WordPress makes editing content and deleting posts a relatively simple and easy process.
In this tutorial you will learn how to edit and delete posts, how to use the features in the table for performing bulk post edits and deletions, and some useful, practical tips that will help you save time when using and editing posts.
Watch the video below and then follow the step-by-step tutorials to learn how to edit your posts …
To edit a single post, log into your WP Admin area, and then click on Posts > All Posts…
This brings up the screen, which displays a table of all your posts.
This table includes posts that have already been published, ones that are scheduled for publishing, draft (not yet published) and pending ones (posts that need to be approved by an administrator before being published) …
(To learn more about the Table of Posts and all of its features, see the next section below.)
In the Posts screen, find the one you want to edit, then either click on the Title, or hover your mouse over the title to display the options menu and click on Edit…
The post you have selected will open up in the Edit Post screen …
The screenshot above shows some of the common areas of a post that you would typically want to edit:
Post Title – Change the title of your post here.
Content Area – Edit your post content here. You can add, edit or delete text, insert and delete images, videos and other media, etc … using the Visual Editor and/or the Text Editor.
Categories – Edit your post category/categories in this section by clicking on one or more category check boxes. You can also create a new Category for your post by clicking on the + Add New Category link (see example below).
Tags – Add or delete your post tags in this section. You can add new tags to your post by typing in your tags separated by commas into the Tag field and then clicking on the Add button (see example below).
Here is an example of adding a new Category to your post …
Note: WordPress Categories are covered in more detail in this tutorial
Here is an example of adding new Tags to your post …
Note: WordPress Tags are covered in more detail in this tutorial
Once you have finished editing your post click on Publish > Update to save your new changes …
Once your changes are saved, you can view your edited post by clicking on the “Post Updated View post” link (1) …
Note: You can also view your post while working in the Edit screen by clicking on the View Post button below the Post title (2), and preview any changes you make at any time by clicking on the Preview Changes button in the “Publish” box.
How To Edit And Delete a WordPress Post
Table of Posts
The table of posts lists all of your posts in a row …
Here are the main features of the Table
The table of posts displays your most recent posts at the top of the list …
They can be selected for bulk editing or processing by clicking on the checkbox next to each post …
Title Column – The Title of each Post is displayed as a clickable link. Clicking on the Title link lets you edit the Post. Hovering your mouse over the title also lets you edit and see other post options …
A bold text next to the Post Title will display if your Post has been saved as a Draft, Private, Pending, Sticky, or Password Protected Post …
Author – The author is displayed in Author column. If your site has multiple authors, then clicking on an author name will display all that are authored by that user in the Table of Posts …
Categories – This column displays all the Categories that your Posts have been assigned to …
Tags – This column displays all the Tags associated with each Post …
Comments – The column with the “comment bubble” displays the number of comments for each Post. If any Posts have comments, then the number of comments is displayed in the comment bubble for that Post.
How To Edit And Delete a WordPress Post
You can view Post comments by clicking on the comment bubble …
If a Post has any pending comments (i.e. comments that need to be approved by an administrator before they can be displayed), then a blue comment bubble will display for that Post …
Note: Clicking on the comment bubble brings up the “Comments Screen” and allows you to moderate comments (see this tutorial to learn How To Manage WordPress Comments).
Date – The Date column for each Post shows the “Published” Date for Published Posts, the “Last Modified” Date for unpublished Posts (e.g. Draft Posts), and the “Scheduled” Date for posts set to publish in the future …
In addition to displaying Posts using the default “List” View (1), the Table of Posts can also display Posts in “Excerpt View (2) …
How To Edit And Delete a WordPress Post
How To Edit and Delete A Single Post
Watch the video below and then follow the step-by-step tutorials to learn how to edit your posts …
To delete a single post, click on Posts > All Posts…
This brings up the Posts screen …
In the Posts screen, find the Post you want to delete, then hover your mouse over the post title to display the options menu and click on Trash…
Your Post will be moved to the Trash [ See (1) below].
Note: A Post can be restored to the Table of Posts by clicking on the Undo link [See (2) below] immediately after being sent to the trash …
To permanently delete a Post, click on the Trash link …
The contents of the Trash will display in the Table of Posts. Hover your mouse over the Title of the Post you want to permanently delete, and click on either the Restore link to restore the post, or the Delete Permanently link to delete completely.
Your Post has now been permanently deleted …
Posts – Filtering Options
WordPress offers a number of options to filter and display selected Posts.
Above the Table of Posts, you will see links such as All, Published, Scheduled, Draft, Pending, and Private displayed with the number of Posts assigned to that Status.
Clicking on any of these links displays only the Posts for that status in the Table of Posts …
Below this section, next to the Bulk Actions dropdown menu and Apply button, are two additional Filtering options:
Show all dates
Use this dropdown menu and then click the Filter button to select and display Posts by date …
By default, “Show all dates” is selected and all of your Posts are displayed.
View all categories
Use this dropdown menu and then click the Filter button to select and display Posts by category …
If you have a large number of posts spanning across many pages, you can use the Search Posts function inside the Screen to filter and display only the posts that contain the search words you have entered into the Search field…
To remove the “search” filter and view all Posts again, click on the All link at the top of your posts screen …
Bulk Editing And Deleting Posts
WordPress also allows you to edit and delete multiple Posts at once. This is useful if you are performing management or bulk administration tasks such as removing old or unwanted ones, or if you would like to make bulk changes to specific sections of multiple Posts.
Select the Posts that you want to bulk edit or delete from the Table of list. You can select multiple ones or one at a time by clicking on the checkbox next to each, or select all at once by clicking on the Main Checkbox column heading in the Table of Posts …
Once you have selected your Posts, choose either Edit or Move to Trash from the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu, and click the Apply button to begin processing your selection …
Bulk Editing Posts
If Edit is selected in the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu …
A number of “Bulk Edit” options similar to the WordPress Quick Edit feature are displayed below the Column headings section …
The “Bulk Edit” screen allows you to edit the following items for all selected posts:
Categories– Categories can be ADDED in bulk to Posts, but you cannot CHANGE or DELETE a Category for those Posts through the bulk editor feature.
Tags– Tags can be ADDED in bulk to Posts, but you cannot CHANGE or DELETE a Tag for those Posts through the bulk editor feature.
Author– Use the dropdown menu to change the Author for all selected Posts.
Comments– Use the dropdown menu to allow / not allow comments for all selected Posts.
Status– Use the dropdown menu to change the Status of all selected Posts to Published, Private, Pending Review, or Draft.
Format– Use the dropdown menu to change the Post Format of all selected Posts to Standard, Aside, Gallery, Link, Image, Quote, or Status. (Note: depending on your theme this option may not be available).
Pings– Use the dropdown menu to allow / not allow pinging for all selected Posts. If “Do not allow” pings is selected, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to your selected Posts. (See How To Configure Your WordPress Site Settings: Discussion Settings tutorial for more details)
Sticky– Use the dropdown menu to change all selected Posts to either sticky, or not sticky. (See this tutorial to learn How To Make A WordPress Post Sticky)
Click the Cancel button to cancel and exit the Bulk Edit screen, or click Update after making changes to save your new Post settings …
Bulk Deleting Posts
If Move to Trash is selected in the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu …
Your Posts will be moved to the Trash [see (2) above].
Note: Posts can be restored immediately after sending them to the trash by clicking on the Undo link [see (1) below] …
To permanently delete your Posts, click on the Trash link …
The contents of the Trash will display on your screen.
Select the Post(s) you want to permanently delete by ticking the checkboxes next to their Post title, then using the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu, select either the Restore options to restore your Posts, or the Delete Permanently link to completely delete all selected Posts … …
If you select Restore from the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu, your Posts will be restored to the Table of Posts from the Trash …
If you select Delete Permanentlyfrom the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu, your Posts will be permanently deleted …
Editing And Deleting Posts – Useful Tips
Tip #1: You can access the “Posts” section from your Dashboard by clicking on Posts inside the “Right Now” box …
Tip #2: You can set the number of posts to display in the Posts page by clicking on Screen Options at the top of the page, then entering a number of posts to display in the Posts field and clicking Apply …
Tip #3: The Screen Options area also allows you to display or hide certain features in the Table of Posts …
And in the Post Editor Screen when editing an individual Post …
Tip #4: If you change the Post Title significantly, it’s a good idea to also change the Permalink of your Post.
