For over a decade, WordPress has given bloggers an option that’s easy to use for content posting and increasing readership. But, some bloggers feel too overwhelmed by the platform to use it. This article provides tips for new and experienced WordPress users.
Devote some time to learning about the various options and tools that you have at your fingertips when you use WordPress for blogging. For instance, clicking the “kitchen sink” button gets you a multitude of formatting and importing options to distinguish your site. This can control an array of formatting features.
Don’t choose a design that’s identical to what others that have a WordPress website use. While copying someone else’s design is quick, it doesn’t make a good impression. Make sure your blog emphasizes your individuality.
Be sure to use Title & Alt. When you are adding images to your posts, don’t forget to use titles and alt text. This is good for SEO, and it allows people who have disabled images to know what the images are about.
If the title for a post is long, try cleaning up the permalink. For instance, “Ten Ways Smart Parents Can Tame Their Children” would come across as a cumbersome, long URL. Instead, try making the permalink “tips-parents-uncontrollable-children” or something comparable based on the SEO keywords.
With WordPress, users can easily have video blogging on their site. This will require you to spend more time prepping, but this is worth it. Most users on the web will love this. One powerful tool is video because it can convey messages more clearly than the written word.
Spend some time getting to know all of WordPress’s tools and options. One great tool is: Kitchen Sink. It gives you may importing and formatting choices. Screen Options is another useful tool. Using this will help you better manage any formatting issues.
Teach yourself everything you can prior to using WordPress. The more you plan in advance, the better you can start off. Research SEO, WordPress and content generation before starting to develop your site.
Use Alt and Title tags. text as you are uploading images to your posts. This will give you more space to use for SEO phrases. Additionally, it will help viewers whose images are turned off know what is on the page.
Have a plan before you begin publishing. If you are aware of your posting time, your motivation will increase. Actually, you can write all the posts for a week in one sitting and then use WordPress’s schedule feature to upload the posts at the appointed time.
Make sure that you learn all you are able about WordPress before even installing it. The greater the amount of advance planning done, the more comfortable you will be. Learn about SEO, content creation, and how WordPress can best be used to your advantage.
You must make adjustments if you do not want your posts to show up in the order published. If you want to rearrange the list, you’ll have to change the date first. To do this, open up a post and look for the date located at the top of the right corner. Changing the date and saving it will re-position it.
When you are ready to start posting, create a schedule. You will feel motivated to post regularly if you have a good schedule. In fact, you have the option to write all of your posts in advance and schedule them to be published at regular intervals.
Are you getting as many comments as you’d like? If that’s the case, it may be hard for you or your visitors to sift through those numerous comments. A plugin including page numbers will organize this section. This navigational tool will save time and make your site look organized.
Moderate comments and content that add nothing of value to your blog. This keeps the site easily usable to the honest viewers. Akismet is a great plugin that you can include that will help you to filter out the daily spam on your site.
Better your search engine rankings by taking a couple minutes with pictures before uploading them. Always create alternate text and title tags for your images. This works in all kinds of places, including the very popular Pinterest.
You might believe that WordPress has not saved all of the changes you just struggled to make. That is likely not the case. You might be able to solve the problem by clearing out your browser cache. Just hold the ‘shift’ key when you refresh your browser to see the changes.
Don’t use something boring, such as “admin”, as the name you use on your site. Words like “admin” or “administrator” often attract malicious bots who are seeking security breaches. This poses a real threat to security. Look at your users page and delete any usernames that are “admin” or “administrator”. Select a different user name.
Help users easily send articles to you when they want. There are some people who cannot look at Twitter or Facebook in the office;however, they want to share your information with others. WordPress has an email plugin just for this purpose.
Make sure you maintain an organized media library. Uploading images straight into the library is certainly appealing, but it does not take long for chaos to set in. Instead, create folders and place your images in the appropriate folders. You’ll have a lot easier time finding images in the future that you hope to reuse.
Keep your WordPress password safe and to yourself. Your plugin choices should be from reputable sites. If your site ever gets hacked or infected with malware, you risk losing the entire thing.
Keep your plugins updated. You can really improve your website with WordPress plugins. However, they receive updates just like normal applications. If you fail to update your plugins, you may miss key upgrades and the plugin may even stop working completely.
Make sure to always organize your media library. Sure you can just throw images in there, but it may become overwhelming pretty quickly. Create a folder structure when you begin and place images into the folders properly. In time, when you wish to go back and find something, it will be easy to do.
