Web Design Tutorials and Tips

WordPress has pretty decent typography features in the core installation. But there are plenty of areas ripe for improvement. That’s where the plugins below come in.

(Image bg: fabianohikaru)

Whether you just want more control over how the basic text on your site shows up or you want to do something a bit more advanced, there’s surely a plugin available to help. There are plugins to better handle things like hyphens and long URLS, plugins to replace text with images (whether in headlines or to avoid censorship), and plugins to let you add print-centric elements, like drop caps and pull quotes, to your posts.

Be sure to check out our previous post on Dynamic Image Replacement for more useful WordPress typography plugins and here are some WordPress related articles we’ve previously published:

• WordPress Tricks & Hacks Part I, Part II, Part III
• Manage & Handle Multi-Author Blogs
• Great looking WordPress Themes

Full list after jump.

Typography Plugins For Better Readability

TTFTitles

The TTFTitles plugin is another dynamic text replacement plugin that lets you replace your headers with images using any TrueType font you choose. It’s mostly a rework of the Image Headlines plugin. It has been tested with WP 1.5.2 up through 2.7.

DRF2WP EN

DRF2WP EN is a font replacement plugin that allows you to replace any font on your WP site with a dynamically generated image that uses any TrueType or OpenType font you want. The source code remains in-tact, which means your site won’t take a hit with search engines. The plugin works with WP 2.5 up to 2.8.4.

Drop Caps

The Drop Caps plugin lets you add a customized drop cap to each of your posts and pages (or even comments and other excerpts), similar to what’s commonly done in print publications. It can also be used to create other types of initials. The plugin has been tested with WP 2.3 up through 2.7.1.

WP Typography

The WP Typography plugin adds a number of typography features to your blog. It includes hyphenation, spacing control, forced internal wrapping of long URLs, intelligent character placement, smart handling of quotes and other characters, and CSS hooks for styling ampersands, acronyms, and other special characters. It works with WP 2.7 up through 2.8.4.

Simple Pull Quote

The Simple Pull Quote plugin lets you insert pull quotes into your blog posts to emphasize certain sentences or phrases using custom fields. Pull quotes can be styled by editing the included CSS file. It works with WP 2.7 or 2.8.

jQuery Font Resizer

jQuery Font Resizer is a plugin that improves the usability and accessibility of your blog. It adds three links to each page to allow visitors to resize the type on that particular page. It’s a great option to make your site more user-friendly to visitors who want a larger or smaller type than standard. It’s known to work with WP version 2.0.2 up through 2.7.

WP-Syntax

WP-Syntax is another syntax highlighter that uses GeSHi. It gives you the option to highlight with or without line numbers and maintains formatting when you copy snippets. WP-Syntax is compatible with WP 2.0 up through 2.8.

Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

The Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress lets the original Google Syntax Highlighter that was developed by Alex Gorbatchev work within WP. It’s a completely client-side highlighter, supports multiple languages (including Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, Delphi, CSS, C++ and more), and is very lightweight. It’s known to be compatible with version 2.0.0 through 2.2.2.

WP-Syntax Colorizer

WP-Syntax Colorizer is a simple plugin for colorizing code snippets within your blog posts when run alongside WP-Syntax. WP-Syntax Colorizer has been tested with WP 2.0 up through 2.5.

CodeColorer

CodeColorer adds syntax highlighting to code snippets placed on your blog. It’s a great plugin to use if you frequently post code snippets, such as on a web design or development blog. It works with version 2.7 up through 2.8.4.

TextImage

The TextImage plugin replaces all the text in a post with a PNG image. It’s a good plugin to use if you wnat to block search engines from seeing your content or otherwise fly under the radar. It also gets around most automated filtering that certain countries use to censor internet content. It’s been tested with WP 2.1 up through 2.7.1.

Censortive

Censortive helps you get around automated censorship by replacing certain words with images of the word instead of text. You define which words you want to be replaced and Censortive does the rest. It’s a great plugin for getting around a lot of censorship without blocking your content from search engines. It’s been tested with WP 2.0.2 up through 2.3.

Title Style

Title Style gives you additional formatting options for your post titles. It can be used to wrap lowercase words or words like “the”, “a”, or “of” in em, span, or other elements. It’s compatible with WP 2.0.0 up through 2.8.4.

PS Disable Auto Formatting

PS Disable Auto Formatting prevents WordPress from applying its own auto formatting functions to your posts and pages. It prevents WP from stripping out tags when you’re editing in the HTML editor and has a positive impact on the way the visual editor formats your posts, too. It’s known to be compatible with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.

Post Typographer

Post Typographer plugin adds a number of typography improvements to your posts automatically. It changes dashes with spaces around them to em-dashes, transforms hyphens without spaces to n-dashes, and turns spaces after particular words into non-breaking spaces, among other features. It’s been tested with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.

Author Intro for Post

Author Intro for Post plugin adds an author intro to the beginning of each post based on the author’s name and bio information. It’s been tested with WP versions 2.0.2 through 2.7.

WP-Footnotes

WP-Footnotes makes it simple to add footnotes to your posts. Usage is incredibly easy and only requires you to use double-parentheses around your footnote. It does the rest. It’s compatible with WP versions 2.0 through 2.6.

Typography Plugins for Admins

Here are a couple of admin plugins that can help you improve your site’s typography by giving you more editing options in the back-end of your site.

WP Super Edit

WP Super Edit adds a host of WYSIWYG options to the standard WP visual editor. It adds two full rows of additional features to your visual editor toolbar, including options for applying specific styles and for adding and formatting tables. It’s known to work with version 2.8 and 2.8.1.

Real WYSIWYG Plugin

The Real WYSIWYG Plugin adds a WYSIWYG editor that actually shows you the page layout of your post within the visual editor. It makes it easier to see how your line breaks, images, and other elements will actually fit on your page.

Text Control

Text Control gives you additional options for formatting posts on your WP site according to a variety of different syntaxes and encoding options, including Textile 1, Textile 2, and Markdown. It’s compatible with WP 1.5 and higher.