To edit the Post URL (also called the “post slug”) click the Permalink: Edit button below the Post title …
When editing the “post slug”, type all the letters in lowercase (use “a-z” and “0-9” only) and separate words with a hyphen (like-this-example). Click OK when finished to set your new permalink …
Note: When you change the post category and/or the Post slug, updates the Permalink URL, so that all instances of links using the Permalink structure will be updated to reflect your changes. (See this tutorial to learn more about using Permalinks to create search engine friendly URLs.)
Tip #5: You can click on a Category link to display a list of all Posts assigned to that Post Category only …
Clicking on a Post Category is like performing a “bulk” category filtering sort – the Category Filter box at the top of the Table will also change to display your selected Category.
To return the Table of Posts to your default list, do the following:
Select View all categories from the drop down menu
Click on the Filter button
Tip #6: Clicking on a Tag link in your Table of Posts …
Displays a list of all Posts that include your selected tag …
Tip #7: To display all Posts in Alphabetical or reverse Alphabetical order, click on “Title” in the column header …
Tip #8: If you need a short URL to use for sending visitors to your post, click on the Get Shortlink button below your Post title …
A pop-up window appears with a short URL that you can copy to your clipboard by pressing the OK button …
Shortlinks can also be obtained using various different plugins. This is covered in separate tutorials.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
In this tutorial you will learn how to add photos and videos to your site using the App for mobile devices.
For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version of the WordPress mobile app – Media The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).
Complete the step-by-step tutorial below to learn how to add photos and videos to your site or blog using your mobile device.
The WordPress Mobile App – Media
You should have already set up your WordPress App. If not, see this tutorial.
Tap on your WordPress app icon to log into your account …
The App gives you access to the following Media-related functions:
Quick Photo – Take photos with your mobile device and add them to your posts.
Quick Video – Shoot videos with your mobile device and add them to your posts.
Quick Photo
To insert a photo into a post tap on the Quick Photo menu …
This will immediately launch the camera application in your mobile device.
WordPress Mobile App Theme
Take a photo with the camera and click Save to keep the image, or Discard to try again …
The application creates a new WordPress post and inserts your photo. Add some content, edit your settings and you are ready to publish your post …
After adding an image to your post, you can adjust the image settings by tapping on the image. This brings up the Image Settings screen …
The Image Settings screen allows you to edit the following settings on your image:
Image filename – Change your image filename.
Image caption – Add an image caption. This field is optional.
Horizontal alignment – Choose from the following options: “None”, “Left”, “Center” and “Right.
Width – Use the slider to adjust the image width.
Use as featured image – Check the box in this field to set your image as a featured image.
After adjusting your settings, click on OK to save your new settings, or Cancel to exit the Image Settings screen without saving your settings.
WordPress Mobile App Theme
Quick Video
To insert a video into a new post tap on the Quick Video menu …
This will immediately launch the video camera application in your mobile device.
Record a video and click Save to keep it, or Discard to try again …
The application creates a new post and inserts your video. Add some content, edit your settings and you are ready to publish your post …
Note: If your video uploads to your site … great!
In some instances, however, you may find that posting a video using the WordPress App results in errors and your video not displaying on your post.
In the screenshot below, for example, after adding a new video to a post and publishing it, the video screen size was too large …
And no video displayed …
On another occasion, nothing even showed up on the screen …
WordPress Mobile App Theme
There are many reasons why you may be experiencing problems with your videos when you use the App. It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to help you troubleshoot issues with videos.
Here are some suggestions:
Make a test post with your mobile device. If you experience issues with videos not displaying on your site after publishing your post, then do not use the Quick Video method. Instead, capture videos with your device as you normally do, download the video file to your computer and then use the media uploader to insert the video into your post.
Contact your webhost. You may need to add file-extensions/mime types to your server in order to play the files.
Congratulations! You now know how to use the Mobile App for adding media to your WordPress site via a mobile device.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
In this tutorial you will learn how to access a number of administrative functions in your site using the App for mobile devices.
For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version of the mobile app. The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).
If you have added multiple sites to your App, tap on the drop-down menu at the top of menu section and select the site you want to administer …
The administration functions for the site you have selected can be accessed by tapping on the following menus …
Stats – View stats about your site’s activity.
View Site – Displays your site in your mobile browser.
View Admin – Access the administration area of your site
Stats
To view statistical data about your site on your mobile device, tap on the Stats menu icon …
Note: In order to view your site’s statistics, you will need to have an account set up with WordPress.com.
If you have an account already set up with WordPress.com, then enter your account’s login details to access your stats …
If you don’t have an account with WordPress.com, then go to WordPress.com and register for a free account …
Next, you will need to install the Jetpack plugin to enable stats for your self-hosted site. This plugin was developed by the WordPress team to deliver many of the features available in the hosted versions (i.e. WordPress.com) to your self-hosted WordPress site.
After installing and activating the plugin, add your site to WordPress.com …
Next, log into your site and click on Jetpack in your WP admin menu to access the plugin’s main page …
Click on the Stats > Configure button …
Configure your plugin’s Stats settings and click on the Save configuration button …
Once you have installed and configured the Jetpack plugin for your self-hosted site, select Stats from your app’s menu and enter your WordPress.com login details to view your site’s statistics …
View Site
To view your site in your mobile browser, tap on the View Site menu …
Your site will display on your browser …
View Admin
To view your admin area, tap on the View Admin menu …
You will be taken inside your site’s dashboard area …
You can navigate through the menus and perform many of the administration functions from your mobile device, just as if you had logged in from a PC or laptop.
Congratulations! You now know how to use the Mobile App admin section.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
As mobile devices usage increases, more and more WordPress users will look for ways to continue working while “on the go”.
Mobile applications (apps) are available for a range of operating systems. To learn more about these, go here.
iOS and Android users can connect with their site administration areas via iPads, iPhones, tablets and other devices. You can use these devices to add, edit and delete content, manage posts, pages and comments, and perform a number of other administrative tasks.
In this tutorial, you will learn about posting content using your mobile device.
The WordPress Mobile Devices App
WordPress has developed an app that lets you access your sites using a number of mobile devices to add, edit and delete content, manage your posts, pages and comments, and perform a number of other administrative tasks.
The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play, depending on your operation system (iOS or Android) …
WordPress For iOS
The App works with any device that is running iOS version 4 or greater …
With the App installed, you can access your site from your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and add new posts, edit text, insert photos, check your spelling, insert links, and more. it will automatically adjust to a more widescreen layout if you rotate the screen …
You can moderate, edit, or reply to comments using your mobile device. The app features include bulk comment moderation via an intuitive interface and moderation menus that display when you swipe comments …
You can also insert high resolution and web optimized photos into your post automatically, using the Quick Photo feature, as well as add videos …
App for iOS can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store …
For more details about using WordPress on iOS mobile devices, go here: WordPress For iOS
WordPress Mobile Devices For Android
The App for Android works with WordPress.com and self-hosted sites using versions 3.1 or higher. The App will work on all phones that are running Android version 2.2 (Froyo) or higher.
The App for Android can be downloaded for free from the Google Play App store …
For more details about using WordPress on iOS mobile devices, go here: WordPress For Android
How To Install And Use The WordPress Mobile Devices App
Let’s show you how to install and use the App. For this tutorial, we will use the WordPress For Android version of the App. This process is similar for iOS users.
On your mobile device, locate and tap on the Google Play Store button to open up the application …
In Google play, select Apps …
Search for “wordpress”. Select the WordPress application by Automattic, Inc …
Install the application on your device …
Once you have installed the WordPress Mobile Devices App, make sure to enable the checkbox next to Allow automatic updating …
After installing the app, you will see a new icon on your phone. Tap on the WordPress icon to launch the app and log into your account …
Adding A New Site
The first time you launch the app on your mobile device, you will be shown a screen like the one below, giving you a few options to start blogging. Choose the “Add self-hosted WordPress blog” option …
Note: You will need to have a site already installed before you can add it to your App.
Enter your existing site’s account details:
Blog URL – Enter your domain here (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com)
Username – Enter your username
Password – Enter your password
Ignore both the Optional Settings and the Get a free blog at WordPress.com buttons, and tap on the Log In button when you have finished adding your site’s details into the Account Details section …
The app will try to connect to your account …
If your details have been entered correctly, your account will be set up and you will be logged in and connected to your site via your mobile device …
Once you are logged into your account, a number of options are displayed on your mobile app menu:
WordPress Mobile Devices
Posts – Add, edit and delete your posts.
Pages – Add, edit and delete your pages.
Comments – Moderate and manage your comments.
