With the climate constantly changing and global warming being an actual thing, it’s necessary to stay ahead of the weather. Several industries rely entirely on weather and weather forecasts. Some examples include hospitality, travel, and more. If you own a business and a website in any of these industries, a weather widget on the website will add credibility to your business.
Moreover, believe it or not, adding weather forecasts to any business website is not rocket science. There are two straightforward methods to add a weather forecast feature or widget to any website or blog. Moreover, many third-party weather widgets and plugins allow the simplified implementation of a weather element.
This article will go over the two most popular methods to add the weather forecast element on any website. So, without any further ado, read on ahead.
Does Your Website Need a Weather Forecast?
Before deciding whether you need a weather element on your website, ensure that it serves a purpose. After all, every detail on a website must serve a purpose, or it is simply hogging usable space. Therefore, ensure that you’re in the right industry where your readers will benefit from having a glance at what the weather looks like on that particular day or days to come.
For example, a news website or blog must have a weather prediction on the home page itself. This is because most people tend to check on the news before heading out for work, and a glance at the weather will help them plan their commute and the day.
Apart from news, weather information and prediction play a considerable role in the travel and tourism industry. Users planning to travel to an international destination will benefit from the knowledge of the weather and plan their itinerary accordingly.
Another industry that benefits from the weather forecast is hotel and event management. The benefits for this particular industry are the same as the travel and tourism industry. The website visitors will benefit from knowing the weather where their hotel is or the event they have booked is being organized.
If your business belongs to any of the industries mentioned above and you still don’t have a weather widget on your website, it’s a missed opportunity. Let’s take a look at how you can add one to your website.
Adding Weather Forecast Through HTML
One of the simplest methods to integrate any element in a website design is to use HTML code. Web designers broadly use HTML to determine the structure of web pages. It allows website developers to publish online pages with headings, text, tables, lists, and photos.
Therefore, it is no surprise that top weather forecasting websites have easy-to-embed HTML codes of a weather widget for website owners to use. They can copy-paste the HTML code on offer into their website’s code to display the weather information front and center.
For example, if you are an Israel-based travel and tourism website, Jerusalem is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. You can embed the HTML code for the weather API showing Jerusalem weather on the relevant page. Developers can select elements to display and customize the whole look of the API as per their preference and generate the applicable HTML code for that look. It’s quite an easy process.
Adding Weather Forecast Through Plug-Ins
Plugins are straightforward and thus the most preferred way to add a weather API to any website. Did you know that WordPress is the most popular content management system platform in the world? As of August 2021, WordPress powers over 28 million live websites in the world, or 44 percent of all the websites globally.
Given the numbers, chances are pretty high that your website is based on WP as well. This is good news because WordPress is designed to simplify website creators to add different elements on the website, from social media anchors to external links buttons.
Therefore, it is no surprise that the CMS platform also offers a powerful weather plugin integration with ready-made plugins from top weather forecasting service providers like OpenWeather, AccuWeather, and more. All you need to do is download the plugin, customize the way you want it to look, where you want it to appear on your site, and what information you want to display. The best part is that you can do it all from the admin dashboard without requiring elaborate technical know-how of HTML.
As you can see for yourself, adding a weather forecast to your website is not rocket science. Anyone with a computer and basic knowledge of how websites work can easily integrate a sleek-looking weather API into their website. All you need to do is determine whether it serves a purpose in your domain.