WordPress For Dummies – Some Tips And Tricks

Would you like to learn some more about WordPress? This is an awesome tool that many people use to make websites and blogs. Learning how to use WordPress is not a difficult task. Novices and professionals use it. Review the information that follows to get great advice on becoming a WordPress master.

Don’t choose a design that looks like every other WordPress site. Although it can save time to use a standard design, you won’t have a professional image. You want to show how your site is different from everyone else.

Choose a unique design to make your site stand out from the competition. You may be tempted to do this because it’s a time saver, but your site will just look run of the mill. You want to show how your site is different from everyone else.

Make it a point to become familiar with all options and tools that are available for working with WordPress. For example, “KITCHEN SINK” gives you more format options on posts. Your admin pages will also have a “SCREEN OPTIONS” tab. You can make use of this to control many elements of formatting.

The Title and Alt keys are helpful to know. This adds searchable text to the posts. 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.

Make sure you use Alt and Title. text when you upload images. This will allow you to incorporate more SEO phrases.

WordPress makes it easy for users to incorporate video blogging into their site. You must do some preparation; however, it’s worth it. Many users want to see videos. A video can clearly convey a message that is hard to explain with the written word; this makes video a powerful marketing tool.

It’s easy to incorporate videos on your blog with WordPress. While this might take a little extra preparation on your part, it is worth it. Visitors to your site will appreciate how visual a video is. People enjoy videos, and a video that explains things well can grab their attention faster than words can.

Make a schedule for your posts. If you schedule when things must be posted, you’re more likely to actually post them. As a matter of fact, you can create your posts ahead of time and then use the WP scheduling feature to post them at specific times.

Devise a schedule when you are set to begin making posts. You may actually do it, if you set a time. In fact, you have the option to write all of your posts in advance and schedule them to be published at regular intervals.

Clean up comments and content that is worthless to your site. This will help ensure that your site remains user-friendly. Use Akismet if you need a plugin to do this.

Eliminate comments and content that fail to add value to your site. This will keep your site user-friendly to the honest people who are viewing it. Akismet is a plugin that can be used to keep spam off your site.

Get rid of special characters in the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. They can make it hard for search engines to “spider” and should be removed. While utilizing keywords, make sure you keep those URLs short as well.

Get rid of special characters in the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. Special characters make it more difficult for search engines to index your site. You also need to abbreviate URLs so they do not overwhelm readers.

Unless you change it, posts will appear chronologically. You must start by altering the date. In order to do that, open one of your posts and you will be able to see the date at the top right hand corner. Change the date after clicking on it to get it moved from the original position.

Sometimes you might think some changes you’ve made weren’t saved. That is not likely. Clear you cache to get rid of this problem. Just press and hold your “shift” key while refreshing your browser and your changes should appear.

It is important that you securely store your password. Also, only download reputable plugins and check the reviews before installing them. If your are hacked or infected with malware, all your hard work on your site will be lost.

Your posts appear chronologically by default; however, you can change this. If you want to rearrange the list, you’ll have to change the date first. You can see the date when you open up a post. Click the date, choose a new one and save the post to alter its position.

Search Engine

Spend a little extra time on your pictures if you want to improve your rankings on search engines. Always use titles and alt text tags. This works in all kinds of places, including the very popular Pinterest.

Try keeping the plugin installations on your WordPress blog to a minimum. Although plugins can be beneficial, too many can slow down your site’s load time. You may decrease your search engine rankings and popularity because your site takes too long to load. A faster website tends to be higher up in the search engine results.

Organize your media library. If you just upload images randomly it’ll get out of control and disorganized. Place images into proper folders. 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 often contain security patches which eliminate any vulnerabilities. If you don’t update, you could be leaving your website open to malware issues. Thus, make a point to install WordPress updates as soon as they are available.

Make sure that you have the most recent version of any WordPress plugins you use. You can make a powerful website using plugins. But like any other software, it is important to update it. If you skip over these updates, you’ll miss important updates. Worse, you could be operating with certain bugs in your current edition.

Don’t forget to back up your blog. This has to be done regularly. Consider a plugin such as Xcloner to assist you. Utilize any plugin or site you wish for the purpose of backing up your blog. Just be certain to have a back up in multiple locations. It would be disastrous to lose your whole blog.