Stats – View stats about your site’s activity.
Quick Photo – Take photos with your mobile device and add these to a new post.
Quick Video – Shoot videos with your mobile device and add these to a new post.
View Site – Displays your site in your mobile browser.
View Admin – Access the administration area of your site
Settings – Edit your app settings. Also add and delete sites.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
These options are explored further in the tutorials listed below.
In this tutorial you will learn how to manage your settings.
For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version. The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).
Tap on your WordPress icon to log into your account …
Settings for your App can be accessed by tapping on the Settings menu …
The Settings area is divided into the following sections:
Blogs – This section displays a list of all WordPress sites and blogs you have added to your app and lets you add new sites.
Comment Notifications – The settings in this section affect how your mobile device is notified about new comments posted on your site.
Post Signature – In this section you can add a custom signature when publishing new posts.
About – This section displays information about your WordPress app and its Open Source licenses.
Blogs
This section displays a list of all WordPress sites and blogs you have added to your app’s account …
Clicking on a site listing …
Opens up a screen where you can edit your site’s details …
In this screen, you can edit the following settings:
Account Details
Edit your site’s username and login password …
HTTP Credentials
This section is optional. It allows you to enter other forms of authenticating a user’s login credentials …
Media
This section allows you to specify media settings that will affect how images are added to your posts and uploaded to your WordPress site …
You can change the Default Image Width setting to another desired width (Note: You can also tap on an image in the new post editor to set a custom image size there as well) …
Additionally, by selecting checkboxes, you can opt in this section to:
Upload and link to full image
Upload and link to scaled image
Location
You can geotag your posts by ticking the Geotag Posts box checkbox in this section …
Geotagging your posts lets your readers know where you are posting from. It also allows you to assign a city or town to any post so readers can find posts relevant to certain places more easily. For example, if you write about local events in your city, you can tag them so that others who live nearby can find out what’s going on. If you post photographs of a town you have visited, you can tag them with the name of that town so that people searching for it will be able to more easily find your site.
Remove Blog
If you no longer want or need to have one of your WordPress sites in your mobile app’s account, you can delete its details by clicking on the Remove Blog button at the bottom of the screen …
As well as deleting sites from your mobile WordPress account, you can also add new sites in the Blogs section …
Comment Notifications
The settings in this section affect how your mobile device is notified about new comments posted on your site …
Enable blogs
Enable or disable comment notifications for all sites in your mobile WordPress account …
Update interval
Tap on Update interval to bring up the Update interval screen. Here you can select the interval you want your mobile app to check for any new comments posted on your WordPress site …
The Comment Notifications settings section also allows you to specify a number of options that will notify you when new comments have been posted on your WordPress site:
Play notification sound – Tick the checkbox to enable or disable this option
Vibrate – Tick the checkbox to enable or disable this option
Blink notification light – Tick the checkbox to enable or disable this option
Post Signature
In this section you can add a custom signature that will be added to all new posts published to your WordPress site from your mobile device.
To add a custom signature to new posts, tick the Add a signature to new posts checkbox and tap on the Post signature area …
This brings up the Post signature screen. Type in a custom signature to replace the default app’s signature and tap on OK to save …
Your custom signature will be added to all new posts published from your mobile device …
About
This section displays important information about your WordPress mobile application …
You can view information about your WordPress app, such as the version number, terms of service, privacy policy and the app developer …
You can also read information about the application’s Open Source license …
Congratulations! You now know how to use the WordPress Mobile App settings area.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
The most relaible theme guide that make things for you to manage and customise. The straight forward guide helps you to learn quicker and saves time.
You will discover how themes can save you thousands of dollars in a year on web development or website design cost.
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Learn from the guide to save lots of time and money on website development or website design costs and make customising your website design easy.
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Themes provide website owners with professional yet really inexpensive website templates that are easy to customize and could save you and your business hundreds of dollars on website development costs.
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In this blog post series on helping you understand WordPress features, we look at what WP themes are, how it can help your business and how WP themes can help you easily customize your website.
Powerful web management platforms like the WordPress CMS have effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners. This is a great news for businesses and individuals planning to build their own website which they can also manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed a site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, even many months!
The development of themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are and how they can help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your WordPress site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More businesses today have been benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that started several years ago. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what typically took place before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would discuss your project with a website developer or designer. Next, the design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with a professional web designer discussing design elements of your site, such as the, colours, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with the elements and codes written into the content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using link and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. A website template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web development companies to expand their services to include small businesses with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started using “template-based” web design services, templates started being created that offered various customizable features, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website building tools developed, website templates also began to evolve into website template “systems”, which allowed users and web designers to customize their web site’s visual elements.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was developed and helped to start a new online publishing revolution …
A WordPress theme pushes website template systems, even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a template system does, but also gives you more control over the management and customization aspects of all template features.
As explained in the official WordPress site …
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
As the above states, one of the unique features of the WordPress theme is that how your website looks to visitors externally in no way affects your site’s content management aspects.
Basically, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, settings, and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you choose as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing web code development skills. Just pick a theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial web design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Theme varies from minimal-looking, to stylish designs, that are quite spectacular and could typically cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
Benefits And Advantages Of WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Theme are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
WordPress has a large online community of commercial theme designers who, collectively, make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, such as pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to change themes as often as you want without disturbing the underlying content.
Many themes provide additional built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within your site’s administration interface.
Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. lap tops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can scroll, read and load your site on different device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will work correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
I hope this overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help your business save money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize a website.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress Tutorials Index
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In WordPress you can upload, store, and display a variety of file types (media) into your site’s content.
The most common file types are images, videos and audio files, but you can also use other file types such as PDF document files, spreadsheet files, code samples, etc.
Adding media to the WordPress Media Library allows you to upload photos and create image galleries usingan interface that makes uploading files and placing them into your posts and pages very easy.
Additionally, you can create image galleries very quickly with drag and drop reordering, inline caption editing, and simplified controls for layout, amongst other things.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to use the feature.
Note: Some settings such as specifying the size of thumbnail images and options for the location and structure of the upload directory (where your media files are stored) are controlled in the Media Settings section.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using the WordPress media library …
How To Use The WordPress Media Library: Step-By-Step Tutorial
You can upload and store various types of media files in your WordPress Library …
You can also upload files to your site without creating a post or page first. This allows you to upload files to use with posts and pages later and/or get a web link to a particular file that you can share.
To view all the files in your WordPress site’s Library, go to your navigation menu and click on Media>Library…
This brings up the Library screen ….
A table listing all of your files will display in the Library screen. In a later section of this tutorial we will cover all the features available in this section.
If you have not added any files to your Library, you will see an empty table …
How To Add Media Files To Your WordPress Media Library
To add files to your WordPress site’s Library, go to your navigation menu and click on Media>Add New…
You can also add new files by clicking on the Add New button in your Library screen …
A new screen called Upload New Media opens up containing the WordPress Uploader functions …
There are three options you can use to upload files to your site:
1) Drag-And-Drop: You can add multiple files to your Library by selecting a group of files and dragging them into the Drop files here area surrounded by the dashed border.
2) Select Files: This opens a window that lets you select a folder in your hard drive and upload files from your computer.
3) You can also use the Browser Uploader if you experience any problems using the multi-file uploader…
Note: the maximum upload size for your files is determined by your web hosting account settings. In the example screenshot above, the Maximum upload file size is showing as 64MB (MegaBytes). Your screen may show a different maximum limit.
If you are experiencing problems uploading files to your WordPress site, your limit size may be set too low. You could use an image editing application to resize the image, but it’s best to ask your web hosting company to increase your file upload settings, or see this tutorial: How To Increase The Maximum File Upload Size In WordPress
Let’s go through each of the file upload methods now …
Drop files here – Drag-and-Drop method
The drag-and-drop method is useful if you want to upload multiple files located in the same source folder. However, you can also use it to upload a single image.
Make sure that both the Upload New screen and the folder containing your image files are open and visible on your screen (you may have to resize their windows on your browser to see both of them at once).
Next select a single image, or multiple images by holding down the Shift or the CTRL button, then drag your selected files from your folder into the blue dotted area of the Upload New screen (in the Drop files here section) and release your mouse …
If you have selected multiple files, these will begin uploading …
Once your files have been uploaded, they will display in your Library …
Select Files Method
This method allows you to search for the location of your files (e.g. in your hard drive), then upload one or multiple files.
