Author: Kristin Kuhn

Have you been thinking of starting a blog but feel you are too technologically challenged to do so? Well, have no fear because you have come to the right place. The following article will point out the most important things you should know when working with the most popular content management system – WordPress.

Don’t choose a design that’s identical to what others that have a WordPress website use. Though it is less time consuming, your site will blend in with other blogs. Take the time to create a unique site that reflects you and your business.

Check out add-ons to find simple tools which will make your site or blog better. For example, you could add a calendar to your side menu bar in order to share events which would be interesting to your readers. You can also find many great add-ons which provide control for advertising, turning your site into a revenue maker.

Make the most of your titles and your descriptions. Any time you share posts on social media sites a description and title may be required. These are important in terms of good search engine optimization, so don’t just toss out titles and descriptions in a random fashion. Give it some thought and optimize with good keywords.

When you are done with your site, check out how it looks from a visitors standpoint. Did you get across everything that you wanted? Go to your site from someone else’s computer to get their point of view and write down the changes that you will need to make to continually improve the aesthetics.

Enable different types of avatars on your website. This will make your site very fun and friendly for the users who visit it. Also, it will allow you to get across your personality in a better way. To find this component, visit the discussion area on your dashboard under settings.

Images make your blog look beautiful; however, the images can also help your site rank higher among search engines. One of the easiest ways to do this is to add keywords to your title tag and alternate tags. Both of these tags should contain precise keywords in order to rank your site appropriately.

WordPress has many keyboard shortcuts which make working with posts a snap. For example, ctrl-c allows you to copy text, while ctrl-x lets you cut it. Ctrl-v will paste it somewhere else. Ctrl-b is bold, ctrl-i is italic and ctrl-u is underline. These basic keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of time if you memorize them.

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!

Having a theme for your WordPress site can make it much more professional. There are plenty of websites that allow you to download themes for free. However, it is very important that you download themes from a trusted source. Not doing so can result in you installing outdated or malicious codes.

Include your SEO-based keywords in the titles of your posts. In fact, make them the first few words of the title. For example, if your key phrases is “best pizza in Toronto”, you could create a title such as “For the Best Pizza in Toronto, Only Spring Water Will Do!”

Make sure that you keep any plugins or themes you are using on your blog up to date. Exploits and general weaknesses in the security of a plugin or theme are almost always found eventually. Updates will keep them running smoothly and securely, but it’s important that you remember to keep them updated.

Always back up your WordPress files and database regularly. Although your website has backups, they may not do backups as frequently as you would like. You can find plugins that can make the back up process much easier. When you have your files and database backed up, you can easily restore your site if anything happens to it.

Use the Evergreen Post Tweeter plugin to promote your posts automatically. It can be a chore to choose which posts to retweet daily, so let the software do it for you instead. Once you have it in place, you can literally set it and forget it and then enjoy the visitors it brings in.

If your WordPress site is running rather slowly, consider adding in a caching plugin. These plugins speed up page loads by caching pages that are rarely changed. This means that your site can increase in speed by 20% to 30% just with the plugin installed. There are a few different options, but W3 Total Cache is very popular.

The article you have just read covered a lot of very valuable information about using WordPress when creating a blog. Hopefully you learned enough from it that you now feel empowered enough to get out of your comfort zone and tackle WordPress. Take the knowledge you now have and let your creativity flow.

WordPress is the blogging tool that is hot right now. It makes an impact all over Internet marketing today. But, knowing all about WordPress isn’t so easy. Some helpful tips can get you down the right path. Read this article to get great advice on how to make the most out of WordPress for your needs.

Try to use a landing page when you are using wordpress on your site. This is a great alternative to displaying your current posts as it gives your site flavor and pizzazz. You can even use Premise for WordPress, which is a premium solution that can get you started with the process.

If you plan to start a WordPress blog, make sure that you offer readers more than just content. Even if you say many useful things, it may be quite difficult to engage readers with text. It would be a great idea to implement videos and pictures since this is a great attention grabber.

