Unless you’re living under a rock, you have seen many blogs on the Internet. A lot of the blogs you’ve seen are likely operating on WordPress, which some say it the best blogging platform there is. If you’d like to start a blog, read on to learn about the best blogging tool around: WordPress.
Select a unique design when creating your site. It can be tempting to do this since it saves lots of time, but it will not give users the best impression of you. You want your site to stand out from others.
If your post has a long title, make sure your permalink is clean. A lengthy URL would be created by a title like “How Wild Children Can Be Made to Behave by Outsmarting Them.” Instead, try making the permalink “tips-parents-uncontrollable-children” or something comparable based on the SEO keywords.
If your post has a long title, clean up its permalink. Avoid cumbersome URLs like “The Ten Ways Intelligent Parents Manage Their Children.” You can change that permalink to ” parenting-tips-unruly-kids” or similar based on SEO keywords.
WordPress is full of options, features and tools that you can use to improve your blogging site. For instance, clicking the “kitchen sink” button gets you a multitude of formatting and importing options to distinguish your site. Use this for many formatting options.
Become familiar with the options and tools that are at your disposal when you blog with WordPress. For instance, the button named kitchen sink gives you multiple formatting and importing options for your posts. There are some great options in the screen options as well. Use this to control a wide variety of formatting elements.
Use Title and Alt when you are uploading pictures. text whenever you upload pictures. You can increase the number of SEO phrases and inform visitors of additional information.
Make sure you use “title” and “alt.” text whenever you upload pictures. Not only do these fields offer more opportunities to stuff in more content specific SEO keywords, but they also allow users who can’t load images to know what they can’t see on your site.
It is relatively easy to include video blogging in your WordPress site. You must do some preparation; however, it’s worth it. Internet users are a visual group. Videos can sometimes convey information more quickly and effectively than the written word.
Eliminate comments and content that fail to add value to your site. This makes your website more user-friendly. Trying using a plugin like Akismet to filter out spam.
Gather as much information as you can before installing WordPress. The more you plan, the better your results will be. Learn all you can about SEO, good content and using WordPress to your advantage.
Take out any special characters in the URLs of your blog entries. Their presence can cause problems for the search engine spiders, so omitting them entirely is your best bet. It is also wise to make all URLs as short as possible. Only use the key words to avoid overwhelming those who visit your site.
Set a schedule when you’re ready to post. Doing this provides you with the necessary motivation to make your posts. In fact, to save even more time, you can create a week’s worth of posts at once, then schedule WordPress to upload them for you automatically.
When you take time to adjust a WordPress blog, you may not realize that your changes weren’t saved at all. That is likely not the case. See if clearing the browser’s cache resolves the issue. Hold down the Shift key as you click Refresh to see the changes to your site.
Sometimes you spend hours changing your WordPress site, and then think that the changes have not been saved. This is most often not the case. To deal with this issue, clear your browser cache. Save changes by holding the ‘shift’ key while refreshing the browser.
Be careful when setting up usernames. Your blog is more vulnerable to attack by bots if you choose this as your username. This is a risk to the security of your site. Any user names on your users page that are “administrator” or “admin” should be removed. Pick a different username.
Are you overwhelmed by the comments on your site? If so, weeding through all the comments may be difficult for you and for other visitors. You can install a simple plugin that will put page numbers into this section. Not only will your blog look more organized, but it will also make navigation a lot easier.
Organize your media library. It can become really chaotic if you are constantly uploading images directly to your library. Set up folders right at the outset, and put images into the correct folders. At later times, when an image is needed, your search time will be greatly reduced.
Be certain users have the ability to email posts to themselves if they like. 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. WP-email plugins are a great way to accomplish this.
Keep your WordPress updated. Updates will eliminate vulnerabilities. Older versions of WordPress leave you vulnerable to attack by malware. That is why you should always install the latest WordPress updates to make sure everything is safe and secure.
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 is an unnecessary security risk to take. Look at each individual page on your site and change admin or administrator usernames. Then, choose a different name.
Make sure your blogs are backed up. You must do this on a regular basis. Xcloner is a wonderful WordPress plugin designed just for this purpose. Create a back up of your blog using any method that you are comfortable with; just be sure to create multiple backups. You don’t want to take the chance of losing all your blog posts.