Click on Select Files in the Uploader, and locate the folder containing your files, then …
Select one or more files to upload and click Open in the File Upload window …
Selecting the file(s) you want to upload and clicking Open activates a progress bar on the Upload New Media screen …
You can also use this method to upload different media file types (e.g. audio and video files) from different folder locations on your hard drive.
Selected files are placed in a queue waiting to be uploaded …
Using The Browser Uploader Method
If you experience any problems uploading your files using the previous methods, then try using the browser uploader instead.
After clicking on the browser uploader link, a new screen appears. Click the Browser button, then locate the file you want to upload and click on the Upload button to import your file …
Click on Switch to the multi-file uploader to exit the browse uploader and return to the multi-file uploader …
Attaching Media Files To Posts And Pages
Typically, there are two ways to upload media to WordPress:
You can upload files into a Post or Page while creating or editing your Post or Page
You can upload files that is not related to a Post or Page yet.
If a file is uploaded within the edit screen of a post or page, it will automatically be attached to that post or page.
If a file is uploaded via the Library, then the file(s) will be unattached. The file(s) may become attached to a post or page when inserted into a post or page later, but you can also attach unattached items directly inside the Library feature …
For example, here is a screenshot of an image that was uploaded via the Library and that is currently unattached to any page or post …
Clicking on the Uploaded to > Attach link associated with an unattached file brings up a screen that allows you to associate the file with a page or post …
To do this, search for the page or post you want to attach the file to, the select it from the list and click the Select button …
Note: Media items are also “Posts” in their own right and can be displayed as such .
If the parent post of an attached media item is deleted, the item will become attached to the deleted post’s parent if it exists. If no parent post exists, the item will become unattached and available for re-attachment to another post or page.
Editing Media Files In The WordPress Media Library
Once a item is uploaded to the WordPress Media Library, it can be edited.
You can edit the item by hovering your mouse over it and clicking on the Edit link…
You can also edit the item by clicking on its file name and thumbnail image …
Uploaded media such as Videos, Audios, PDF documents, etc… allow you to edit features such as your File Title, Caption and Description …
Image files, on the other hand, offer far greater editing options than other media types …
Deleting Media Files From The WordPress Media Library
To permanently delete an item from the Library, hover your mouse over the item you want to delete and click on the Delete Permanently link …
Your media item will be permanently deleted …
See the Filtering Options section further below for instructions on how to delete multiple files.
Viewing Items Uploaded To The WordPress Media Library
You can view items you have uploaded to the WordPress Library by hovering your mouse over the item and clicking on the View link …
The item will be displayed as a separate post …
Additional Information – Table Of Media
Library items are displayed in a table, with all of your media items listed by row, and the newest uploaded item listed first …
The Table of Media contains the following columns:
[ ] – Check the box to select an item. Selected items can be processed by a Bulk Action.
Thumbnail – A thumbnail image of the item is displayed in this column.
File – This column displays the name of the file (Note: this is not the same as the filename of the uploaded media) …
The file’s type (e.g TXT, PNG, JPG, PDF) is displayed below the file’s name …
Author – This column lists the user who uploaded the item, or the file’s assigned author. Note: Files can be assigned a different author than the user who uploaded the file. See this tutorial for details on how to change authors for files.
Uploaded to – This column displays whether a file is unattached, or the Post or Page the file is attached to and the date of that Post or Page. Click on the title of the Post or Page to view that Post or Page in an edit Screen. If a media file is unattached, an “Attach” link will appear allowing the file to be attached to selected Posts or Pages.
Comment Bubble – This column displays the number of comments a file has received …
Date – This column displays the time or date the file was uploaded.
Sort the Columns
The column headings in the Table of Media can be clicked to sort items in ascending or descending order.
Hover over the column title (e.g. File), and the up arrow or down arrow will display. Click the heading to change the sort order of your media files …
Media Library Page Navigation
The number of items uploaded to your Library is displayed in the Table of Media, as well as the number of pages (if there is more than one page of media uploaded).
You can use the navigation arrows to skip to the first or last page, or to move backwards or forwards one page at a time. Also, you can enter a page number in the box showing the current page number to go directly to that page …
You can also specify the number of media items to display per page (see next section below).
Media Library Screen Options
The Screen Options allow you to choose which columns are displayed, or not displayed, in the Table of Media.
Click the Screen Options tab on the top right-hand corner of your Library screen …
A list of columns is displayed with a check-box next to each column. Check the box for each column that you want displayed in the Table of Media, or uncheck the box to hide that column.
You can also specify the number of items to display per page in the Table of Media. Remember to click the Apply button when finished to apply your new settings …
Click the Screen Options tab to close the Screen Options box.
Search Media
Above the Table, to the right, is a search box where you can enter one or more search terms and click the Search Media button to search and display all the files that include your search terms …
Your search results are displayed in the Table of Media …
Note: Click All in the Library menu to reset your page and display all files in the Table of Media …
Filtering Options
At the top of the Media Library screen are links such as All, Images, Audio, Video, Unattached, etc. that allow you to display only media files of that type in the Table of Media when the link is clicked …
Below these links are the Bulk Actions drop-down menu, Apply button, Show all dates drop-down menu and the Filter button …
Bulk Actions Drop-Down Menu – You can perform Bulk Actions on one or more media files selected in the Table of Media.Current;y, the only Bulk Action allowed for media files is to permanently delete all selected files.
To use the Bulk Actions filter, (1) select the checkbox(es) for all media files you want to delete. Do this by ticking each box individually, or click on the column header checkbox to select all media files (unchecking the header or footer title bar checkbox will cause all entries in the table to be unchecked), then (2) select Delete Permanently from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu,and (3) click the Apply button …
Show all Dates – This dropdown allows you to select which media files are displayed in the Table of Media by date. By default, “Show all dates” is selected and all of your files are displayed.
To filter media files by upload date, (1) select one of the available dates from the Show all dates drop-down menu, and (2) click on the Filter button to apply the filter selection …
Plugins
If you plan to use media frequently, there are a number of plugins you can add to your WordPress site to enhance your Library functionality and help you better manage and organize your uploaded media, like Media Library Assistant …
Congratulations! Now you know how to use the WordPress Media Library.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress Themes – Powerful, Flexible & Cost-Effective Web Design
Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress has simplified the process of web design and web development.
This is great news for anyone wanting an online presence that they can fully manage themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you wanted a website, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed.
In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress Themes came along: The video below explains how to customise your WordPress.
First, you would discuss your project requirements with a web developer or web designer. Then, the “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time spent with someone with web design skills going over the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc. of your web site .
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along will all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
Your website will be ready Once everything worked the way it should and looked the way you imagined it to look.
Then, web design “templates” came along. Web templates allow the content to be separated from the presentation in web design. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the web development process and allowed for mass-production of web documents. This lowered production costs and suited the needs of clients with lower marketing budgets.
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates were developed that offered a number of customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colors, pick styles, rearrange layouts and so on.
As websites and web editor applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into web template “systems”, which controlled all of the visual aspects of a website, i.e. its web design.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new web revolution.
About WordPress Themes
“Themes” take the concept of a web template “system” further.
The “theme” system controls the design aspects of a website and allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does, but it also gives you more control over the “look and feel” and presentation of the material on your website.
According to the official WordPress site …
A Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. It modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. It may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
Because WordPress is Open Source software, it allows professional web designers from all over the world to create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are available to users. They are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives users access to thousands of great themes at no cost …
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of site owners.
They range from simple, stylish and professional looking, to visually stunning and highly creative designs that would normally cost thousands of dollars to commission, but are surprisingly very inexpensive to buy.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of some that you can have immediate access to further down the page.
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the unique benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
It has a large and thriving (and growing) community of professional web designers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
It gives sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to change themes as often as you like (and hence the “look and feel” of your site) without affecting the content.
Many provide various features and options that allow you to easily customize the theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look and style to suit your preferences.
Many are are built using a framework that allows you to update your theme to a newer theme version without losing any of your unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
It allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically from your site’s administration interface.
Themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium” WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.
You can easily install a theme on your site without any web design knowledge required. Simply choose a theme, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design with just a couple of mouse clicks …
With WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get started with any theme you like, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many WordPress Theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust itself to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile devices) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Now that you understand WordPress themes a little better, let’s show you where to find great themes for your website.
If you are looking for “mouth-watering” web design, or professional quality yet highly affordable WordPress web design themes with a distinctive look, unique customizable options and ongoing support, you can search through the theme galleries of the “Premium” theme design agencies listed below:
Solo Stream
Solo Stream provides WordPress users with a selection of high quality professional themes and the option of accessing all through a WordPress theme membership.