Make sure that all of the information on your site is current. This is very important as viewers will tend to veer away from your site if it is outdated or pointing out very old information. Spend time each week getting rid of the antiquated material on your website to improve how it looks.

With WordPress you have lots of choices in themes so you can have a really good looking blog. Take plenty of time to peruse all of your choices so that you can select just the right one to suit your style and your topic. For a truly unique theme, select a premium theme. This will really help your blog stand out from the crowd.

Don’t forget to use spellcheck. It may seem obvious now, but many people forget to do it. When using the WordPress editor to post to your blog, make sure you take advantage of its spellcheck function. Even if you have already proofread your post, a quick and simple spellcheck couldn’t hurt.

If you are new to WordPress, make sure to keep your sidebar simple. Make sure that it only has the essentials. Your visitors shouldn’t have to weed through a ton of ads and banners to find the links they want to click on. Try removing the items in Appearance & Widgets that don’t contribute anything to your cause or business.

If you haven’t customized your WordPress sidebar, it could be cluttered with useless items that are doing nothing but confusing your readers. Your sidebar should only contain things you actually want visitors to click on. Navigate to Appearance & Widgets to edit the appearance of your sidebar and remove anything there that doesn’t actually benefit you or your visitors directly.

Look into other themes for your WordPress blog. Sure WordPress comes preinstalled with a few excellent themes, but there are many more options out there. Many are free and then there are premium themes as well. These premium themes are very well designed and let you add more advanced aspects to your blog with ease, such as e-commerce plugins.

WordPress has many keyboard shortcuts which make working with posts a snap. For example, ctrl-c allows you to copy text, while ctrl-x lets you cut it. Ctrl-v will paste it somewhere else. Ctrl-b is bold, ctrl-i is italic and ctrl-u is underline. These basic keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of time if you memorize them.

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.

If you don’t like your theme, change it! There are thousands of free themes available online which allow you to quickly and easily change the look of your site without having to know much about HTML coding. Be sure to choose themes from reputable sites to ensure they don’t affect the security of your software.

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!

If you want a post to stay at the top of the page, there is no need to set it’s date way in the future any longer. Instead, go to the post and click on Edit under Visibility. Choose the option which allows you to make the post sticky and enjoy!

As you can see, using WordPress is easy when you know what you’re doing. Using WordPress to create blogs can be extremely helpful to any online ventures you pursue, or it may just be an excellent method of broadcasting your blog to the public. Read on to improve your knowledge of the tool.

WordPress is one of the most powerful and flexible tools out there for bloggers. When you choose to use WordPress, you have at your fingertips a vast array of features you can use to customize your blog. To learn more about these options, you should read the advice in the following article.

If you plan to start a WordPress blog, make sure that you offer readers more than just content. Even if you say many useful things, it may be quite difficult to engage readers with text. It would be a great idea to implement videos and pictures since this is a great attention grabber.

With WordPress you have lots of choices in themes so you can have a really good looking blog. Take plenty of time to peruse all of your choices so that you can select just the right one to suit your style and your topic. For a truly unique theme, select a premium theme. This will really help your blog stand out from the crowd.

If you want to easily be able to search through the media you upload, such as videos or photos, put it all into a single folder through WordPress. To do this, go into Settings & Media and then uncheck the box which sets WP to sort your media into folders based on the date.

Don’t forget to use spellcheck. It may seem obvious now, but many people forget to do it. When using the WordPress editor to post to your blog, make sure you take advantage of its spellcheck function. Even if you have already proofread your post, a quick and simple spellcheck couldn’t hurt.

Are you someone lucky to have a large number of commenting people on your posts? You may not want to sort through all of the comments. To remedy this, you can use a plugin that adds page numbers to your comments section. It will be easier to navigate your site, and it will look more organized.

Get to know your WordPress WYSIWYG editor. When you write a new post, you’ll see a small bar that goes across the text input area. This is your WYSIWYG editor – meaning whatever you push will happen to whatever text you have highlighted. If you choose bold in the editor, the text you have chosen will become bold. It’s similar to using Microsoft Word.

