. This information is particularly important when citing content that has been published on the Internet, as such content can be subject to substantial change over time. It is therefore useful to indicate when the content was consulted (and therefore which version was consulted and is being referred to in the reference)
Your text might look something like this:
Cite this post: “{title}”, by {author}. Published on <em>{sitename}</em> on {publication_date}. Link: {permalink}.
For your readers, this will read as follows:
Once you have adjusted the settings, you now just have to choose the posts where you wish to display this message. To do this, simply write [cite] (with the square brackets and without a space before or after “cite”) where you would like the citation message to appear (probably at the start or end of a post), in a “Paragraph” block by itself.
NB: It is possible to use Cite on a page (rather than a post), but we don’t recommend publishing citable content on a page. Pages do not contain categories or keywords and their URLs may change over time. This means that they are static and a useful way of structuring your blog (by displaying the names of your editorial team, for example). However, posts are the best way to publish academic content on your blog.
Featured image: Perkins Library Reference Desk, 1970s by Duke University Archives (licence: Creative Commons by-nc-sa)
This post is a translation of this one, by Helen Tomlinson.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
François Pacaud (October 12, 2015). Make it easy for readers to cite your posts using the Cite plugin. The house of blogs. Retrieved March 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ppa6
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