(click on the images above to browse more SoloStream themes)
Woo Themes
Woo Themes creates stunning eye-catching themes and offer a membership option that allows you to access all themes in their growing theme collection.
(click on the images above to browse more WooThemes themes)
ThemeForest allows many professional WordPress theme developers to showcase their designs through their online marketplace. There are well over 7,000 premium themes to choose from (some starting from as little as $1) …
(click on the images above to browse more ThemeForest themes)
Store Front specializes in e-commerce themes for WordPress. Their themes integrate well with powerful e-commerce platforms and plugins.
(click on the images above to browse more StoreFront themes)
StudioPress
StudioPress provides WordPress themes based on a framework that allows you to quickly and easily build a professional website that is highly search optimized, and provides auto-updating design architecture, turn-key designs with beautiful frames for your content and unprecedented control of the framework.
One low price entitles you to receive unlimited support and updates, and install your themes on unlimited domains. for more details, click here: StudioPress.
(click on the images above to browse more StudioPress themes)
A word of warning: When choosing FREE themes for your site, we recommend sticking to the ones listed in the official WordPress theme repository.
A number of websites offering “Free” WordPress Themes have sprung up around the web and some of these have been found to be distributing themes containing malicious code. In fact, some of these sites will even come up at the top of Google’s search results for search phrases like “free WordPress themes”. It’s best, therefore, to stick with the official WordPress theme directory, or well known and trusted sites.
If you have any doubts about whether a theme installed on your site may contain potentially malicious or unwanted code, you can use a free WordPress plugin like Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) to scan your files. This plugin searches the source files of every installed theme on your site for signs of malicious code and presents you with a report as shown in the screenshot below …
Hopefully this information has given you a better understanding of themes and why many people choose WordPress when it comes to building their websites.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress Plugins – Adding New Functionality To Your Website
WordPress is a powerful blogging platform because of its ability to add new applications that will enhance the performance of your website.
In WordPress, these applications are called “plugins“.
Watch the video below that shows you how to install plugins.
Typically, adding a new feature to your website or enhancing its functionality involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, this cost can be significant, especially if web developers have to create new code or modify programs or scripts to integrate with your existing site.
When setting up a website, businesses will often either spend money upfront buying features that they may or may not need, or pay extra later for new features, enhancements, and/or customizations.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could:
1) Get your web presence up and running quickly with a simple, easy-to-manage and professional-looking website that communicates exactly what your business is about, and then …
2) As the need arises, easily add new software modules with the click of a mouse button that would integrate seamlessly with your existing website and give your site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …
3) Cost not a single cent extra to download and install on your site?
Well, that’s exactly what plugins allow you to do!
If you own a smartphone, then most likely you are familiar with the concept of the “app”. Apps is like a software program that can be instantly downloaded and installed on your phone to give your phone added functionality. Some apps are free to download, and some apps cost a little money.
plugins are similar to phone apps.
Because WordPress distributes its application as Open Source software and makes its code publicly available, anyone can create, modify and customize any portion of the code to enhance and contribute to the core software application. This has allowed many third-party software developers to create more applications that seamlessly “plug into” the WordPress platform than you can imagine.
Plugins – Benefits And Advantages
Plugins let you start off with a basic, simple website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your website easily and inexpensively.
Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can fully manage themselves. Most plugins typically work “out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality. Some plugins are a little more complex and require some initial configuration.
Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And Often 100% FREE!
Just like themes, thousands of plugins are made available for WordPress users and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!
Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others
Show countdown timers (for expiring special offers, coupons, etc …)
Add coupons and special offers
Display personal (and personalized) greetings
And hundreds of other features!
As you can see, the possibilities of what you can do with a WordPress site are just about endless when you add plugins.
If you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with separate login details for every member …
You can use free plugins to enhance your site in so many ways. From adding new features that will improve the “user experience” of your site …
To extend your site’s reach across social media networks and search engines …
You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive Premium (i.e. paid) plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate the process of managing customer testimonials and booking events on your site …
And even run a complete bookings and reservation system on your site, all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create these applications for you …
You can take advantage of the WordPress built-in commenting features and add plugins that will make your site even more interactive and allow you to better engage with your visitors, customers and registered users / members. …
For example, visitors on your site can:
Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using WordPress built-in comments, or Facebook comments (which get shared throughout the visitor’s Facebook pages giving your site additional exposure).
Share and bookmark your content with other online users on all major social networking and social bookmarking sites.
Contact you via contact forms
Engage in online discussions with you and other customers / members of your site through forums
Engage via live chats (text and video/audio)
Call your business directly from a mobile phone while visiting your site
Open support tickets via a customer support helpdesk
And so much more …
You can even integrate complex “Back End” third party applications and solutions with a WordPress “Front End” site. This allows you to manage the marketing content that your visitors see on your site, while your third-party applications handle the “business” end without visitors leaving your site …
Plugins – Some Useful Tips
There are many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s performance and loading times. It also means more maintenance and more possibilities of conflicts and errors arising.
Only keep the plugins you really need and use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site.
Free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. Even when choosing paid plugins, check around to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, etc.
If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before downloading it or continuing to use it.
Always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins can cause errors and may have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious users.
As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important feature of WordPress.
Hopefully this information has given you a better understanding of plugins what they are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your WordPress site or blog.
We provide detailed step-by-step tutorials on how to use WordPress plugins and how to configure many of the most popular and useful WordPress plugins.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
In this tutorial you will learn how to edit your WordPress user profile.
You will also learn how to set up an “about the author” information box that will be associated with all the content you post online and how to use this feature to better promote yourself and/or your business online.
The Profile section lets you specify how your name will be displayed on your site, your e-mail address for administrative purposes, and other personal information and personal options related to your WordPress user account.
Watch the short video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about editing WordPress user profiles …
To edit your user profile, go to the Profile screen, which is accessible from the main navigation menu by going to Users > Your Profile …
Or by clicking on the “Howdy, Your Name” link at the top of your WordPress admin section and selecting “Edit My Profile” …
The Profile section contains a number of subsections that allow you to manage information about your user account:
Personal Options
Name
Contact Info
About Yourself
Change Password
Let’s go through each of these options now …
User Profile Fields
You can always access your profile by clicking on your username, which is displayed in the top right hand side of the screen and selecting “Edit My Profile” from the drop-down menu
You can ignore this section, unless you specifically want to customize aspects of your WordPress site administration area that are only viewable to you (and no one else) such as disabling the visual editor when writing, changing the admin area’s colour scheme, or enabling keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation. Tip: If you ever experience issues when trying to add code to your posts or pages (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor button in this section
Important: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” checkbox enabled to display the Toolbar in your WordPress administration area. To learn more about the WordPress toolbar, see this tutorial: Your WordPress Site Administration Area
The username cannot be changed in the User Profile section by anyone, including the site administrator (although you can change your username if you know how to edit your WordPress database, but this will affect your login, as this username is required for logging into your WordPress site!). You can, however, change the data in the First Name and Last Name fields.
If you want to display a different author name on your posts other than the one you originally registered or installed WordPress with, then change the Nickname (required) field and select your new nickname from the Display name publicly as drop down menu. You can add multiple nicknames. All your posts, comments will display your new nickname, instead of the name you registered with. Tip: Go here for a step-by-step tutorial on How To Change The Author Name On Existing WordPress Posts.
Make sure that your correct email address is entered in the Email (required) field.
Enter your website address in the Website field. If you have another website or business blog that you want to display as your website, then enter the URL for that website or blog instead. You can enter details for the other Contact Info section fields, or just ignore these.
In this section, add a personal or business description for your visitors and blog readers.
Use the New Password section only if you are required to change your login password. You will need to enter your new password twice before the system can accept the password change.
Click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile.
Note: Adding certain plugins to your site (e.g. social media features), may insert or remove fields in your User Profile screen (e.g. add a field for “twitter” username, etc…)
User Profile: Important Notes
WordPress only requires your e-mail address and a nickname. Your email address is used only for your blog administration.
Your email address is never sent to any other site (including WordPress) and it is never displayed on your site (unless you publish it, or use a specific WordPress theme that displays your email address).
Only registered users of your blog have access to the e-mail address you provide.
Each user’s email address must be unique.
WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Information
Your WordPress Profile section has a number of fields that allow you to enter additional contact information such as your AIM screen name, your Yahoo! MessengerID, and your Jabber / Google Talk name …
Normally, you would just leave these fields empty. Some WordPress theme developers, however, may choose to customize their templates to display this and other contact information.