Having a theme for your WordPress site can make it much more professional. There are plenty of websites that allow you to download themes for free. However, it is very important that you download themes from a trusted source. Not doing so can result in you installing outdated or malicious codes.

If you want a post to stay at the top of the page, there is no need to set it’s date way in the future any longer. Instead, go to the post and click on Edit under Visibility. Choose the option which allows you to make the post sticky and enjoy!

When you upload images into the media gallery, try to keep the image file sizes down. Large image files take much longer to upload. When you use an image like that in your website, it will delay the load time of your page. This may discourage your visitors to stay and browse.

Use the Easy Tweet Embed program to create links for readers to tweet the content of your posts to their followers. It does the work of creating the tweet content for you, so you don’t have to manually create it every time you draft a post, saving you a ton of time.

If you want to put two images side by side, try using an invisible table in your WordPress post. You can create a one row/two column table via your post editor and then embed a photo into each cell. You could take the next step and add another row underneath to add captions below each photo.

Tired of the clutter on WordPress? Turn off a few boxes that are on the page. To do this, utilize the button called “Screen Options” located atop the WordPress window. When you click that, a menu will drop down with options to disable certain boxes.

The Relevanssi plugin allows you to search your logs to find out what your users are interested in reading. Why does this matter? When you have writer’s block, you can check out the results it provides to know what you should be researching and posting about on your site.

Getting started with WordPress is not difficult. The program is easy to use, and anyone can start blogging in a few minutes. However, some of the program’s more powerful features may take some more time to learn. Use the advice that you have read in this article to get the most out of WordPress.

Does your WordPress blog lack traffic? Are you considering starting one, but you have reservations about doing it right? Successfully operating any web content creation is a matter of balancing personal knowledge with honest effort. Read this article for a few tips on starting your new blog.

Don’t use a common design for your WordPress site. Though it is less time consuming, your site will blend in with other blogs. Take the time to create a unique site that reflects you and your business.

Be sure to add an author biography to each blog post on boards where many bloggers are posting. In this way, each blogger gets proper credit and it is easier for readers to know who posted what at a glance. Furthermore, readers will tend to stay on your page if they can get all the information they need in one place.

If you are doing a WordPress blog for professional or search engine optimization purporses, don’t let WordPress actually host your blog. Put your blog on a different host and then just use the WordPress application there. Blogs at WordPress’ website are sometimes deleted for being too commercial or deemed spammy in content.

Add page numbers at the bottom of your comments section if you have a very active community. This is important as it will allow your users to be able to sort through the material and information easier. Make sure that the page numbers are easy to see for the viewers.

If you want to easily be able to search through the media you upload, such as videos or photos, put it all into a single folder through WordPress. To do this, go into Settings & Media and then uncheck the box which sets WP to sort your media into folders based on the date.

Keep your permalinks clean and understandable. That means you should look at the permalink box every time you put up a new post. Does the title in the URL make sense? Does it help from an SEO standpoint? If not, click on it and alter it until it is perfect.

Don’t forget to use spellcheck. It may seem obvious now, but many people forget to do it. When using the WordPress editor to post to your blog, make sure you take advantage of its spellcheck function. Even if you have already proofread your post, a quick and simple spellcheck couldn’t hurt.

Sidebars are generally packed full of useless information. To help streamline them and only include information that your visitors want, navigate to Appearance & Widgets. Remove everything from your sidebar that does not get more people on your list, make visitors take an action or make you money. By paring down your sidebar, your WordPress site will become successful.

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.

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.

Consider using a password manager. Choosing a secure password for your blog is important. It’s important that your password be difficult to guess and changed regularly. Unfortunately, a password that’s hard to crack can be just as difficult for you to remember. Password managers can be used to randomly generate and keep track of your passwords.

