People who are even a little bit familiar with blogging know something about WordPress. Unfortunately, not many people really understand the power of WordPress. The information provided herein helps bring these facts to light and offers some helpful insights with regard to WordPress.
When you are using WordPress, get familiar with the tools and features available in the application. For instance, the button named kitchen sink gives you multiple formatting and importing options for your posts. There are some great options in the screen options as well. Many formatting elements are managed in this fashion.
Alt and Title are two important things to know about. When you are adding images to your posts, don’t forget to use titles and alt text. Such areas provide a chance to add additional SEO phrases, and they show viewers who have not enabled images to see what they are missing.
Be sure to learn all you can before you even install WordPress. If you plan ahead, things will flow better once you get started. Understand the basics of SEO and content creation before starting your site.
Eliminate any content that is not adding value to your blog. That will help you to keep the site friendly to people who are looking at it. Check out Akismet for a great way to remove spam.
Unless you dictate differently, your posts always show up in a chronological order. To change it, modify the date. Open a post and look at the upper right hand corner. There you will find the date. Click on date, modify it and save the post so you can change the position.
You can increase your rank by including keywords with your pictures. Always use titles and alt text tags. This works in all kinds of places, including the very popular Pinterest.
At the very top of your WordPress page, create a catchy greeting for your visitors. You can cultivate customer relationships this way, by including a message on top commenting on how visitors found your site. That will make things seem less formal on your site, and can be arrived at with the Greet Box plugin.
Be careful when setting up usernames. This will make your site vulnerable to bots that want to attack it. This is a major security risk. Delete all users who call themselves “administrator” or “admin”. Choose something else.
Security is essential for WordPress users, so make your password is kept confidential. Additionally, only use plugins from reputable sites, checking the reviews posted before you install them. Otherwise, you are vulnerable to hackers and malware.
Take the time to update your plugins regularly. These are a great tool that will make your website more powerful. Like other software, they are frequently updated. Not keeping up with the latest versions can mean that versions you have now will suddenly stop working or cause other problems.
Don’t install more WordPress plugins that you will be using. Plugins are cool and all, but they can make your site load at a snail’s pace. This has a negative affect on your traffic and your search engine rankings. Slow sites do not do as well in the SERPs as those that are optimized for speed.
Always back your files up! It’s important to make sure you don’t lose any valuable information. Xcloner is a great plugin that you can use. Create a back up of your blog using any method that you are comfortable with; just be sure to create multiple backups. It would be pretty depressing to lose your blog.
Try a linking plugin to help join your posts so that readers see a greater amount of content. These plugins add a list of three to five links at the bottom of each post based on the relevance of the tags on all of the posts on your site.
Don’t use the drop-down menu when you are selecting a header. Instead, use keyboard shortcuts! There are six different options for adding a header to your post. This has the potential to save you lots of time if you make heavy use of headers.
You should allow visitors to post comments on your site. This engenders some community spirit, and you get to know a bit more about your readers. Don’t worry about spammers, there are plugins that allow you to screen comments before allowing them to be seen on your site.
Experiment with a variety of blogging tools. Are you unsatisfied with WordPress’s dashboard? Try Windows Live Writer, a third-party program for authoring blogs. There are several programs that are both compatible with WordPress and efficient. Give a couple of them a try to figure out which one is most effective for you.
Use pictures on your website. The adage that a picture is worth more than a few words is still true today. You will see that your site has a great deal more flair. Make sure you use title and alternate text tags to describe the picture so that it seems clear for readers and the search engines.
If you’d like to test changes to your blog without making those changes live, create a duplicate of your site in another folder with a duplicate, identical database. This prevents mistakes you might make in the process from costing you sales or keeping your site down.
WordPress has been around for a while, and many bloggers are conversant with it. There are many people that don’t know how great WordPress really is. Hopefully, this article has shown you that you won’t fail with this great platform and that you can use it to your advantage.
The information you just read should have made it clear that wordpress is a complex topic that require a lot of information. However with good advice, you can much better master your subject. Use the information you have learned here to help you.