Make sure your site has the most recent version of WordPress. Updates generally include security fixes that you will want to have. If you use an older WordPress version, it opens your site up to attacks of malware. So, make sure you’re installing all updates that are rolled out.
Always use the newest version of WordPress. Updates will eliminate vulnerabilities. If you don’t update, you could be leaving your website open to malware issues. So, make sure you’re installing all updates that are rolled out.
Back up your blog on a regular basis. You need to to this with regularity. There is a plugin called Xcloner that will make it easy to backup your blog. 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 truly be difficult to start from scratch if your blog disappeared one day.
You don’t have to manually approve comments anymore. Let Akismet filter out the spam for you. You can moderate comments individually, but it’s advisable to switch off manual approval and let visitors comment freely. Pre-approving every post can consume large amounts of your time.
Connect posts with the internal linking plugin. This will help your readers find content they like. These plugins add lists between three and five links beneath the posts based on your tag’s relevancy to each post.
Is it hard for you to post at scheduled times? You can write a blurb ahead of time and have it posted at the date and time that you select. Future publications are very convenient. This can help you get it taken care of.
Think about scheduling post publishing in advance by using WordPress. You can schedule them to auto-post any time you like, even if you’re away from your computer. Locate the Edit screen, and find the Publish box. Beneath that, look for “Publish Immediately.” Use military time to input the times, days, months and years you want your content published. Hit “OK.” When your screen shows “Schedule For”, check this option and then hit the “Schedule” option if it is right.
When choosing a website header, avoid the drop-down menu. Use the keyboard shortcuts. You can hold down CTRL, and choose from one to six for the different options. This is a major time saver if you frequently use headers.
Are you having a hard time keeping to a schedule of posting regularly? It is possible to write something ahead of schedule and have it post on a selected date. If you open a new post, there is an option for a future article. This can help you get it taken care of.
Screen Options
Certain hosts allow you to install WordPress quickly and easily with a single click. This saves you the frustration of creating a separate database yourself. This one click can have the host create its domain for you and its database.
Does your WordPress page look cluttered? Turn off some of the boxes that you see on the page. Do this from ‘Screen Options’ near the top of your window. Click the “Screen Options” button for a handy drop-down menu you can use to enable or disable your boxes.
Keep in mind that a “read more” option is always a possibility. Nobody wants to see a wall of text on your main page. Allow visitors to click to read more if they choose to. You don’t want your landing page to appear cluttered and messy.
Try to highlight comments made by blog posts authors. You can find a lot of inquiries in the comments section. Responding to one of these questions can easily be overlooked, swallowed up in a sea of comments. Use a different color, and bold or italicize the text. This way they can be found and recognized with ease.
Put images to work on your websites. Pictures are more appealing than words. Your site will be 10 times more attractive. For your images, be sure to include the title and alt attribute so readers and search engines have better clarity.
Don’t forget to make use of the “read more” button. Too much text can send viewers away if they see it all at first. Let your visitors click if they wish to read more. Failing to do so could make your blog look uninviting and cluttered.
Plugins that cost money to download may still be of value. Think about the cost of your time and compare that to what the plugin costs. If you feel that you are getting a lot for the price, it may be worth it.
Just because some plugins require payment, it does not mean that they are not worth getting. Think about how much time the plugin will save you. You have much more time to do things when features are available to you, even if they cost a little something at the outset.
Find helpful resources before creating a site in WordPress. Look for groups and forums to advise you on navigating through WordPress issues. Regardless of whether your issue is with a theme or plugin, you’ll find experts available to answer your questions.
Search for helpful resources to help plan your site. There are forums, other blogs and even social medial groups that will give you an insider’s opinion and tips on WordPress. No matter whether you’ve got problems with themes or plugins, they can help.
If you want to save a post but not publish it yet, the “unpublished” mode is best used for this. This way, you can still edit it, but it won’t be visible to the public. Wait until your are totally satisfied with the post before you publish it.
Hold your post that are not ready in unpublished mode. That way, you can change it as you please and it stays out of view. Only publish your work when you are completely satisfied with it.
Always backup any images or other files before exporting from WordPress. Log on with FTP or with your server’s control panel and copy all of your folders and content.
WordPress is a great platform for blog creation and useful content promotion. Learning more about WordPress is a great way to extract great results from blogging without spending every waking hour working on websites. This article should help you get a blog started with WordPress.
Think about your current set of WordPress plugins before leaping into the latest WordPress upgrades. If you currently have plugins you can’t live without, wait until WordPress is tested further. Installing the new upgrades too quickly may end up causing your existing plugins to become unusable.