Use images properly on your WordPress site. They can add everything from beauty to interest to your pages. Use their alternative text tags and title tags properly. Don’t settle for generic descriptions. You need to make them specific so that your visitors know exactly what they are. This also helps them figure out what your site is about.

Optimize your photo size before uploading them to your WordPress media library. Photos should be no more than 10 to 15 kilobytes in size. A website is no place for a multi-megabyte sized photo. It’ll slow down your website, which may cause some visitors just to surf elsewhere. Take the few minutes it takes to downsize that photo.

Be sure to use a robust spam plug-in to filter out spam and bad content. People with ill-intentions are always looking for ways to spam a blog for link building purposes. This kind of spam will create a bad impression on your blog because your legitimate readers will think that your blog has security issues.

By now you should better understand how to use WordPress. Use what you’ve learned here, starting right now. Your traffic is sure to increase. Visitors will also find it more attractive. Save this article in case you need to refer to it later. You will have a better site when you use these tips.

Have you taken a look at WordPress in the past or used it before? If so, or even if you have not, you’re about to learn some great things about just how much WordPress has to offer you as a blogger. Read through these valuable tips to see exactly what you’ve been missing out on.

Try to use a landing page when you are using wordpress on your site. This is a great alternative to displaying your current posts as it gives your site flavor and pizzazz. You can even use Premise for WordPress, which is a premium solution that can get you started with the process.

Improve the look and style of the footer on your wordpress website. This is very important as it is the first thing that your viewer is going to see. Include a short bio that includes all of your details or important links that pertain to what you want to get across.

Add page numbers at the bottom of your comments section if you have a very active community. This is important as it will allow your users to be able to sort through the material and information easier. Make sure that the page numbers are easy to see for the viewers.

Set a publishing time for your blog posts. When editing an article for publication, you can select when it will be published. It’s a good idea to set regular updates for a specific date and time. To really stay on top of keeping your blog up to date, put your blog posts in ahead of time and let WordPress post them to your blog for you.

When you are done with your site, check out how it looks from a visitors standpoint. Did you get across everything that you wanted? Go to your site from someone else’s computer to get their point of view and write down the changes that you will need to make to continually improve the aesthetics.

It is relatively easy to include video blogging in your WordPress site. You must do some preparation; however, it’s worth it. Many users want to see videos. Videos can teach people much better than words can.

Enable different types of avatars on your website. This will make your site very fun and friendly for the users who visit it. Also, it will allow you to get across your personality in a better way. To find this component, visit the discussion area on your dashboard under settings.

Encourage your users to share your site with their friends, family and loved ones on the top social media sites. Twitter and Facebook are the most optimal sites that come to mind, as this can get your name across to millions of different people. A social sharing plugin can be used to facilitate this.

If you don’t like your theme, change it! There are thousands of free themes available online which allow you to quickly and easily change the look of your site without having to know much about HTML coding. Be sure to choose themes from reputable sites to ensure they don’t affect the security of your software.

Keep your media library organized. It may be tempting to just upload images directly into the library, but things can become chaotic really quick. Develop a system of folders so that things go where they should. This will make searching for a particular image much easier.

Consider using a password manager. Choosing a secure password for your blog is important. It’s important that your password be difficult to guess and changed regularly. Unfortunately, a password that’s hard to crack can be just as difficult for you to remember. Password managers can be used to randomly generate and keep track of your passwords.

Be sure to back up your site often! The best way to do this is to have your host back up your site every day for you. If they don’t offer this service, instead back it up yourself. There are plugins which will do the job for you, or you can just download it to your own computer.

Use a security plugin. Keeping your blog secure is important, and there are plenty of plugins out there that promise to do just that. Try a plugin you feel you can trust. Wordfence is a good choice. It offers a firewall, does virus scans, blocks any malicious networks, and is free.

Does your WordPress dashboard look like a cluttered mess? Want to clean it up? Use the Screen Options link on that page to choose which boxes you want to appear and remove those which aren’t helpful to you. This will ensure that your dashboard experience is streamlined in the future.