If this is the case, then you can choose to set up accounts with these services (if you haven’t already done so) and then add your details into the appropriate fields in the Contact Info section.
Currently, WordPress provides default fields for the following services:
AIM
AIM is a desktop and mobile chat application that allows you to chat with friends or collaborate on a group project online …
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger allows you to connect and chat with friends from any web browser or mobile device …
Jabber / Google Talk
Google Chat software allows you to chat with friends and share files online …
Note: If you plan to run a corporate website, you may not want some of the Profile screen fields displayed to users. If this is the case, see the “tips” section below to learn how to remove unnecessary fields from the User Profile screen.
Useful Tips Related To Your User Profile
Tip #1: Your user profile gives you an additional opportunity to promote your business to your site visitors.
A link to the author is added to every post published on your site …
Clicking on the author link takes you to the Author Archives section, where site readers can learn more about you (or other authors registered as users on your site) and see other posts that you (or other authors) have published …
You can add hyperlinks and simple text formatting like bold and italicized text to enhance your author description and further promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, to your site visitors …
This is done by adding HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section …
Tip #2 (Advanced User):How To Hide User Profile Fields
If you plan to run a corporate website, you can install a simple WordPress plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that will automatically hide the following fields from your site’s user profiles and creation pages when activated:
Colour Profile
Keyboard Shortcuts
Toolbar
AIM
Jabber
Yahoo IM
Web site URL
Biography Description
User Role (every new user is created as Subscriber)
If you need to learn how to install and activate WordPress plugins, see this tutorial: How To Use WordPress Plugins
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress makes publishing and formatting content online easy by providing users with the option of using a rich, visual editor that does not require knowledge or experience of code (e.g. HTML) to create professional-looking web pages with embedded images, media, etc …
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to use the Visual Editor – what the menu buttons do, how to format text, how to resize the text editor, and more!
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial in this section to learn how to use the Visual Editor …
A Simple Guide To Formatting Text In WordPress
WordPress comes with a simple and easy-to-use feature-rich WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visual content editor that lets you format text, create hyperlinks, add images and media to your posts and pages, and so much more, just by clicking a few buttons …
Visual Editor Buttons Explained
If you have used a text editor like MS Word before, then the visual editor interface should seem quite familiar to you…
Here is a brief description of the function of each of the WordPress Visual Editor buttons shown in the screenshot above:
1. Title Field – Here’s where you enter the title of your post or page.
2. Permalink – Click on the “edit” button to change the permalink text of your post or page. This is useful if you want to shorten or change the URL of your post or page.
3. Media Manager – Click this button to upload, manage and insert media into your post (e.g. pictures, videos, audio, etc) from your computer, an external URL, or from your site’s own media library.
4. WordPress Visual Editor Tab – Click this tab to access the WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
5. Text Editor Tab – Click this tab to view and work with the code behind your content. Switching between these two tabs allows you to add content in the WYSIWIG mode, and then make changes to the underlying code.
6. Bold – Highlight text and click this button to make the words bold.
7. Italics – Highlight text and click this button to make the words italicized.
8. Strikethrough – Formats selected text as strikethrough
9. Unordered list – Use this button to create an unordered list like the example below:
List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
etc …
10. Ordered list – Use this button to create an ordered list like the example below:
List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
etc …
11. Block Quote. Use this function to create a block quote. Simply select the text you want to display in the block quote and click the button.
To exit the quote press the “Enter” key to create a line of space and then click the block quote button again and this will end the command and return your text to normal.
12, 13 & 14. Alignment buttons – Use these buttons to align text and objects inserted into your posts or pages:
12. Align Left
13. Align Center
14. Align Right
Press the “Enter” key and leave a line of space to end the alignment command
16. Unlink. Select and highlight any text you want to unlink and click this button to remove the hyperlink.
17. Insert More Tag. Clicking this button will insert a “read more” link wherever you have placed your cursor. All text added to a post prior to inserting this tag will display as normal on your post when published, but all content added to the post after this tag will only be displayed to visitors after they click on the “read more” link …
Important: The “Read More” tag does not work on WordPress “Pages”. It is only used on the Home page that shows your latest posts (i.e. your Blog Page).
18. Spell Checker. Use this button to check the spelling of your content. Use the drop-down menu to select a different language …
19. Toggle Full Screen Mode. Clicking this button will toggle your screen between full screen & editor normal screen. This is useful for checking placement of items on the page and for working on your content free of other page element distractions …
20. Show/Hide Kitchen Sink. Click this button to toggle the WordPress visual editor between minimal mode (one row of buttons) and enhanced mode (two rows of buttons).
21. Format Style. Use this feature to format text. When you create a new post or page and start typing into the content area, the text is formatted as “paragraph” (i.e. normal) by default.
To create headings for your content, highlight an area of text and select different format styles from the drop down menu (e.g. heading sizes ranging from h1 to h6) …
22. Underline. Select an area of text and click this button to underline text.
23. Align Full. Use this button to justify your content and display your text neater on your page. This button will adjust the spacing in your text to try and square up every line of text so that the line ends are not “ragged” (as is the case when text is aligned left by default).
24. Select Text Color. Select an area of text, then click on this button and select from the color options in the dropdown menu to change the color of your selected text area …
Note: You can expand the selection of colors available in the color palette by clicking on the More colors button …
You will then have access to an almost limitless choice of colors.
Useful Tip: If you are familiar with the Hexadecimal (HEX) color system, you can just type in the code for the specific color you want into the Color field.
The example below shows the HEX color codes for some of the most commonly used “web safe” colors (i.e. colors that display correctly across most browsers and monitors) …
25. Paste as Plain Text. Click the button marked with a “T” to paste the content of your clipboard into your content editor area as plain text.
26. Paste from Word. Click the button marked with a “W” to paste in text from MS Word.
Note: Pasting text directly from MS Word into your WordPress content editor can introduce unnecessary code into your content and result in errors. MS Word and some other text editors store code that is not directly visible when copying text from a document into the clipboard …
27. Remove formatting. If you notice unwanted formatting code in your text (or your content isn’t displaying as you intended after your post or page has been published), then select all text and click this button to clear all formatting on the page.
Tip: Here is a quick and useful way to test and remove any errors that you suspect may be caused by poor formatting tags without losing your original content.
Before using the “Remove formatting” function, switch to the “Text” tab, then select and copy all of your text to the clipboard …
Paste the content from your clipboard into a new plain text file, then go back to your content and go through the “Remove formatting” process. Now, if something goes wrong, at least you have a backup copy of your content with all the original formatting preserved.
29. Outdent – Click this button to remove indented text & return text to left alignment on the page.
30. Indent – Click this button to indent one or more lines of text to the right.
Here’s a line of indented text (indented by pressing “enter” button).
This line has been indented further to the right by pressing the indent button one more time.
31. Undo. Click this button to undo your previous commands. This is useful if you have accidentally deleted a section of text, or formatted text wrongly and need to backtrack.
32. Redo. Click this button to reinstate a change or deletion that you have undone.
33. Rich Editor Help. Click this button to bring up the WordPress Editor Help feature …
Tip #1: WordPress Content Editor – Power User Shortcuts
As well as using the menu buttons in your Visual Editor toolbar to insert and format content, you can also use the key combinations below as you type. This can help you create and format content faster …
Tip #2 – How To Resize The WordPress Visual Editor Text Box
WordPress provides a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Visual Editor for creating and editing your posts and pages.
By default, WordPress normally displays around a dozen lines of text in its WYSIWYG Editor …
Depending on your content writing or editing needs, this may not be enough.
So, how can we make the text editor larger?
Well … before the WordPress 3.5 version upgrade, one of the options for increasing the size of the WordPress text editor, was to go into your Writing Settings area and specify the number of lines you wanted to display in the post box …
Although the above option no longer seems to be available post WordPress version 3.5, it’s still quite easy to resize your text editor.
All you have to do, is log into your WordPress admin, then go into your Post or Page area (create new or edit), and click and drag the bottom right-hand corner of your post box to resize it …
Your Text Editor Box is now resized …
Another useful way to enlarge your working space, is to click on the Distraction Free Writingmode button (Alt + Shift + W) in your WYSIWYG toolbar menu …
This gives you a “full screen” mode to work with when editing or reviewing your content …
To return to your previous setup, just click on the Exit fullscreen link at the top of your screen …
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images and information on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s own website and sites that providePremium WordPress Services
Having a basic knowledge of HTML can be useful when creating, editing or formatting content on your WordPress site.
