How to Add a Glossary or Dictionary Section in Your WordPress Site

Do you want to add a glossary or dictionary section to your WordPress site?

If a customer is unsure about a specialist term or abbreviation, then a glossary can give them the necessary information. In this way, you can help visitors better understand industry topics and present yourself as an expert in your field.

In this article, we will show you how to add a glossary or dictionary to your WordPress site.

What Is a Glossary or Dictionary?

A glossary or dictionary lists specialist terms in alphabetical order and then provides a definition.

Like a physical dictionary, an online glossary can help visitors find the meaning of any term, phrase, or abbreviation they are unsure about, such as our WPBeginner WordPress Glossary.

This can help potential customers understand your blog posts, guides, tutorials, and other resources. This often keeps them on your site for longer, which can increase pageviews and reduce the bounce rate in WordPress.

By presenting yourself as an accessible and helpful industry expert, you can also encourage visitors to keep coming back. If you sell online products or services, then this trust and respect can even help you get more sales.

With that said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a glossary or dictionary section to your WordPress site.

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Adding a Glossary or Dictionary on Your WordPress Site

The easiest way to add a glossary or dictionary to your WordPress website is by using the CM Tooltip Glossary plugin. This plugin lets you organize all your specialist terms and abbreviations into a list and then show each definition in a tooltip.

The first thing you need to do is to install and activate CM Tooltip Glossary. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will be asked to register the plugin by typing in your email address.

If you don’t want to join the CM Tooltip Glossary email list, then simply click on ‘Skip’. You can still use all the plugin’s features.

After that, click on the ‘General Settings’ tab.

Here, you can add the glossary to any page by opening the ‘Glossary Index Page ID’ dropdown and choosing a page from the list.

If you prefer, then you can create a new page for your glossary by checking the box next to ‘Generate page for Glossary Index’.

Then, find the ‘Glossary Terms Permalink’ field and type in the URL slug that you want to use for the new page. Your glossary is an important page, so it’s a good idea to use a descriptive slug.

If you don’t add a URL, then the plugin will simply use /glossary.

By default, CM Tooltip Glossary highlights glossary terms when they appear on your pages, posts, and in the glossary itself.

If you want to change these settings, then scroll to the ‘Term Highlighting’ section.

You can now delete any of the options in ‘Highlight terms on given post types’. You can also type in any other areas where you want to highlight glossary terms, such as any custom post types you may be using.

After that, you can choose whether to highlight a glossary term every time it appears on a page or only the first time.

If it’s a common word, we recommend only highlighting it when it first appears to avoid distracting your readers.

However, if the word or definition is complicated, then visitors may appreciate being able to access the glossary every time that word appears on your site.

To make this change, check or uncheck the box next to ‘Highlight first term occurrence only’.

You may also want to only highlight glossary terms on single posts and pages. By enabling this option, CM Tooltip Glossary will ignore your custom homepage, author pages, and other taxonomy-related pages.

When you are happy with how the glossary is set up, just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save Changes.’

After that, you can click on the ‘Glossary Index Page’ tab and configure the glossary display settings. For example, you can use a tile layout for the glossary page and change the width of the tiles.

Most of these settings are straightforward. However, if you need more information about an option, then simply hover your mouse over its ‘?’ icon to see what this specific option does.

Next, you can check the link settings for your glossary by selecting the ‘Glossary Term’ tab.

Here, you can customize how the glossary links look by changing the link color, adding an underline, and creating hover states.

You also have the option to ‘Open glossary term page in a new window/tab’. This may be a good alternative to the default WordPress tooltip if you want to show lots of information about each glossary term.

Adding a New Glossary Term

When you are happy with how the glossary is set up, you are ready to start adding terms and definitions by going to CM Tooltip Glossary » Add New.

Adding a new glossary term is similar to writing a great blog post. Simply type in a title, which will appear in the list on your glossary page.

Then, type a definition into the main WordPress block editor. This text will appear in the tooltip or in a new tab, depending on whether you selected ‘Open glossary term page in a new window/tab’ in the plugin’s settings.

When you are ready, simply click on the ‘Publish’ button.

You can add as many glossary terms as you want, and the plugin will arrange them in alphabetical order automatically. After adding a few terms, you can visit your WordPress blog or website to see the glossary page in action.

Note: You will find the glossary page at the ‘Glossary Terms Permalink’ URL, as defined in the plugin’s settings.

After creating a glossary, you will want to help visitors find it. This may mean adding it to your website’s navigation menu or the WordPress footer.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add a glossary or dictionary on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a custom page in WordPress or our expert pick of the best popular post plugins.

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