The number of blogs online has been increasing in number over the years. WordPress has become an extremely popular tool in helping users publish their blogs. Although WordPress has thousands of different plugins and tools available, the sheer number of them can be overwhelming. If WordPress is something new to you, and you would like some advice on using it, read on.
Choose a unique design to make your site stand out from the competition. While copying someone else’s design is quick, it doesn’t make a good impression. You want to get off on the right foot with your visitors.
Choose a design that is relatively unique when making your WordPress blog; don’t just choose the design everyone else is using. It is tempting, but it is not going to help people think the best of you. You want to differentiate your website by enhancing the uniqueness of your business.
Know as much as possible before you begin with WordPress. Adequate planning will save you time in the long run. Understand the basics of SEO and content creation before starting your site.
If you have a long title on a post, be sure to clean up your permalink. For instance, if you have a long phrase in a URL, that can seem very long. Be sure to select only the keywords from your long titles to create your permalinks.
Do you have lots of comments? If you do, it may be hard to go through the comments for you and visitors. Add a plugin that will add page numbers to this section. This makes for a more organized site that is easier to navigate.
Alt and Title are two important things to know about. This adds searchable text to the posts. This will allow you to incorporate more SEO phrases.
You can increase your rank by including keywords with your pictures. Use the title tags and alternate tags to include keywords. When visitors pin your images to sites like Pinterest, the title you gave is what will be represented on their screen.
Remove unnecessary content and delete comments that fail to add value. This makes your website more user-friendly. Check out Akismet for a great way to remove spam.
Ensure that users have easy access to your articles, which should be in their email, at their leisure. This is essential for sharing since many people can’t access many popular social networking sites when at work. They may wish to share articles with friends, regardless. You can use a plugin called WP-Email to help you do this.
Take special characters out of your URLs for your blog posts. They can make it hard for search engines to “spider” and should be removed. You should also shorten all URLs so that they aren’t overwhelming to anyone coming to your site, so only include the key words.
Keep your media library organized. Uploading images straight into the library is certainly appealing, but it does not take long for chaos to set in. Start out with a good system of folders and be sure to file your images correctly. Further down the line when you need to find the image, this will make things easier.
Do your posts attract a lot of comments? You may not want to sort through all of the comments. You can install a plugin that does this for you. That is going to help your site seem organized, and it will be much easier to navigate.
Keep your WordPress plugin installations to the minimum you need. Plugins are great, but each one slows your load time a little bit more. If your website is slow, it can affect your rankings with different search engines. Well-optimized sites rank better than slow ones.
Make sure that users can easily send your articles to their email whenever they want. This is important for sharing purposes as well, as many users may not be able to access Facebook or Twitter at work but may want to share your articles with friends. Set this up using a WP-Email plugin.
Do not go without proper backup when blogging. This is an important step in ensuring that you don’t lose your entire blog. Plugins, such as Xcloner, are important to use. Utilize the plugins or sites you like most for your blog, but take care to do backups in multiple locations. It could be devastating to lose your whole blog.
Always organize your media library. Uploading images straight into the library is certainly appealing, but it does not take long for chaos to set in. Set up your folders from the beginning, even if you do not have content for all of them yet. Later, you will be able to find an image you want to use much easier.
Nobody needs to approve comments manually anymore. The Akisment plugin can do this task for you. You’ll be emailed once there’s a comment, but you should uncheck manual approval so that the authors get to post comments without delay. Pre-approving every post can consume large amounts of your time.
Make sure that your plugins remain up to date. You can really improve your website with WordPress plugins. However, they are updated just as other types of software are. If you fail to update your plugins, you may miss key upgrades and the plugin may even stop working completely.
Is it hard for you to post on a schedule? Write something well ahead of the scheduled time, but set the posting at the chosen time and date. You can find this option when you open a new page to post. This means you should get started on everything ahead of schedule.
Don’t install more plugins than you need. Sure plugins are fun and cool, but every one you add increases the load time of your website. Plugins do slow down website performance, which can degrade your search engine ranking. Slower sites don’t usually rank as well as those that are faster.
There are quicker ways to add a header to your post than using the menu. Take advantage of keyboard shortcuts instead! You can hold down CTRL, and choose from one to six for the different options. That will save a great deal of time if you’re someone who often uses headers.