You are ready to take advantage of everything that has been provided to you here concerning WordPress. With such a variety of tools at your fingertips, there is always more you can learn. Get moving to see just what you can do now that you can be an experienced WordPress user.

WordPress is an incredibly valuable platform, largely because of the amazing accessibility it provides to a wide range of potential bloggers. Its ease of use is truly remarkable, but that is not to say that some amount of education is unnecessary before putting it to work. Use the information below to get a good grounding in WordPress so that you can get started blogging today.

Try to use a landing page when you are using wordpress on your site. This is a great alternative to displaying your current posts as it gives your site flavor and pizzazz. You can even use Premise for WordPress, which is a premium solution that can get you started with the process.

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.

With WordPress you have lots of choices in themes so you can have a really good looking blog. Take plenty of time to peruse all of your choices so that you can select just the right one to suit your style and your topic. For a truly unique theme, select a premium theme. This will really help your blog stand out from the crowd.

Use your footers wisely. People often scroll to the bottom of a page to find out who runs the site, how to contact the owner or to see how fresh the content is based on a copyright date. You can even include a short biography or other information you feel is pertinent.

Posts are always shown chronologically, until you say otherwise. You have to alter the dates to alter the order of the list. Open any of your individual posts and go to the date near the top right-hand corner to change the date. Changing the date and saving it will re-position it.

Encourage your users to share your site with their friends, family and loved ones on the top social media sites. Twitter and Facebook are the most optimal sites that come to mind, as this can get your name across to millions of different people. A social sharing plugin can be used to facilitate this.

Make sure that your wordpress site loads as fast as possible for your visitors. This is vital, as a site that crashes or takes too long will discourage your users from visiting it. A fast site will put your users in a good mood when they come there on a daily basis.

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.

Take the time to log out of your site every once in a while. Go back and look at it as a visitor. Doing so could allow you to see something that you are missing when you are logged in as an administrator. This step will not take very long, but it should set your mind at ease that everything is functioning the way that it should be.

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”.

You don’t have to manually approve comments anymore. The Akisment plugin can do this task for you. You can receive an email each time someone leaves a comment, but it’s more efficient to just forgo manual approvals. If you do not do this, you will waste lots of time.

Make sure that you keep any plugins or themes you are using on your blog up to date. Exploits and general weaknesses in the security of a plugin or theme are almost always found eventually. Updates will keep them running smoothly and securely, but it’s important that you remember to keep them updated.

Use the Comments tab in the WordPress dashboard side bar to keep tabs on who is posting what on your site. This will save you the hassle of getting an email every time someone says something in reply to a post. In the end, you just don’t have time for that!

There is little debate about the tremendous appeal of WordPress among bloggers of all types. It is terrific way for beginners to get their foot in the door, but it can also be used by more advanced bloggers as well, to great result. Keep the tips found above handy, and WordPress can become a versatile tool that will be employed for years to come.

Are you a WordPress novice, or someone who has put this tool to work for a number of years? Regardless of your experience level, there are certainly new and exciting things about WordPress about which you should be aware. The tips and guidance found below will help you get the absolute most from this wonderful platform.

Make your theme current on your website to draw more traffic. Switch to a new theme that accentuates your colors and logos. Also, you may want to opt for a more professioanl theme if you are planning on showing your site off to a high volume of potential customers each day.

Be sure to stay on top of updates! Many updates to add-ons or WordPress itself are security-based, meaning your site could be compromised if you don’t update the software. If it’s telling you a new update is available, install it as soon as possible to protect your site from harm.

Check out add-ons to find simple tools which will make your site or blog better. For example, you could add a calendar to your side menu bar in order to share events which would be interesting to your readers. You can also find many great add-ons which provide control for advertising, turning your site into a revenue maker.

If you want to easily be able to search through the media you upload, such as videos or photos, put it all into a single folder through WordPress. To do this, go into Settings & Media and then uncheck the box which sets WP to sort your media into folders based on the date.

