Blog Like A Pro: Tips And Tricks For Using WordPress

WordPress allows you to start your own stylish blog and enjoy the freedom of sharing yourself with the world. WordPress is the primary platform under which bloggers operate. This article is full of great tips and tricks to help make WordPress as useful as possible.

Use different designs than other blogs on WordPress. 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 get off on the right foot with your visitors.

Clean up long titles in the permalink. For instance, a title such as “Top Ten Way To Tame Unruly Children” can create a long URL. Rather, seek out keywords in the long URL and create a shorter permalink for it.

The title and Alt keys should be used. This lets you add text to your posts. This lets you add some phrases for SEO and it lets your readers know what the image is.

Clean up comments and content that is worthless to your site. This keeps the site easily usable to the honest viewers. Use Akismet if you need a plugin to do this.

You might find one day that you think you’ve made a lot of changes to your blog that haven’t been saved. This is most often not the case. Clear your cache to see if it will fix the problem. Just hold the ‘shift’ key when you refresh your browser to see the changes.

Unless otherwise specified, your posts will appear chronologically. You must alter the date if you wish to reorder the list. First, open the posts and look for the date in the top-right corner. Click the date, edit it, and save it to reorder its position.

Never use a word like “admin” as your username. Using a username like admin or administrator ups your chances of being hacked. That’s a security risk. Look at your users page and delete any usernames that are “admin” or “administrator”. Use another username.

Security is crucial for a site built with WordPress, so always keep your passwords secure. Download reputable plugins to stay safe at all times. When your site ends up hacked or attacked by malware, you’ll lose all that you’ve built.

Maintain organization with your media from the start. You might be tempted to directly upload to the library, but this can make things a mess. Make sure to incorporate folder structures that allows you to categorize properly. Just this simple move will make it much simpler to find (and use) photos in the future.

Try keeping the plugin installations on your WordPress blog to a minimum. Of course plugins are cool and fun, but each one that is added increases the time it takes your website to load. If your website is slow, it can affect your rankings with different search engines. Optimized websites will almost always rank better than slow-running websites.

Make sure you are always using the latest WordPress version. With each update, new security patches are rolled out. Older versions can make you vulnerable to malware. Thus, make a point to install WordPress updates as soon as they are available.

Use a plugin to link your posts. This allows the reader to enjoy more content. These types of plugins add several links at the end of every post, depending on how relevant the tags of your posts are in your website.

Don’t use the drop-down menu when you are selecting a header. Rather, use shortcuts on the keyboard. Press CTRL and the numbers one to six for the various headers. This saves you time if you use the headers often.

Read reviews when searching for new plugins. Keep in mind that everyone who can code can create plugins. If a plugin has a lot of flaws and bugs reported, don’t use it. You can usually use reviews to see which plugins are good.

Would you like to de-clutter WordPress to make things easier? You can disable select boxes on the page. Click Screen Options. In there, you’ll see a full menu of boxes that you can turn on and off.

Enable comments so that visitors will want to return. Allowing comments creates a relationship with your readers. Use this information to learn about your visitors. Different plugins can help you weed through and figure out which are the “real” comments and which are just spammers.

Experiment with a number of blogging platforms. Don’t find WordPress’ dashboard particularly helpful? You may want to consider Windows Live Writer. There are several WordPress compatible tools that can help you out. Try some out, and choose the one making your work easier.

Think about highlighting any comments left by a blog post’s author. The comment section is where people ask any questions they might have. The author’s response to these comments can easily be missed, especially if there are many comments. Highlight the author’s comments as a different color. Finding them will be much easier this way.

Make a plan of your site before you dive into WordPress. List all the things you’re wanting to accomplish with your website and think about what people will want to get from it. This helps you build a site with everything you need from the onset.

Try using pictures on your websites. Pictures really are worth a thousand words. Your own blog can have just that much more oomph. Also use alternate text and title tags when describing the pictures to help search engines crawl your site.

Just because a plugin costs money, does not mean that you shouldn’t give it a try. Think about whether the plugin is a good value given the time it may save you. It is affordable and provides you with an unparalleled amount of features.

People worldwide have discovered the power of blogging. You have a wide audience with which to share your ideas, thoughts and opinions. After having read the tips described, you can now do that using WordPress.

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