For many years, WordPress has been a go-to method of creating blogs of various descriptions, and it has gained an impressive following across the world. However, WordPress has the potential to do some amazing things of which not everyone is aware. Keep reading to gain some valuable insights about the true capabilities of WordPress.
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.
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.
WordPress is full of options, features and tools that you can use to improve your blogging site. For example, if there’s a Kitchen Sink button you click, you’ll be able to get a bunch of other choices that allow you to format and import what you want so posts can be unique. You also may notice that there’s a Screen Options tab where your admin pages are. Use this to control a wide variety of formatting elements.
Always upgrade WordPress as soon as possible. Hackers will target WordPress because of the large amount of users. Updating WordPress as soon as updates are available can be on of your most valuable security tasks. The longer you wait to update, the better opportunity for hackers to get into your business.
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.
Use the “ABC” button to spell check your posts before they go live. Many people overlook this ability, but WordPress can spell check your work for you. This ensures that you continue to give off a professional look with your posts and yet you don’t have to use a separate program to do so.
Regularly check your site and content. All your plugins and everything else you work with needs to be current. This will help ensure that your visitors have a seamless experience on your site. If you have trouble remembering to do this, consider setting your phone to alert you once a month to perform this task.
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.
Never use a word like “admin” as your username. Doing so can make your site vulnerable to bot attacks. It is a risk of your security. Go to your page of users and remove usernames that say “admin” or “adminstrator”. Use something else.
Never forget to properly setup your WordPress page’s timezone. Under the General Settings page, take a moment and make sure that your timezone properly represents where you reside. This can be very important as the times and dates are published along with your posts. Not having the proper date stamp can leave you in a time warp.
Differentiate the look of your WordPress blog. It may be tempting to just roll with the standard WordPress themes, but you’ll look like many other blogs out there. Consider a few other themes. Even install them so that you can preview them with your current crop of content. It can make all the difference to audience engagement.
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”.
If you need to work on your site, be sure to turn on a maintenance mode so that visitors aren’t surprised with the current state of your website. There are lots of maintenance mode plugins out there. And best of all, they are typically free. It’s a quick button push to toggle maintenance mode on and off.
Bloggers of all stripes have long turned to WordPress as a helpful tool for creating just the sort of sites they desired. It is worth noting, though, that WordPress can do many things beyond simple content presentation. Use the tips found above as a reference going forward, and it will be possible to squeeze maximum value from WordPress every time it is used.