Make sure you have a landing page. This will ensure that visitors arrive at a specific page instead of directing them right to your most recent posts. A landing page will help your site gain an air of authenticity and helps it to look a little more professional than it would have otherwise.

Be sure to choose unique, difficult to hack passwords and keep them secure. It doesn’t matter if you are a free WordPress blogger of a paid, self-hosted WordPress blogger: it is important to keep your passwords strong and secure. In this way, you will not have to waste valuable time cleaning up sabotage and changing passwords. This will help ensure that your blog is a success.

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.

Security on your WordPress site is very important, so make your password strong and keep it secure. Also, only download reputable plugins and check the reviews before installing them. You can lose everything on your page if it gets hacked or is affected by malware.

Choose a focused keyword for each post or page you create. What would someone be searching for if this is the exact content they wanted? Be sure to make your key phrases targeted as simple queries, such as “sailing tips”, are already overrun by thousands of competitors and their websites.

Do not use an old version of WordPress. There are security patches in updates, which decreases vulnerabilities. Your site is more vulnerable if you use an old version. So, make sure you’re installing all updates that are rolled out.

You can easily get rid of external text formatting in WordPress. You may need to copy text from Word. Many times, it inserts characters that don’t display properly, even with “Paste from Word” option. Select the “Show/Hide Kitchen Sink” option to show another row of buttons. Highlight the problematic text. Click on a button called “Remove Formatting” to fix it.

Are you having a hard time keeping to a schedule of posting regularly? Write your posts beforehand, and have them automatically posted at a certain time or on a specific day. You have the option to schedule a future posting when opening the new post page. So, get as much done as possible when you have the time and schedule your posts so they go up across a period of time.

If you have made a mistake in spelling of a name in multiple posts, or just want to change a certain word across your site, use the Search and Replace plugin to do the job for you. The time it takes to do this manually is horrific, so instead let the plugin get it done.

It may be that you have been a long-time WordPress user who thought you already knew everything there was to know about it. However, the above article has likely demonstrated the fact that there are many great things you may not have realized about WordPress, which you can start putting to use right away. Best wishes as you keep improving your online presence.

For more than a decade, WordPress has been providing an easy-to-use application for bloggers who want to express their opinions to a large number of Internet users. Still, even today there are up and coming bloggers that have yet to step into the wonderful world of WordPress. This article has been created to offer precisely that sort of knowledge.

Make sure you have a unique template for your WordPress blog. While it may seem appealing to use a common design, your readership may not be impressed. You want to differentiate your website by enhancing the uniqueness of your business.

Make your theme current on your website to draw more traffic. Switch to a new theme that accentuates your colors and logos. Also, you may want to opt for a more professioanl theme if you are planning on showing your site off to a high volume of potential customers each day.

Improve the look and style of the footer on your wordpress website. This is very important as it is the first thing that your viewer is going to see. Include a short bio that includes all of your details or important links that pertain to what you want to get across.

Keep your permalinks clean and understandable. That means you should look at the permalink box every time you put up a new post. Does the title in the URL make sense? Does it help from an SEO standpoint? If not, click on it and alter it until it is perfect.

Make sure you have a landing page. This will ensure that visitors arrive at a specific page instead of directing them right to your most recent posts. A landing page will help your site gain an air of authenticity and helps it to look a little more professional than it would have otherwise.

One reason WordPress is so great to work with is that its plug-ins offer a dazzling array of functions. Be that as it may, you want to be careful when selecting plug-ins. Don’t just start downloading them willy-nilly. Begin with the essential plug-ins: WP DataBase BackUp, All-In-One SEO Pack and WP Optimize. Choose others with care to get precisely what you need.

If you haven’t customized your WordPress sidebar, it could be cluttered with useless items that are doing nothing but confusing your readers. Your sidebar should only contain things you actually want visitors to click on. Navigate to Appearance & Widgets to edit the appearance of your sidebar and remove anything there that doesn’t actually benefit you or your visitors directly.

