How do I make the text that is out putted via this Wordpress PHP function bold?

Question

The following wordpress plugin allows for Widget titles to be turned into links. I would like the link text to be outputted as bold and be black. What do I need to modify? I would do this via CSS, but it ends up effecting other classes and styles. I would like to just do it in the PHP script for this single use case that is not site wide.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Custom Widget Title Links
Plugin URI: http://www.playforward.net/
Description: Allows you to define a link that is wrapped around widget titles.
Version: 1.0
Author: Playforward | Dustin Dempsey
Author URI: http://www.playforward.net/
*/

function custom_widget_link( $title ) {

// assume there's a link attached to the title because it starts with ww, http, or /
if ( ( substr( $title, 0, 4) == "www." ) || ( substr( $title, 0, 4) == "http" ) || ( substr( $title, 0, 1) == "/" ) ) {

    // split our title in half
    $title_pieces = explode( "|", $title );

    // if there's two pieces
    if ( count( $title_pieces ) == 2 ) {

        // add http if it's just www
        if ( substr( $title, 0, 4) == "www." ) {
            $title_pieces[0] = str_replace( "www.", "http://www.", $title_pieces[0] );
        }

        // create new title from url and extracted title
        $title = '<a href="' . $title_pieces[0] . '" title="' . $title_pieces[1] . '">' . $title_pieces[1] . '</a>';
    }
}

return $title;
}

     add_filter( "widget_title", "custom_widget_link" );

?>

Answer 1

You could only use the <strong> tag in the <a href>.

I would change the following line

$title = '<a href="' . $title_pieces[0] . '" title="' . $title_pieces[1] . '">' . $title_pieces[1] . '</a>';

to

$title = '<a href="' . $title_pieces[0] . '" title="' . $title_pieces[1] . '"><strong>' . $title_pieces[1] . '</strong></a>';