Always back up your blog. This has to be done regularly. Use a plugin like Xcloner to help you with the process. Create a back up of your blog using any method that you are comfortable with; just be sure to create multiple backups. It would truly be difficult to start from scratch if your blog disappeared one day.

Use linking plugins to help connect your posts. This type of plugin adds 3-5 links beneath your posts based on their tags’ relevancy.

Connect your posts via a linking plugin to easily provide visitors with more of your content. This type of plugin adds lists of posts at the end of every post. These are selected based on tag relevance.

You no longer have to manually accept comments. Akismet is a helpful plugin that you can use. You’ll get emails when comments are made, but you can also uncheck manual approval. You won’t save yourself time.

If you want to post on off-days, schedule them a few days before via WordPress. This way, your posts will be published while you are doing other things. The option to publish now or later is available under the edit screen in WordPress. You’ll notice something that says “Publish immediately.” Enter the time you want the post published. This should include the day, month, and year. Press OK. Check the “Schedule For” page and then hit “Schedule”.

Do not use the drop-down menu to find a post header. Keyboards shortcuts will save time. To use, simply use CTRL and the numbers 1 through 6. This shortcut can save a lot of time when working with headers.

Are you sick of clutter in WordPress? Turn off some of the boxes that you see on the page. Just go to SCREEN OPTIONS in the upper portion of the window. Click on that button and you will see a drop-down menu. Use this to control the various boxes.

Is WordPress clutter getting you down? Turn several of the boxes off to clear it up. To do this, go to the top of WordPress’s window and go to “screen options”. Click this option, which enables you to choose which boxes you want.

You should allow visitors to post comments on your site. You will start to learn more about your regular visitors and your guests will also feel like they are joining a community. There are plugins that will require comment approval before they show up on your site. This will keep spammers and advertisers away.

Make sure to pick a WordPress host that allows you to click a button in order to install it. This makes things very easy for you. The host will be able to create your blog’s domain as well as it’s database with a single click.

Plan your strategy prior to building your site. List your goals and what you think readers want to know about. Do this and you’ll save time trying to add the things you forgot later.

Blog Authoring

Free plugins should not automatically be overlooked. Think about what the plugin does and how much time it would save to see if the cost is worth it. If it is rich in features, paying a little bit is still worth your money by saving you time.

Use a variety of blog authoring tools. Are you not pleased with WordPress’s dashboard? Give an alternate blog authoring program a try, such as Windows Live Writer. Lots of tools can work well in conjunction with WordPress in this way. Try some out, and choose the one making your work easier.

Want to do some work on your blog without these changes being updated live? Make a duplicate of your blog inside a different folder, with a separate, but identical, database. This helps you avoid mistakes that could cost you money or your site.

Write a tentative plan before starting your WordPress blog. Write down what you wish to accomplish with your blog and how you think visitors will want to use it. Do this and you’ll save time trying to add the things you forgot later.

It’s not necessary for you to do all your site work alone. If you brings someone else aboard, it will save you a lot of time and possibly money.

Make sure your sites always have images. After all, pictures are worth thousands of words. This adds much more interest to your site. Be sure you use alternate text and title tags to explain your pictures so that the search engines and readers know what your picture is about.

Find helpful resources before creating a site in WordPress. You can find blogs on WordPress, use Facebook groups or even forums to ask for advice from experts. Someone on these resources should be able to give you some help.

Plugins that aren’t free can be useful, too. Think about the value of your time, and then reconsider the price of that plugin. If you feel that you are getting a lot for the price, it may be worth it.

Keep in mind that you can utilize your search engine optimization key phrases throughout your site through use of tags and categories. In fact, clear category names may be just what people are looking for when they search on Google. Certain key phrases probably drew you into this article.

Learn where to go if you run into difficulties with your site. There are forums, other blogs and even social medial groups that will give you an insider’s opinion and tips on WordPress. The community can help you with questions around a theme, a plugin or any other WordPress related issues.

Back up your WordPress site regularly basis using the Export function. This create your historical database of backups that let you return to a recent back up or clean copy should you get hacked of if the server dies.

It is possible for you to create websites and blogs that appear professional once you have become proficient in using WordPress. Beginning is not difficult. There’s a wealth of information online that can aid you in making the blog of your dreams. Put it to work for you.

Backup your files and images before you use the ‘export’ function. This is done by logging in via FTP or through the control panel of the server, then copying all folders.

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