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CiteKit
Open Reference Library

What’s New in CiteKit – Footnotes, Tooltips, Citations, Bibliography & References Manager for WordPress

CiteKit has come a long way – from a handful of shortcodes to a full reference library, hover tooltips, numbered footnotes, and a block-editor-native experience. Every release below marks a step in that progression.

The latest, 4.3, adds a Glossary. Define the terms your readers keep tripping over, render them with [​glossary] or the Glossary block, and link a tooltip to a term so one definition stays authoritative everywhere it appears. Terms import and export as JSON, CSV, or plain text, and the glossary page carries schema.org DefinedTermSet markup.

Before it, 4.2 opened CiteKit up. A citation can now carry its own reference: write [​cite id="who-2025" type="report" author="..." title="..." year="2025"] and CiteKit creates the library record when you save, so an article arrives with its sources already attached — useful for AI-assisted drafting, migrations, and structured content written by hand. Underneath it sits the CiteKit Reference Schema v1, one canonical reference model shared by citations, bibliographies, imports, and exports. And 4.1 was about getting sources in: look up a source by URL, DOI, ISBN, or PubMed ID without leaving WordPress, import and export BibTeX, RIS, and CSL-JSON, and a first-class AI / LLM source type for citing generative tools properly.

Take a scroll through the changelog below to see how CiteKit has grown, and what’s landed in your latest update. Happy citing.

4.3.1 September 2026

  • New: Glossary. Define the terms your readers keep tripping over — a term, a definition, and optional aliases, examples, related terms, and a concept to group them under. Glossary Terms are their own kind of record, not references: a term explains a word, a reference points at a source, and neither has to pretend to be the other.
  • New: [​glossary] shortcode and a Glossary by CiteKit block. Render the full A–Z list, group it by concept, filter to a single concept, or output a compact index of terms that links down to the definitions. Every term gets its own anchor, so you can link to a single definition from anywhere on the site.
  • New: Tooltips can join the glossary. Turn on “Add to Glossary” while writing a tooltip and CiteKit links it to a matching term, or creates one from what you typed. The glossary term then becomes the single source of truth, so editing the definition updates it everywhere it is used. Turning the toggle back off unlinks the tooltip and leaves the term alone.
  • New: Import and export glossary terms as JSON, CSV, or plain text, so a glossary can be drafted elsewhere, moved between sites, or kept under version control.
  • New: Glossary structured data. The glossary page outputs schema.org DefinedTermSet and DefinedTerm markup, and linked tooltips are included, so search engines can read your definitions as definitions.
  • New: Bibliographies and footnote lists carry a small CiteKit mark linking back to citekit.com. It is shown by default and can be turned off in Settings.
  • Fixed: Saving a post no longer damages other shortcodes whose names begin with “cite”. Earlier versions treated anything starting with those letters as a citation and inserted a reference ID into it, which broke tags such as [​cite_this_article]. Updating also repairs any shortcodes a previous version altered, and clears out the empty references it left in your library.
  • Fixed: Premium features listed on the upgrade page now match what premium actually unlocks.
  • Improved: Multi-style switching and in-post reference search are now premium features. Every site keeps its full choice of the eight built-in citation styles site-wide; premium adds setting a different style per post or per bibliography, and searching your Reference Library from inside the editor.
  • Note: Glossary terms are stored in their own table rather than as posts, so they add nothing to your post list and stay easy to move between sites.

4.2.0 August 2026

  • New: Portable citations — a [​cite] shortcode can now carry a full reference payload, and CiteKit creates the library record for you when the post is saved. Write [​cite id="nist-genai-2024" type="report" author="Autio, Chloe; Schwartz, Reva" title="..." year="2024" doi="10.6028/NIST.AI.600-1"] once, then simply [​cite id="nist-genai-2024"] everywhere after. Both forms render identically.
  • New: Articles can now carry their own sources. Paste in content written elsewhere — by a person, a script, or an AI research assistant — and the references it cites are reconstructed in your library automatically, with the bibliography working straight away. No separate import step, and no rebuilding references by hand.
  • New: CiteKit Reference Schema v1 — one canonical reference model underneath everything. Citations, footnotes, bibliographies, imports, and exports now all speak the same vocabulary, with structured authors, structured dates, and normalized identifiers (DOI, ISBN, ISSN, PubMed ID).
  • New: Reference reuse. If an incoming citation carries a DOI, PubMed ID, or ISBN that already exists in your library, CiteKit points the citation at that reference instead of creating a near-duplicate under a new ID — even when the identifier is written differently (a doi.org link, or an ISBN with hyphens). Matching is exact only: references that merely share a title, author, year, or journal stay separate, because collapsing two genuinely different works is worse than keeping the occasional duplicate.
  • New: Your Reference Library stays authoritative. A payload can create a reference, but it can never overwrite one. If a pasted citation disagrees with a reference you already have, CiteKit keeps your stored version, renders it, and tells you in the editor exactly which fields differed — nothing changes until you decide it should.
  • New: Organization authors are explicit. Write author="literal:World Health Organization" to record a corporate author, and author="Smith, John; Chen, Alice" for people. Where a name is genuinely ambiguous, CiteKit asks rather than guessing.
  • New: Dataset and Standard source types.
  • Improved: Validation before creation. A mistyped attribute is reported with a suggestion (“Did you mean url?”) and the reference isn’t created until it’s fixed, so a typo can’t quietly lose half a reference’s metadata.
  • Fixed: Restored the plugin’s original main file name after a release changed it. Sites that installed the affected version migrate back automatically on update — CiteKit stays active, nothing needs reactivating, and no duplicate plugin appears. Sites already deactivated by the earlier change will need to be activated once by hand.
  • Note: Adding a reference isn’t the same as verifying it. Anything CiteKit ingests from pasted content should be reviewed before you publish, especially if metadata comes from an AI tool.