In this tutorial you will learn the basics Guide for using the code in WordPress.
Note: You don’t need to know HTML to use WordPress. WordPress has a powerful built-in visual editor that allows you to easily format your content simply by clicking on a few buttons. As you will learn below, however, knowing a little bit will save you time and money.
Watch the short video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about BASIC HTML for WordPress content …
Having a basic knowledge can be useful when running and managing your own web presence.
For example, here are some situations where having a basic understanding of basic HTML can help you save time and money:
You want to add some formatted text and a hyperlinked image into an area of your sidebar or direct visitors to your contact form, newsletter subscription page, etc… into your user profile description. If you know basic HTML, you can do this very quickly without using code editors.
You decide to outsource your content creation to a freelance writer and receive back files containing codes. Knowing basic HTML helps you better proof your content before you accept the work.
Someone else is responsible for creating and publishing content on your site. You see a couple of text formatting errors or hyperlinks that are either missing, or pointing to the wrong destination. Knowing basic HTML can help you fix simple things in your content very quickly without having to ask (or pay) a webmaster, or web designer to do it for you.
Knowing basic HTML can help you communicate more effectively with web developers and web designers when discussing your website requirements, and also you sound more confident and knowledgeable when presenting your website ideas or requesting custom work to be done on your site.
What Is HTML?
HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language.
According to Wikipedia’s definition of HTML …
It’s the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
It’s written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>, although some tags, known as empty elements, are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In between these tags web designers can add text, tags, comments and other types of text-based content.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.
The elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML lets images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts written in languages such as Java Script, which affect the behaviour of HTML web pages.
Important: Like everything else on the Internet, HTML is also subject to change and some of these changes will affect WordPress.
Currently, it’s in version 5 (also called HTML5), and this change has introduced a number of new “tags” to keep up with new advances in software and browser technology. As some of the tags used in older and even recent versions of WordPress are being phased out of HTML5, you can expect that WordPress will also keep updating its software to remain compatible with industry-wide coding standards.
Using Basic HTML for WordPress
WordPress provides users with a choice of adding content to posts and pages using either a rich Visual Editor (also called a WYSIWYG editor, which stands for What You See Is What You Get) and a TextEditor that allows you to input and work directly with code like HTML and other script languages (e.g. Javascript) when adding or editing your content. …
We address the WordPress Visual Editor and how to create / add content to Posts and Pages in separate tutorials.
HTML Tags Allowed In WordPress
The WordPress Content Management System (CMS) and publishing platform allows you to insert many commonly-used HTML tags in the Text editor, including the tags below
Here are some examples of simple, practical applications that use some of the HTML tags listed above
As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to know HTML to use WordPress, but it can be useful to know the basics of HTML. In certain situations, this may even save you time and money.
If you are interested in learning more about using HTML, then see the link below for Free HTML tutorials:
The Basic HTML for WordPress Text Editor Explained
The WordPress Text Editor allows you to see, edit and work directly with code like HTML and other script languages (e.g. Javascript) when inputting content into your posts and pages.
By default, the WordPress Text Editor comes with a number of standard menu buttons already installed
Here is a brief description of the function of each of the Text Editor menu buttons (refer to the screenshot above):
b: <strong></strong> Use this HTML tag for strong emphasis of text (i.e. bold).
i : <em></em> Use this HTML tag for emphasis of text (i.e. italicize).
hyperlink: <a href=”http://example.com”></a> Use this HTML tag to add a hyperlink to your selected text
b-quote – <blockquote></blockquote> Use this HTML tag for quoted or cited text.
del: <del></del> Use this HTML tag to label text considered deleted from a post. Most browsers typically display this as striked-through text.
ins: <ins></ins> Use this HTML tag to label text considered inserted into a post or page. Most browsers typically display this as underlined text.
img: <img src=”http://www.yourdomain.com/img/image.jpg” alt=”image description” /> Use this HTML tag to insert an image into your post or page.
ul: <ul></ul> Use this HTML tag to insert an unordered list in your post. Unordered lists typically display as a bulleted list of items.
ol: <ol></ol> Use this HTML tag to insert a numbered list. Items in an ordered list are typically numbered (just like the list you are reading now!).
li: <li></li> Use this HTML tag to insert or turn your selected text into a list item. (This tag should be used in conjunction with the ul or ol tag).
code: <code></code> Use this HTML tag for preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier.
more: <!–more–> Use this WordPress tag to break a post into “teaser” and content sections. For example, if you type a few paragraphs, then insert this tag and compose the rest of your post, users will only see the first paragraphs of your post or page with a hyperlink ((more…)), which when clicked on, will display the rest of the post’s content.
lookup – Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
Close Tags – Closes any open HTML tags left open. Please note: proof your content after using this function to ensure that all tags have formatted your text correctly.
Full screen – click this button to work in “full screen” mode (see screenshot example below). You can toggle between the Visual Editor and Text Editor modes, insert media and hyperlinks and update your content while in “full screen” mode. Click Exit Full screen to return to the normal text editor display
Some Useful Tips Related To Using Basic HTML for WordPress
Tip #1: Some sections of your WordPress site like some sidebar “widgets” and user profile areas allow you to use HTML-formatted content, but they don’t provide you with a Visual Content (WYSIWYG) editor like the one that is built-in to the editing screens of your Posts and Pages
If you want to design or edit web pages using HTML, there are several FREE HTML Editor software applications that you can download. A popular FREE editor, for example, is KompoZer.
KompoZer is Free Open Source software built as a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. It’s designed to be extremely easy to use, especially for non-technical computer users who just want to create attractive, professional-looking web pages without needing to know HTML or web coding.
If, however, you have no need or desire to go into anything of a technical nature, but would still like to be able to easily insert and format content containing basic HTML tags into areas of your site like your sidebar, author profile, etc…, then see the tutorial below for a really simple solution that involves no extra time and requires no additional downloads.
Tutorial: How To Add Formatted Text To The “About Yourself” Section Of Your Profile
By default, whenever a post is published on your WordPress site, a link to the author is displayed at the bottom of the post
Clicking on the author link takes you to the Author Archives section, where site readers can learn more about you (or other authors registered as users on your site) and see other posts that you (or other authors) have published
You can add hyperlinks and simple text formatting like bold and italicized text to enhance your author description and further promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, for your site visitors
You do this by adding HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section
You will notice that, although the Biographical Info text box allows you to paste HTML-formatted content into the text area, it doesn’t actually provide you with a content editor to do so
This means that you either have to type in the content using the code, or paste the content with the HTML already embedded into this text field.
Let’s “paste the content” into this field using the simple method described below.
Create a new post and type in your content into the Visual Editor (if you need help with this step, see this tutorial: How To Create A New WordPress Post).
In this case, we want to create author’s description
You will Format the content using the Visual Editor tab (if you need help with this step, see this tutorial: Using The WordPress Visual Editor). …
Continue working in the Visual Editor tab until you have added all of the formatting you want to display in your author description. Please note that you will only be able to use simple formatting in your author description such as hyperlinks, bold, underline and italicized text
Once you create your content, switch over to the Text Editor and copy all of the content you have just created to your clipboard
Go to your profile by selecting Users > Your Profile from the main navigation menu …
Scroll down to the About Yourself section and paste the content from your clipboard into the Biographical Info text area
Click the Update Profile button to save your changes
Congratulations You have just created an author description for your content and formatted it using basic HTML!
Tip #2 (Advanced WP User): You can enhance the function of your WordPress Text Editor using plugins.
For example, you can add a Free WordPress plugin to your site called Extensible HTML Editor Buttons that allows you to have better control of settings for HTML tags like div and span, for example, as well as add custom buttons and additional function to your text editor …
This plugin allows you to add your own custom buttons to the WordPress Text Editor toolbar. For example, you can add an H1, H2, H3 button to make adding headers to your content easier …
Tip #3 (Advanced WP User): By default WordPress does not allow some HTML tags to be used for security reasons (e.g. codes such as embed, frame, iframe, form, input, object, text area and others) .
If you experience any problems adding common basic HTML for wordpress tags into your content that are allowed to be used in WordPress, try disabling the visual editor in your user profile …
After disabling the visual editor and saving your new profile settings, go back to your post or page and reinsert the content with the problematic HTML tags, then save or publish your post.
If the above suggestion fixes the issues you were having with adding HTML to your content, go back to the Profile page, reactivate the visual editor, and check to see if the HTML code is still working fine with the visual editor restored.