Be sure to always use the most updated version of WordPress on your site. There are security patches included in updates that will eliminate any vulnerabilities. Using an out of date WordPress version will leave your site vulnerable to malware attacks. Therefore, always install any updates that WordPress rolls out to ensure that your site is secure and tight.
When searching for plugins, check their reviews. These plugins are not that difficult to create. If a plugin has a lot of flaws and bugs reported, don’t use it. Highly rated plugins with lots of downloads are generally safe.
Do not forget to create a backup of your blog. You must do this on a regular basis. In WordPress, you can use a plugin for this, such as Xcloner. Use the plugin or site you’re confident in for blog backup, but be sure to backup in a lot of places. You don’t want to take the chance of losing all your blog posts.
Are you sick of clutter in WordPress? You can disable select boxes on the page. Utilize “screen options” found at the top to take care of this. When you click that, a menu will drop down with options to disable certain boxes.
Attempt scheduling blog posts in advance with WordPress. This way, your posts will be published while you are doing other things. Just have a look at your EDIT screen. Here you will see the PUBLISH box. There, you will find “publish immediately.” Put the time you want the blogs to post in military time. Select OK. When your screen shows “Schedule For”, check this option and then hit the “Schedule” option if it is right.
If you want to use a new host for your blog, pick one that offers installation tools. That will make it possible for you to add WordPress to your site right away. This will save you a lot of hassle from having to create your own database separately. This one click can have the host create its domain for you and its database.
You no longer have to manually accept comments. Instead, use Akismet to do the work for you. You can set up notifications for comments, but manual approval usually deters commenters. If you fail to do this, you will not save yourself any time.
Try using all kinds of authoring tools for blogs. Is the WordPress dashboard not to your taste? You can use authoring programs to write blog posts, such as Windows Live Writer. In fact, there are quite a few tools out there that can help you post in a more efficient manner. Try some out, and choose the one making your work easier.
Don’t use that drop-down menu for post headers. Keyboards shortcuts will save time. Depress the CTRL key along with a number between 1 and 6 to select one of the options. If you use headers a lot, this can save you a ton of time.
Plan your strategy prior to building your site. List all the things you’re wanting to accomplish with your website and think about what people will want to get from it. This will allow you to plan in advance.
Try out different blog authoring tools. Are you not a fan of that dashboard on WordPress? Try an authoring program for a blog like the Windows Live Writer. WordPress is compatible with a variety of tools that make it more efficient. Try several of them. Find one that works for you.
Incorporate images on your site. The saying about a picture being worth a lot more than words is true even today. This will make your site more dramatic. Make sure you use title and alternate text tags to describe the picture so that it seems clear for readers and the search engines.
Think about using the highlight feature for author comments. The comment section is where people ask any questions they might have. If there is a response from the author, it can be easily overlooked. Use a different color to highlight your comments. In this way, they will be easy to find.
Just because some plugins require payment, it does not mean that they are not worth getting. Think about how long it will take you to make something like that; then, compare it to the cost. If you feel that you are getting a lot for the price, it may be worth it.
Before building a site on WordPress, put a plan together. List all that you wish to accomplish with your website along with what readers should get from it. This allows you to shape your website around your plans.
Keep in mind that you need not to everything for your blog on your own. You can hire someone or get a volunteer to take care of some of the tech work so that you don’t go through a lot of trial and error.
Keep in mind that you can use a button so people can “read more”. Visitors aren’t going to want to dive into lengthy text right off the bat. Let visitors read more by clicking if they want to. Not doing this could cause the blog to appear messy and overwhelming.
If you’ve got post that you aren’t ready to publish, keep them in unpublished mode. You can still modify them, but the public can’t see them. You then publish the blog post when you are completely satisfied with it.
Surely this article has made WordPress more understandable for you. A majority of WordPress users don’t really understand all the tips, tricks and tools available to them. Keep this article available when you begin posting your blog on WordPress.
Keep in mind that categories and tags make it easy to have key phrases for your SEO building throughout the site. Choose a niche that helps answer people’s questions. Think of the things you would search for if you were trying to find the information that you place on your site.