4.1.0 August 22, 2026

  • New: Add a source by looking it up. Paste a URL (or a YouTube link), a DOI, an ISBN, or a PubMed ID — or search by title — and CiteKit fetches the details, fills them in, and lets you edit anything before saving. No more retyping a reference from a browser tab.
  • New: “Look up a source” in the citation tool. While writing, resolve a source and either Add to library or Add & cite — which saves the reference and drops the citation at your cursor in one step.
  • New: “Add source” button on the Reference Library page, opening the same lookup panel so you can build your library directly, without needing a post to cite from.
  • New: AI / LLM is a first-class source type. Cite ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others with fields that actually fit — tool, model, company, date accessed, and the prompt — rendered correctly in all eight citation styles rather than being forced into the shape of a web page.
  • New: Import and export references as BibTeX, RIS, or CSL-JSON. Bring in a library from another reference manager, or take yours with you. Imported references become real records in your library, not format-specific blobs — so they’re immediately citable, editable, and usable in a bibliography.

4.0.0 August 20, 2026

  • New: Chicago Notes-Bibliography (full notes) mode — set a post to Chicago (Notes-Bibliography) and your citations render as complete, numbered footnotes, interleaved with any commentary footnotes in one sequence, while the bibliography stays as a separate alphabetical source list.
  • New: Vancouver and AMA citation styles — eight built-in styles in total.
  • New: Editors field — record editor(s) on books, chapters, and edited volumes; rendered as “Ed./Eds./edited by” in the styles that use them.
  • New: Optional Journal abbreviation field, used by IEEE, Vancouver, and AMA (falls back to the full journal name when blank).
  • New: Post-level Citation Style panel in the document sidebar — set the style for a whole post, overriding the site default, and switch a post into Notes-Bibliography mode.
  • New: Rebuilt bibliography — a collapsible “Works Cited” box with numbered entries, a back-link from each entry to its in-text citation, and a full CSS class system for theming.
  • New: Footnotes now render in a matching boxed, titled, collapsible container, with a site-wide “Default state” (open / collapsed) setting.
  • New: Premium licensing with a 14-day trial and automatic premium updates.
  • New: Premium — Rich footnotes & tooltips: bold, italics, links, bulleted and numbered lists, emoji, and images with captions inside any footnote or tooltip.
  • New: Premium — Custom Citation Style Builder: build your own in-text and bibliography formats with live preview, applied site-wide, per post type, or per post.
  • New: Premium — Global citation editing: edit a reference from your Reference Library and the change propagates to every post that cites it.
  • New: Premium — In-post reference search: search your library and insert a predefined reference from the editor.
  • New: Premium — Custom post type support: use CiteKit on all posts, pages, and custom post types, and apply a custom-built style per post.
  • New: Premium — Citation schema (schema.org / JSON-LD) for cited works.
  • New: Coming soon: Premium — Web Sync, two-way syncing with CiteKit Web.
  • Fixed: Footnote/tooltip popups could overflow into a sidebar on some themes (e.g. Divi).
  • Fixed: Bibliography default heading is now consistently “Works Cited”.
  • Fixed: Removed the post-activation redirect that could land on a “not authorized” page.
  • Note: Repeat-citation shortening (ibid. / short forms) and per-cite page numbers aren’t part of full-notes mode; author a condensed bibliography in the CiteKit web app and embed it when you need those.

3.2.1 May 26, 2026

  • Improved: APA author rendering now uses initials (Brown, B.) rather than full first names, matching APA 7th edition convention.
  • Improved: Organizational authors (World Health Organization, Stanford University, etc.) are now detected and passed through unchanged rather than being mangled into initial form.
  • Fixed: Double period after author initials in APA, MLA, and Chicago bibliography entries.

