Simple Steps To Help You Better Understand WordPress
Do you understand the way WordPress works? Have you heard about the top plugins and know how to use them? Do you worry a lot about site security? Knowing what it takes to make an attractive site is essential for attracting visitors. Keep reading for answers to all your questions about WordPress.
Check out add-ons to find simple tools which will make your site or blog better. For example, you could add a calendar to your side menu bar in order to share events which would be interesting to your readers. You can also find many great add-ons which provide control for advertising, turning your site into a revenue maker.
Make the most of your titles and your descriptions. Any time you share posts on social media sites a description and title may be required. These are important in terms of good search engine optimization, so don’t just toss out titles and descriptions in a random fashion. Give it some thought and optimize with good keywords.
If your post has a long title, clean up its permalink. To illustrate this, “The Best Banana Cream Pie Recipe Taught To Me By My Grandmother” would show as a very long URL that can be annoying to your readers. Instead, you could use something like: “Smart Parents Control Kids” if it works with your SEO strategy.
Allow all of the users that visit your site the ability to comment using Facebook. This is a very important tool that will get your name across to hundreds of thousands of people. The Simple Facebook Connect plugin can be used if you want to install this feature on your site.
Don’t forget to use spellcheck. It may seem obvious now, but many people forget to do it. When using the WordPress editor to post to your blog, make sure you take advantage of its spellcheck function. Even if you have already proofread your post, a quick and simple spellcheck couldn’t hurt.
If you are new to WordPress, make sure to keep your sidebar simple. Make sure that it only has the essentials. Your visitors shouldn’t have to weed through a ton of ads and banners to find the links they want to click on. Try removing the items in Appearance & Widgets that don’t contribute anything to your cause or business.
Make use of a landing page. Instead of coming directly to current posts, users will pass through this landing page first. You can use this for a variety of reasons, whether for promoting a product or promoting yourself. Many themes feature a landing page; however, there are also paid options.
Make sure that your wordpress site loads as fast as possible for your visitors. This is vital, as a site that crashes or takes too long will discourage your users from visiting it. A fast site will put your users in a good mood when they come there on a daily basis.
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Improve the look and style of the footer on your wordpress website. This is very important as it is the first thing that your viewer is going to see. Include a short bio that includes all of your details or important links that pertain to what you want to get across.
Enable different types of avatars on your website. This will make your site very fun and friendly for the users who visit it. Also, it will allow you to get across your personality in a better way. To find this component, visit the discussion area on your dashboard under settings.
Moderate comments and content that add nothing of value to your blog. You want to make your site as user-friendly as possible. To get rid of spam on a daily basis, Akismet can be a useful plugin.
Don’t install more WordPress plugins that you will be using. Sure plugins are fun and cool, but every one you add increases the load time of your website. Plugins do slow down website performance, which can degrade your search engine ranking. Slower sites do not appear as high in search rankings as optimized sites.
Optimize your photo size before uploading them to your WordPress media library. Photos should be no more than 10 to 15 kilobytes in size. A website is no place for a multi-megabyte sized photo. It’ll slow down your website, which may cause some visitors just to surf elsewhere. Take the few minutes it takes to downsize that photo.
If you need to work on your site, be sure to turn on a maintenance mode so that visitors aren’t surprised with the current state of your website. There are lots of maintenance mode plugins out there. And best of all, they are typically free. It’s a quick button push to toggle maintenance mode on and off.
Try installing a caching plugin in your WordPress site. There are many out there, but a popular one is W3 Total Cache. This plugin simply caches the website and keeps it from reloading each time a page is reloaded. This makes your site faster. It speeds things up because every file isn’t being called every time a page reloads.
If you aren’t into getting comments on your WordPress blog, you can turn comments off on any individual post or page. This is an excellent solution if you are creating more of a promotional website rather than a personal blog. WIth the comments off, you can solely concentrate on your post content without worry of spam.
Using the WPTouch plugin lets you create a mobile-friendly website without doing any extra work. All you need to do is install a second, mobile-friendly theme which the site will automatically switch to when someone arrives at it via a mobile device. Your content will stay the same, of course.
You should now know a little bit more about WordPress. There is quite a bit to learn, from plugins to issues regarding security. The tips here are a great place to begin. Come back to this article in the future for refreshers.