WordPress is a big deep sea. There are a lot of things you can do using this super content management system. To beautify a website, there are many beautiful themes. You can create custom theme too. Plugins are for making a website more functional. You want to do something with your WordPress website which is already present in another website? No worry! You can do that by using plugins.
There are thousands of themes and plugins. For common purposes, you will get free plugins from WordPress directory. Now if you want something cool and uncommon and nobody has made plugin for that yet, you can make a plugin using your favorite scripting language. WordPress has pre-installed JS library. All the latest updates of WordPress contain latest version of JS library.
As a beginner, what should you know about WordPress?
Use hard to guess username and password
Do not set username “admin”. About password, it should not be easy guessing too. WordPress do not fight against brute force attack. Brute force attack is when a hacker is trying to login to your website using random username and password.
Always try to have a long and hard to guess username and password. Easy guessing username and passwords will put your website at security risk.
Use a better hosting
Do not complain your website is running slowly if you are using a shared hosting package from a bad hosting company. It is always suggested to use a good hosting package form a good company. If you do not want to buy VPS or dedicated server, you can keep your website in a shared hosting but choose a good company. A good company will sell one server to a limited number of users so that all websites using the same server will get fair speed.
Do not install theme from unknown sources
Themes can make your website slow and also it can possess security risk if you download theme from unknown sources. There are a lot of themes in WordPress directory and there are many reputed websites from where you can buy themes if you want to have a premium theme installed in your website.
Themes control what will be in the header section, body section, footer section and all of the other sections of your website. So make sure that you are using the right theme in your website.
Turn off automatic update for WordPress
Updating WordPress is good as long as theme and plugins support new version. Many plugins and themes will not support new update. If the theme that you’ve installed does not support the next version of WordPress and if your site gets updated automatically, it will create a big mess.
When WordPress releases a newer stable version, make sure to check installed theme and all plugins if those will support the newer version. If everything is fine then you can update your website to newer version of WordPress.
Pre schedule posts
It is possible to pre schedule post in your WordPress website. If you want an article to be posted later at the end of the day or may be few days later or weeks, it is possible to do that by pre scheduling post. In post editor, you will see an option to schedule posting time.
Scheduling posts helps both blogging sites and business sites.
Scheduling post is easy to do. Anyone can do this by simply going to post editor but you need to know the perfect time for scheduling the post.
There is no need of using any plugin for this feature.
Preview changes
It is important to preview the article or content that you created using WordPress post editor before you post on your website. By previewing how it looks, you can make changes if required.yu can do error fixing and also you can add additional content if you want.
Preview option is set by default n WordPress. You can simply use this feature from post editor page.
Multiple revision – use wisely.
Multiple revisions make multiple copies of one post in database. So if you do multiple revisions of one post 10 times and if you do that with 1000 posts, your website’s database will contain 10000 posts saved in it.
Making database heavy is not a good thing to do. It will make the website run slowly. Keep your database as much clean as possible and it can be done using the post revision (if required) wisely.
Use short permalink
Using the default permalink setting is not a good option. The default permalink is set to make links using the post id.
Now you can go to permalink setting and change the permalink to “Post-name” but still that is not a good idea.
If your post has a big title then the permalink will be big. It is good to have small permalink so that search engines can easily get what is the link saying and will give priority to show the link in SERP. To do this, you will need to edit permalink manually and use short form of the title.
Try using the best keyword in link. You do not have to use all of the keywords in the link. You can keep all the keywords within the article and use the best keyword in link
Use alt tag, title and description to define images
When you are uploading images in a WordPress site, you will see option to add title, description and tags. It is very important to add all of these. Adding title, description and alt tags will help your website in two ways. One way is increasing search engine rank for images and another is making your website readable fully when someone is using text only browser or using assisting browser.
You should be detailed about the title. Title is the thing which will be shown instead of images to disabled people who are using assisted browser.
As an example, if you are writing a story about the traffic jam of any specific city, you use an image of that city with traffic jam; you should use detailed title like “traffic jam in city X”. You should not write only “traffic jam”.
Attractive header
It is important to have an attractive header in your website. If the header of your website does not look good, the visitors will lose their interest at first look. This is why you need to make a good looking header. Keep fewer features within the header if there is not much space. If there is space in header to add additional item then you can add different items with menu items.
You can ignore or add search option in header. It depends on the space you have after listing all of the menu items. Use latest CSS and JavaScript to make your header look gorgeous.
Attractive footer
Footer is also as much important as header. Keep copyright information at footer only. Make sure to add CTA button at header or footer. It is better to have a CTA button in header but you can also keep that in footer.
Footer can be small or big. You must include phone number or contact address of your or your company in footer area. Some people prefer to add phone number in header.
Use jump break
Use jump break to show limited number of sentences on homepage. If you do not want to show the entire post on home page, just add a “read more” link using the jump break.
Download WordPress app in your Smartphone
It is better to use app than going to your website by using your Smartphone. You can access your website though the WordPress app and it is secured. You can add post, edit post, respond to comments and do many other things using the app. You can also review before posting and view the post after posting. Having an app of your favorite CMS in your smartphone makes blogging more mobile.
Use of eraser button
When you are copying any text from any a source, it is recommended to use the “eraser” button to remove all pre formats of text. If you want to keep the pre format then in that case you will not need to use the eraser button. However, it is better to remove pre format and design newly with WordPress post editor.
Use quote button and code button
In your website, you can write quotes and codes differently than the normal texts. You can define a quote by using the quote button and you can define set of codes using the code button.
Codes within the code button will not be executed but will be shown differently than usual texts. It will make codes stand out from the normal texts.
We use WordPress to make blogging easier. We can also make different kinds of websites easily using WordPress. Learn WordPress tricks and all the basic tools to enjoy full features of WordPress.