3.2.0 May 25, 2026

  • New: You can now tell CiteKit what kind of source each citation is – a journal article, a book, a chapter, a report, a news article, a thesis, or a plain web page. Each type asks for the fields that actually matter for it.
  • New: Lots more fields are available where they make sense – Journal, Volume, Issue, Pages, Publisher, Place, Edition, and DOI. You’ll find them under “More fields” in CiteBox, and in the block editor sidebar.
  • New: Multiple authors are supported. Enter them as “Smith, Jane; Doe, John” and each style handles the names the way it’s supposed to.
  • Improved: Bibliographies now render properly per source type. A journal article in Chicago, MLA, APA, Harvard, or IEEE actually looks like a journal article – with volume, issue, pages, and DOI when you’ve filled them in. Books show publisher and edition. Chapters, reports, news, and theses each get the treatment they should.
  • Improved: The six built-in styles have been cleaned up across the board — punctuation, field order, italics — to match what each style guide actually calls for.
  • Improved: The block editor sidebar panel now has the full set of fields. The toolbar popover stays small for quick inserts.
  • Existing citations carry over automatically. Anything from before 3.2.0 starts out as a web page and you can change it whenever you like.

3.1.1 May 11, 2026

  • New: Added “Create Example Post” option to the Getting Started page to help users quickly test citations, tooltips, footnotes, and bibliographies.
  • Improved: Minor Getting Started onboarding flow enhancements.

3.1.0 April 22, 2026

  • New: Numbered footnote feature. The [​footnote]...[​/footnote] shortcode and Footnote toolbar format. Each footnote is auto-numbered in order of appearance and renders as a superscript marker with hover popup.
  • New: [​footnotes] shortcode and Footnotes by CiteKit block, which renders the full numbered list at the end of the post with back-links to each marker. Explicit list mode also supported: [​footnotes]one; two; three[​/footnotes].
  • New: Tooltip dashed and dotted underline styles. [​tooltip tip="Term"]Definition[​/tooltip] renders the tip attribute as the visible inline term (dashed underline by default; dotted available via style="dotted"), and the content between the tags as the definition shown on hover. Symbol-marker mode (style="*", style="†", etc.) remains fully supported and backward compatible. In symbol mode the shortcode content continues to serve as the popup.
  • New: “Footnotes by CiteKit” and “Bibliography by CiteKit” block names in the block inserter.
  • New: Getting Started page with side-by-side feature cards explaining citations, tooltips, footnotes, and bibliographies, plus a decision guide for which to use.
  • Improved: Inline citation markers now render at baseline text level (e.g. [1]) instead of superscript, matching IEEE convention and creating clear visual hierarchy with footnote markers (which remain superscript). This makes citations and footnotes instantly distinguishable at a glance.
  • Improved: Editor caret behavior after inserting a citation, tooltip, or footnote. A zero-width space is now appended so the cursor lands cleanly after the inserted token instead of getting stuck.

3.0.0 April 6, 2026

  • New: Bibliography block. Render a formatted bibliography directly from the block editor with style and heading controls in the sidebar.
  • New: CiteKit block category in the Gutenberg inserter.
  • New: Citation inline format. Toolbar button on paragraphs, headings, list items, and quote blocks.
  • New: Tooltip inline format. Toolbar button to wrap selected text in a hover tooltip with custom marker symbol.
  • New: [​tooltip style="†"] attribute. Set a custom superscript marker per tooltip. Defaults to † if omitted. Backward-compatible with all existing [​tooltip] usage.
  • New: Getting Started page with step-by-step slideshow.
  • Improved: CiteBox metabox now displays truncated UUIDs alongside custom IDs so auto-assigned references are clearly distinguishable.
  • Improved: All library queries now find both shortcode-based and block-based citations.
  • Removed: Add Reference from Library button. References are created naturally by inserting citations in posts.

2.0.0 March 21, 2026

  • New: Redesigned Reference Library with sort, search, and status filtering.
  • New: Link Health Checker. Checks whether source URLs are live or broken, with per-citation status badges.
  • New: Settings page (CiteKit Library › Settings). Set a default bibliography style and heading used by all [​bibliography] shortcodes site-wide.
  • New: Remove from Post. Remove a citation from a specific post directly from the Used In modal.
  • New: post_count column. Tracks how many posts reference each citation; unused records are cleaned up automatically.
  • Improved: ID column added to CiteBox metabox.
  • Fixed: [​bibliography] heading now correctly uses the saved default title in all rendering paths.

1.0.0 June 4, 2025

  • Initial release.
  • Shortcode support for [​cite], [​bibliography], and [​tooltip].
  • Post-level citation editor (metabox).
  • Citation Library in admin sidebar.
  • APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE citation style support.