Encourage your users to share your site with their friends, family and loved ones on the top social media sites. Twitter and Facebook are the most optimal sites that come to mind, as this can get your name across to millions of different people. A social sharing plugin can be used to facilitate this.

If you want to create a line break, but not a paragraph break, hold shift while you press the enter key. This moves the cursor down to the next line without including any blank space. If you want to put a letterhead-type address on your page, this should make it a snap.

Avoid using a username such as “Admin”. Bots are more likely to attack a blog that has “administrator” or “admin” as a username. This is a huge security risk. Go through your users page, and erase any such usernames. Find creative user names that you can remember.

Incorporate a social sharing plugin for your WordPress blog. Integrating social media with your blog will be a great boon to your traffic. Your users can instantly share your article through Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. Look for a plugin that will allow liking and sharing, since both will be beneficial.

Use WordPress to schedule your blog post’s publication dates ahead of time. You can schedule them to post, even if you aren’t around. Go to your Edit screen and locate the Publish box. If you choose to publish immediately, all of your blog posts will be published the minute you submit them. Use military time that indicates the exact date. Click OK. You will see SCHEDULE FOR. If the schedule presented is correct, check it and click SCHEDULE.

Does your WordPress dashboard look like a cluttered mess? Want to clean it up? Use the Screen Options link on that page to choose which boxes you want to appear and remove those which aren’t helpful to you. This will ensure that your dashboard experience is streamlined in the future.

WordPress has served as a great way to make blogs and provide useful content for a long time now. It’s possible to have an enjoyable blogging experience if you familiarize yourself with WordPress. This material will help improve your blog in no time.

Using WordPress is not child’s play. If you lack familiarity with this platform, any advice is beneficial to you. You will become a better blogger when you take the time to learn about WordPress. The following advice can help get you started.

Be sure to add an author biography to each blog post on boards where many bloggers are posting. In this way, each blogger gets proper credit and it is easier for readers to know who posted what at a glance. Furthermore, readers will tend to stay on your page if they can get all the information they need in one place.

Utilize Alt and Title. When you are adding images to your posts, don’t forget to use titles and alt text. This will let you add more SEO phrases and will let users that block images know what they are missing.

WordPress is something that people can use to get video blogs onto their sites. While this might take a little extra preparation on your part, it is worth it. Visuals grab your readers’ attention. A video is able to show people what words cannot, and that is why it’s so powerful.

Sidebars are generally packed full of useless information. To help streamline them and only include information that your visitors want, navigate to Appearance & Widgets. Remove everything from your sidebar that does not get more people on your list, make visitors take an action or make you money. By paring down your sidebar, your WordPress site will become successful.

Remember to make good use of the footer area at the bottom of your WordPress blog pages. In this area you can include additional information about yourself and/or your copyright. You can also add a link to another page if you wish. Different themes give you more use of this area, so choose your themes carefully to maximize the value of your page footers.

Get to know your WordPress WYSIWYG editor. When you write a new post, you’ll see a small bar that goes across the text input area. This is your WYSIWYG editor – meaning whatever you push will happen to whatever text you have highlighted. If you choose bold in the editor, the text you have chosen will become bold. It’s similar to using Microsoft Word.

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.

Your WordPress is nothing without plugins, and lucky for you, there are plenty to choose from. However, it is very important that you use caution when installing plugins and keep in mind that they aren’t disposable. You can uninstall them, but most of the time they will still affect your content and leave shortcodes behind.

Take the time to log out of your site every once in a while. Go back and look at it as a visitor. Doing so could allow you to see something that you are missing when you are logged in as an administrator. This step will not take very long, but it should set your mind at ease that everything is functioning the way that it should be.

Always save a backup copy of your blog. You must do this on a regular basis. In WordPress, you can use a plugin for this, such as Xcloner. Use whatever site or plugin you’re comfortable with to back up your blog, but make sure you back it up in more than one location. It would be devastating to lose your whole blog.

