Maybe you've heard of the popular blogging site, WordPress. So many people are using this tool for blogs and sites. Learning it is not all that difficult. Virtually everyone can figure it out. Review the information that follows to get great advice on becoming a WordPress master.
Be sure to choose a design that is not the same as those chosen by others who have WordPress sites. Since it potentially saves you time it can appear like a good idea, but it won't provide users with a great first impression. Your site should be unique and reflect your personality.
Spend some time getting to know all of WordPress's tools and options. For instance, clicking on the button called KITCHEN SINK provides you with many options with regard to formatting and importing that can help you to customize your posts. SCREEN OPTIONS is another tab you are likely to see on the admin pages. You can make use of this to control many elements of formatting.
You must specify if you want your post to appear in other than chronological order. If you want to rearrange the list, you'll have to change the date first. Open a post and look at the upper right hand corner. There you will find the date. Change the date by clicking on it and saving it.
Do you get many comments on your posts? It may have become a challenge to sift through all of them. Use a plugin to add page numbers. That will make navigation much easier and your site will appear more organized.
You can up your rank with the search engines by taking a bit of time with your pictures during upload sessions. Putting in alternate text and title tags is crucial. If a visitor "pins" your image onto Pinterest, the title that you selected is what will show up on their screen automatically.
The greeting appearing at the head of the WordPress website page should be very engaging. This will make visitors feel like your blog is more personal. A possible plugin to use is WP Greet Box; using this will make the things feel less robotic.
It's important that you are the only one with your WordPress password. Before installing plugins, make sure to read reviews. If your site ever gets hacked or infected with malware, you risk losing the entire thing.
Titles and targeted descriptions are important. When people use search engines to find your pages, these elements are usually seen first. That's why they're very important. To have more control over these items on your WordPress site, you can use the SEO software, Scribe. This will allow you to edit these items and attract even more visitors.
Make sure that you have the most recent version of any WordPress plugins you use. Plugins are a smart solution for making your site unique and highly functional. 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 your site has the most recent version of WordPress. Updates include patches that make your page less vulnerable. Using an older version of WordPress opens up your site to malware attacks. So, make sure you're installing all updates that are rolled out.
Don't forget to back up your blog. This is an important step in ensuring that you don't lose your entire blog. Use a plugin like Xcloner to help you with the process. Back your website up in at least 2 places. It would be disastrous to lose your whole blog.
You can give more content to the reader by using internal linking plugins on your website. Plugins like that usually ad links following each blog post, basing that on your tagged posts.
No one manually approves comment any longer. You can use the plugin Akismet to do that work. Make sure that "manual approval" does not have a check mark beside it so that the comments go up automatically. You aren't saving much time this way.
Always read user reviews before installing any plugins. Keep in mind that everyone who can code can create plugins. Do not use a plugin with many issues associated with it. Look for the plugins that have very high ratings.
Are you over the amount of clutter you see on WordPress? You can turn off a number of the on-page boxes you see. Utilize "screen options" found at the top to take care of this. Click on this and a drop-down menu will give you the option to turn boxes off.
You need to enable comments for your WordPress blog. Allowing comments creates a relationship with your readers. Use this information to learn about your visitors. You can install a plug-in that allows you to review comments before posting. This discourages spammers and such.
Blog Authoring
Use a variety of tools for blog authoring. Are you not a fan of the WordPress dashboard? Blog authoring programs, such as Windows Live Writer, can be of help. There are a lot of tools that work well with WordPress and make blogging more efficient. Give them a test run, and feel out which one works for you.
Utilize pictures within your website. A picture's worth a thousand words. Your site will have that much more drama to it. Be certain to utilize title as well as alternate text tags in order to make pictures and their context clear to search engines and readers alike.
When you have gotten better at WordPress, you are going to be able to create wonderful sites and blogs that appear professional. It takes very little to get started. The Internet and other resources have tons of WordPress information. Use all the informational sources at your disposal.