Whether you are a first time blogger or a long time blogger, you have many things to learn. How to properly use WordPress is a necessity if you want to have an easy time with your blogging. Keep reading to learn some valuable tips that will help you get the most from WordPress.
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.
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.
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.
Make sure that users can easily send your articles to their email whenever they want. Not everyone has access to social media sites but may still desire to share your information with others. You can do this by using a WP-Email plugin.
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.
Only use the most recent updated WordPress version available. There are security patches included in updates that will eliminate any vulnerabilities. Your site can be at risk for malware attacks if you’re not using the most current version. Install all updates WordPress offers in order to ensure the best security.
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.
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.
A great commenting plugin that is useful for WordPress is Disqus. This free commenting system works well with its API. You have the ability to import and back up your comments with it. It also adds essential SEO to your comments so that the search engines can index them easier.
The only way to learn WordPress is by practicing it. You can sign up for a free account in WordPress.com and start experimenting with its multitude of features. Change images, background color, font sizes, etc. The more you get your hands on it, the more comfortable you will feel about using it.
The plugin Broken Link Checker makes finding broken links on your site an easy task. Why don’t you want broken links? They make your content appear dated, and that can lose your reader’s interest. When you update or remove broken links, they’ll never realize how old your posts might be.
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.
Make use of your footer area. In WordPress, this section near the bottom of the page can keep your visitors engaged. You can add ownership and copyright information or links to other pages. In some premium themes, you can extend these sections to provide items like biographies and other relevant information to your cause or site.
As stated in the introduction, no matter how long you have been blogging there are always little tricks to learn. These tips make blogging simpler and help you pages look better. Use the tips and tricks listed in the article above to get all you can from your use of WordPress.