Use a security plugin. Keeping your blog secure is important, and there are plenty of plugins out there that promise to do just that. Try a plugin you feel you can trust. Wordfence is a good choice. It offers a firewall, does virus scans, blocks any malicious networks, and is free.

To keep tabs on comments, you don’t need to visit each post separately. Instead, use your dashboard’s comments section to see what has been posted recently. You should check this page daily so that you know what people are saying and can reply if anyone requests more information or asks a question.

Want to create a new link in your post? There is no need to click the link icon any longer. Use ctrl-shift-A instead to start the link creation process using the keyboard and not the mouse. When you create many links within your content, this can shave time off the creation process.

Using WordPress is not so simple, which is particularly the case if you have little familiarity with it. However, this article has given you helpful advice. Use the information you have learned to get more out of WordPress.

Using WordPress may seem a little overwhelming at first. That is because there is so much you can do with the blogging platform. Luckily, it is fairly simple to learn all the ins and outs of the platform. Use these tips when using the popular blogging site to make WordPress work for you.

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.

Make the most of your titles and your descriptions. Any time you share posts on social media sites a description and title may be required. These are important in terms of good search engine optimization, so don’t just toss out titles and descriptions in a random fashion. Give it some thought and optimize with good keywords.

Remember that the title and description of each page on your site is what many other sites will use to categorize your link and share it with the world. For example, it will be what Google shows when someone searches for a site such as your own. Fill them with SEO key phrases and make sure there are no typos.

Do not let your theme get stale. The first thing you should do if you notice a decrease in traffic is check and see when you last changed your theme. As your site grows and changes, the theme should as well. Make sure that it accurately reflects your brand, and you should see a rise in traffic.

Review your content for irrelevant material and remove it. This makes your website more user-friendly. You can use a plugin called Akismet to filter spam on your website.

If you are new to WordPress, make sure to keep your sidebar simple. Make sure that it only has the essentials. Your visitors shouldn’t have to weed through a ton of ads and banners to find the links they want to click on. Try removing the items in Appearance & Widgets that don’t contribute anything to your cause or business.

If you want to create a line break, but not a paragraph break, hold shift while you press the enter key. This moves the cursor down to the next line without including any blank space. If you want to put a letterhead-type address on your page, this should make it a snap.

Many people are responding to video blogs, so consider this option. Video blogging is not only becoming more popular, it is also becoming much easier to use. WordPress, in its current version, makes the use of video blogging easy. This can really increase traffic by drawing those who are less inclined to read.

When you are choosing a WordPress template to use, pick something that gets frequent updates. You do not want to use a template whose creator has abandoned updates because sometimes you have to address security issues. A creator who is proactive in updating his template will give you a better product.

Be sure to back up your site often! The best way to do this is to have your host back up your site every day for you. If they don’t offer this service, instead back it up yourself. There are plugins which will do the job for you, or you can just download it to your own computer.

Include your SEO-based keywords in the titles of your posts. In fact, make them the first few words of the title. For example, if your key phrases is “best pizza in Toronto”, you could create a title such as “For the Best Pizza in Toronto, Only Spring Water Will Do!”

Be sure to use a robust spam plug-in to filter out spam and bad content. People with ill-intentions are always looking for ways to spam a blog for link building purposes. This kind of spam will create a bad impression on your blog because your legitimate readers will think that your blog has security issues.

Did you spend a lot of time making changes to your blog, only to check it out and see none of the changes took effect? Do not fret, you just need to clear your cache. Find out how to clear the cache on the browser you are using, clear it and the changes should show up.

Do not keep the default sidebar. Go in and customize both the titles and sections in the theme directory. This will ensure that your site is unique. In addition, while you can have different sidebars on different pages of the site, you may want to consider keeping everything uniform for your visitors.

Although WordPress seems overwhelming to begin with, it really is not all that complicated to use. You just have to get used to the controls and tools available on the blogging site. Remember the helpful tips above when using WordPress and keep yourself updated to have the best experience with WordPress.