Knowing how to create a successful blog isn’t learned overnight. Fortunately, WordPress is a great blogging platform that makes being successful much easier. The key is understanding some of the tricks and tips that make it work for you, not against you. Keep reading this article for valuable tips for WordPress.
Remember to make your sidebar as concise and clean as possible. You don’t want it to be full of 100 links, ads and buttons. Instead, only put what is important in your sidebar and, if you need more links, put them into submenus which appear when the user mouses over your main menu.
Allow all of the users that visit your site the ability to comment using Facebook. This is a very important tool that will get your name across to hundreds of thousands of people. The Simple Facebook Connect plugin can be used if you want to install this feature on your site.
Get familiar with the tools on WordPress to help you blog. For instance, clicking the “kitchen sink” button gets you a multitude of formatting and importing options to distinguish your site. Use this to control a wide variety of formatting elements.
It is easy to use video blogging on your WordPress site. It may take more effort, but it’s worth it. Many internet users enjoy visuals. Videos can sometimes convey information more quickly and effectively than the written word.
Download Akismet immediately with a fresh WordPress install. Akismet is a plugin for WordPress that basically blocks spam comments as they come in. If you don’t have it installed, you may be inundated with tons of spam. You’ll need to get a free key from the Akismet website to finalize the install.
Make sure you have a unique greeting. That can be more personal for your visitors, since you can craft a message based on how they were able to find your blog. A possible plugin to use is WP Greet Box; using this will make the things feel less robotic.
You can insert media into your posts just by pasting the URL where you’d like the media to appear. For example, paste in a YouTube video just by putting the URL within the text where you want the video to play. Be sure that the URL doesn’t turn blue – if it does, highlight it and click the unlink button.
Know that you can write posts and send them in the future via WordPress. All you need to do is change the post from “Publish Immediately” to a specific date and time in the future. This way you can write posts and have them set up to go out even while you are on vacation!
Control unruly spam not by turning off comments, but by installing the right plugin. Aksimet’s anti-spam plugin is exceptional at keeping your site on the up and up. You can also add Recaptcha which adds a captcha to the comments box on your site, ensuring no bots can leave a message.
Don’t forget to spellcheck your WordPress story. WordPress makes that easy through a spellcheck button on the editor itself. Look for a button that has the letters “ABC” on it. It’ll then scan your post for spelling and common grammatical errors. Check any word or phrase that has a red squiggly line under it.
Include useful links at your footer. The footer is located at the bottom of your site. Most sites include contact information, copyright information and links to other sites in the footer. By including useful information in your footer, you can increase the sales, referrals and traffic to your site.
As you begin getting comments on your posts, consider allowing people to post with an avatar. It helps your site feel like more of a community, and it only takes a minute to do. Simply go to the settings area of your dashboard and then click on “discussion.” You should see the option there to enable avatars.
Be sure to update your plugins. These are a great tool that will make your website more powerful. Just like anything else, though, there are regular updates available for most of them. If you don’t wish to keep up with the update installation, you may miss important upgrades, or they may stop working.
So, what is the difference between tags and categories and why should I care? Categories are broad and house many posts which fall into the same genre, such as “cleaning tips”. Tags are more targeted, detailed words which describe what is in the content of a post, such as “removing blood stains” or “getting out grass stains”.
Now that you have some great suggestions about WordPress, you can better see how it can improve your blogging efforts. Take what you have learned here and build upon that knowledge. As you gain information, you will gain confidence. Soon you will be seeing more traffic and increased popularity on your blog.