As many bloggers out there probably know, it can be very annoying to try and create updates on your blog that are perfectly formatted or that include certain elements (like pictures or ads) into every post. Sometimes, when you’re tired and trying to get something written to your blog as quickly as possible, it’s very easy to forget those formatting issues.

I started my quest for a solution because in all of my blogs I always insert a Google Ad and a picture immediately following the “more” marker. This is a technique that a lot of bloggers use in order to break up the text of any blog entry. Some people insert their own banner image that might promote another part of the website, while others place ads or just imagery to spruce up the post.

The problem is that once you find a perfect format for formatting each post, you’d have to remember to type in that code or insert the picture every time you write a new entry. Not long ago, I wrote about pre-formatting blog posts using the Firefox plugin Scribefire – but sometimes I like to edit directly in WordPress. Thankfully, I discovered an awesome WordPress template plugin called In-Post Template, which will automatically inserts template information into the post for you.

Setting Up The In-Post Template Plug-In

There’s nothing complicated about setting up the In-Post template. Like most other WordPress plugins, all you have to do is FTP the plug-in folder into your WordPress “plugins” folder. Next, go into the plugins area in your WordPress admin panel and activate the In-Post Template plugin.

Under settings, click on “In-Post Template,” and you’ll see a very simple form to fill out. There are just two text fields and one drop-down box.

Before we get into the template configuration, I’d like to show you what sort of thing you have to do if you don’t have a template in order to incorporate ads, pictures or anything else into every post you write. Here, I add an image on the right and an ad on the left directly after the “more” marker. With ads, you have to do it after so that your main blog page isn’t filled with 10 or more Google Ads (Google has a limit on the number of in-page ads).

Instead of typing this code into every single post, you can place it into the “In-post Content” inside the In-Post Template settings. If you don’t use the “more” marker on your blog, the In-Post template still lets you add formatting at the beginning or end of your post.

For example, if you want to append a bio to every post, just change “Ignore” to “After Post” and type in the information that you’d like appended to every blog post. Now that I’m using the In-Post template, I don’t have to worry about copying and pasting all of that code. I just place the “more” marker and it all gets inserted automatically.

Here’s the final post with the content automatically inserted. You can do this for your own banners, a preface for every post, a bio at the end of every post – or any other content you are sick of pasting into your blog entries to keep things formatted and consistent.

The pros of this WordPress template plugin is that it’s one of the easiest I’ve ever seen. There’s virtually no setup – you just add your content and tell the plugin where to place it. The cons of the plugin are that you can’t do all three at once – you can either use the more marker to insert content in the middle of your post, or insert content at the beginning or end. You can’t do all three.

Beyond that, I’ve found the plug-in invaluable for my own needs, and for anyone that needs to insert one section of content into every blog post, this little tool will really save a lot of time.

Have you ever tried the In-Post Template and do you like it? Do you know of any other helpful WordPress template plugins? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Image credit: Svilen Milev