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.
Create smart URLs! Don’t use a lot of keywords in the URL, and keep the whole thing simple and straightforward. Avoid excessive verbiage. You want to create smart permalinks that are easy to look at and easy to understand. This helps make your blog more user friendly and comprehensible.
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 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 This is very important as viewers will tend to veer away from your site if it is outdated or pointing out very old information.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.
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.
Remove special characters from your blog post URLs. These characters are hard for search engine spiders to decipher. You should also shorten all URLs so that they aren’t overwhelming to anyone coming to your site, so only include the key words.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Always make a backup of your blog. It’s important to back your blog up regularly. One good WordPress plugin for this is Xcloner. For added security, use plugins to make backup copies of your blog on several different locations. It would be pretty depressing to lose your blog.
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!
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.
For a more customizable commenting system, try using CommentLuv. This system si a premium plugin that is pretty popular with bloggers. It makes commenting on other blogs easy. You can set it up to leave a link that connects automatically to your latest post. This is ideal for things like giveaways since it lets more people know about it.
Join an online forum full of WordPress users. This way you can brainstorm ideas and get suggestions for your site. People are going to be happy to help you avoid their own WordPress mistakes. Just do a little reading to get some information, and you’ll find that a good forum is better than buying a lot of books.
If you have a post that is not quite ready to be published, you should hold it in an unpublished mode. Although the public won’t be able to view these posts, you can still edit them as necessary. Only publish your content when you are content with the quality and looks of it.
Connecting your blogs to your social media accounts helps your readers stay updated and lets them interact with you easier. Use SexyBookmarks for this. SexyBookmarks is a plugin that helps you link your social media accounts with your blog. There are many ways to customize the links to blend seamlessly with your page.
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.