Use targeted titles and descriptions. These are likely the first things visitors see when discovering your site from an Internet search. Therefore, they are crucial to your site. You can use SEO software called Scribe to get more control on these elements in your site. This allows you to attract additional viewers by editing the items that appear on your pages.
Approving comments manually is an obsolete procedure. Install Akismet or something similar to do this for you. You can receive an email each time someone leaves a comment, but it’s more efficient to just forgo manual approvals. You won’t be saving any time if you do not.
Be sure to always use the most updated version of WordPress on your site. Updates offer patches that will strengthen the security of the site. Older versions of WordPress leave you vulnerable to attack by malware. So, make sure you’re installing all updates that are rolled out.
Is it hard for you to post during the times you intend to or when you plan to? You can create a post in advance and then schedule it to be posted later. Future publication is an option any time you open a page for a new post. So, write in advance and line up your posts in order to have them published at a regular interval.
Do not forget to create a backup of your blog. It’s important to back your blog up regularly. Try using a WordPress plugin like Xcloner. Utilize the plugins or sites you like most for your blog, but take care to do backups in multiple locations. You don’t want to take the chance of losing all your blog posts.
To use a header for a post, don’t worry about the drop-down menu. Instead, use keyboard shortcuts! A variety of options are available by holding down the CTRL button, then choosing a number between 1 and 6. If you frequently use headers, this saves lots of time.
Are you having a hard time keeping to a schedule of posting regularly? You can pre-schedule your content to post if you like. Future publications are very convenient. Writing ahead of time prevents a time crunch later.
Do you have too much going on with the functions in WordPress? Look at the page and turn off a few of the boxes. Utilize “screen options” found at the top to take care of this. Click on that button and you will see a drop-down menu. Use this to control the various boxes.
Read user reviews prior to installing a plugin. Anyone who can program can make their own plugin. It is not a great idea to use plugins that have many known issues. A high rating and a lot of downloads usually signal that a plugin is safe.
Your WordPress site should have comments enabled. This will help users feel like a community, and it will give you the opportunity to learn more about them. There are plugins for approving comments before they post on the site, which can help you avoid spammers and advertisers.
Screen Options
Don’t forget that you can always add a button that prompts users to “read more”. No one wants to click on to your blog’s front page and be greeted by a huge wall of text. You want to let visitors be able to access more information if chosen. If they can’t, your blog might look messy and unwelcoming.
Are you over the amount of clutter you see on WordPress? Toggle off the homepage boxes you don’t need. Go to: Screen Options on the window. Click the “Screen Options” button for a handy drop-down menu you can use to enable or disable your boxes.
Make sure your sites always have images. Pictures are more appealing than words. This makes your site far more dramatic. Make sure to take advantage of title as well as alternate text tags when describing the picture, making it clear for your readers and search engines.
If you’re seeking a hosting company for you WordPress site, select one that has tools for easy installation. This way, you won’t have to create a separate database. A one-click install can create the domain of your blog that you had chosen, then create the appropriate database.
If you desire to test certain elements in your blog without making the changes live, you can make a copy of your blog with a duplicate database. This way, you won’t inadvertently make poor changes to your site.
Blog authoring tools are very valuable. Is the WordPress dashboard unappealing to you? Try an authoring program for a blog like the Windows Live Writer. A number of tools works well in conjunction with WordPress while providing increased efficiency. Give a couple of them a try to figure out which one is most effective for you.
Keep in mind that categories and tags make it easy to have key phrases for your SEO building throughout the site. In fact, people are often searching for clear category titles when they use Google to search. You may have found this article using category names.
Create a plan prior to beginning work on your WordPress site. List the things you hope to accomplish and what you want readers to take away from your content. This will help you build a blog that covers your needs rather than you trying to tack a lot of things on at a later date.
Utilize WordPress’ Export function to give your site a regular backup. This ensures that you keep an historical database that lists site backups, allowing you to reverse course in time to go to clean copies in case of hacking or a routine backup if the server dies.
It does not matter if you blog professionally, post occasionally or read blogs casually; WordPress offers you a lot. The more you learn about the program and what to do when you use it, the more you’ll get from it. Use the information presented above whenever you use WordPress.
Before you install the new WordPress upgrade, think carefully about the already installed plugins. If you use plugins, ensure they work before upgrading. If you rush to update, you might end up with your essential plugins not working properly anymore.