Note: If the above suggestion does not fix the issue and you continue experiencing problems adding HTML code to your site, you may need to look at other options. This may include:
Asking someone with experience troubleshooting WordPress errors to help you
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Are you losing business because your website was badly designed? Learn the simplest and most inexpensive way to repair site design problems.
In this article we’ll show you the simplest and most inexpensive way to fix issues with your website.
Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed web site can end up costing you valuable business.
In a world where beautiful design matters, the design of your web site is very important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitor see and this can influence their decision to buy your products and use your services.
We mostly do it online. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we may fire up our laptop and go visit a website before taking the next step.
Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about what to do next?
The way your site looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately proceed.
Let’s take a look at a few key design problems that can affect your web site:
Website Design Issues
Typical design issues that can impact your user’s perception about your site include:
Colour – Poor colour combinations can affect your website’s results. This also applies to text and background colour. There are tools that can help you select web colours correctly and even safe web colour tools to ensure that the colours you select will display correctly across various systems. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unappealing, outdated and just plain old ugly graphic elements can result in users quickly losing interest. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or excessive use of design elements.
Layout – How your site is structured can have a significant impact in the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links and other useful objects.
Responsiveness – As online information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that your web design is responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers and platforms, you will incur significant loss of customers.
Website Functionality Issues
Common website functionality problems include:
Sub par functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Sub par functionality is not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organisation. It’s important to make sure that all your links, videos and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, these problems are related to factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unknown to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that all issues get corrected as soon as possible.
Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discount coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.
Poor User Experience
Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-constructed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.
A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to vent their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.
Here are just some common issues that can lead to a poor user experience:
Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that users are given instructions about how to download and access your information.
Organisation – If your site isn’t organised and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also existing customers. Providing features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clearly-defined sections where topic-related content can be easily found provides users with a good user experience.
Stimulating Features – Customers stay longer on sites that are user friendly, well organised, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks which point to your product pages with eye-popping images alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
User Interactivity – Another area that helps customers decide to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like features that let users comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly within your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimisation is important.
Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.
As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying customers, but also existing clients as well.
What if you found this post because you currently have an existing website with design problems that are affecting your business?
First, understand that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take some time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if what needs doing requires rewriting code extensively.
If you are considering getting a new website built or overhauling an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress content publishing platform.
We currently publish more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:
WordPress – Unique Web Design Features
WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you easily modify the look of your entire website in minutes.
There are thousands of great-looking themes for WordPresssite owners available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or they can be bought for a relatively small price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.
Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with a flexible and customization options for changing design settings on your site like colour, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.
WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability
Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides users with modular features through add-on applications called “plugins.”
WP plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited new functionality.
Earlier in this post we looked at issues in areas like sub par functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could cost you customers.
Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will do what you want your site to do.
If you want a plugin that will notify you about any issues detected on your website, such as links not working, videos not playing, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!
If you want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.
And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.
WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience
In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you provide website users with a great user experience.
WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and engaging user experience that will keep them coming back for more.
As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.
Hopefully now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website Design and how WordPress can help you build a better online presence. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP website publishing platform, please see our related posts section.
Have we helped you become a more productive WordPress user? Feel free to comment below or take a moment to share this information with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Disclaimer This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product details used in this review have been supplied from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WordPress Services
How To Schedule Your Posts In WordPress using the Workflow Automation Feature
WordPress has a really neat feature that lets you schedule posts. In this tutorial, you will learn how to schedule articles in WordPress.
WordPress has a really cool feature that allows you to postdate or backdate posts. This is a very useful feature that many WP site owners haven’t discovered yet.
Publishing fresh content on the WordPress site on a regular basis helps you get more pages indexed on search engines, drive new prospective customers to and keep your site readers coming back for more.
There may be instances, however, where you may not want content to show immediately.
For example, here are some situations when you may not want to show a WordPress post immediately after adding it to the WordPress CMS:
You travel a lot but you still want blog posts being published on your blog while you’re gone.
You would like to remove a previously published post and automatically it again at a specific time/date later.
You want to start publishing a daily post with the latest news about a certain topic for your blog readers, but they live in a different time zone than you. You want them to receive your updates every day before they start work, but this means that you’d have to get up at 3:30 am to publish your blog post.
You set aside one day each week to create a whole week’s worth of blog posts, or you outsource your article writing to freelance writers who send you many articles each month, but you don’t want to publish all of your new content at the same time!
You launch a private content membership area and would like to “drip-feed” content to members over a period of time.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just add a bunch of blog posts to your blog in one go, and then have it automatically “drip-fed” to your blog so that only one new blog post got published each day, or week, or every few days?
You could then implement a “set and forget” system for scheduling and publishing fresh content to your site that would keep your visitors regularly engaged, and be free to work on other areas of the business … or leave for a while and know that your blogging strategy is still working for you.
Well … with WordPress you can! You can set a date in the future to publish your blog posts and WordPress will schedule and automatically publish or republish these exactly as you have set.
In the tutorial below you will learn how to schedule WP posts to publish at a later date/time, as well as time-saving tips on how to automate certain aspects of publishing your content for scheduling.
Complete the tutorial below to learn more about Work Flow AutomationFeature in WordPress.
How To Schedule your Posts in WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial.
WordPress allows you to easily modify the date and time of your published blog posts, including setting exact dates and times in the future. This lets you create or add posts to your website, which can then be pre-set to go live at any given date and time of your choice.
You can schedule WordPress posts to publish at a later date using the Quick Edit feature when viewing a list of all your posts, or you can schedule them as you’re adding or editing new or existing blog posts.
Scheduling Posts In WordPress Using The Quick Edit Function
To schedule WP posts using the Quick Edit method,
Log into your WP admin area and choose Posts > All Posts …
In your Posts page, find the Post you want to edit, then hover your mouse over the post title to display the options menu and click on Quick Edit…
The Quick Edit feature expands to reveal all the the “Quick Edit” options for editing the Post …
Go to the “Date” section …
WordPress allows you to edit the date and time of your post, simply by changing the values in the fields and selecting options from the drop-down menu …
Tip: You can schedule blog posts in WordPress in the future or backdate post dates to show content as having been published prior to the original date of publication.
This is great if, for example, you’ve been away and would like to publish an account of the day-to-day events and would like your blog posts to match the actual dates you’ve been away. Another reason to backdate the blog posts would be to give a brand new site a little bit more of an “established” look. Similarly, you can set all content to publish in the future if you plan to launch the blog after getting everything set up and configured.
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Change the date of your post to whatever date (and/or time) you would like your post to show as having been published (future or past) …
Note: To schedule a post as being published in the PM, you will need to use the 24-hour clock. For example, to display 1:00 PM enter 13:00 in the post scheduling section. The time your post will actually end up being published is determined by the location settings specified in your Settings > General section.
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Click the Update button to save your changes …How to Schedule your Posts in WordPress
Your post will now show as being “Scheduled” in your Posts section …
Your post status will also display as being “Scheduled” inside the Quick Edit > Status area …
Work Flow Automation Feature – Adding And Editing Posts
If you are creating a new post, you can schedule your post to publish at a later date and time, by clicking on Publish immediately > Edit…
Change the date (and time if you want) of your post and click the OK button …
Remember to click on Schedule to save your settings …
Note: To backdate a post, simply edit the date before you click Publish, as described above. In this case, the button will not change to Schedule.
Your post is now scheduled for publishing on the date and time you have specified …
If you are editing an existing post, you can also schedule a post to be republished in the future, by clicking on the Edit link next to the Published on: section …
Change the date (and time if you want) of the post and click the OK button …
Click on the Schedule button to save your republishing settings …
Your post will now show as being “Scheduled” inside the Post Edit > Publish area …
The post will now show as being “Scheduled” in a Table of Posts …
You can also see which scheduled posts are queued for publishing in the WP dashboard’s ‘Activity’ screen …
Congratulations! Now you know how to publish WP blog posts at a later date.
Let us show you now how to republish WP blog posts.
How To Schedule Your Posts In WordPress
Useful Tip: The above method also works for editing WordPress pages.
Work Flow Automation Feature – Republishing A WordPress Post
In some situations, you may want to republish an old post. If so, there are a few different options you can use to do this:
Edit Post Date And Time
You can reschedule a post by changing the date and the time the post was published. Enter a new date and time, then click Schedule.
When the scheduled time arrives, the post will jump from its current place in your timeline to the most recent spot on your blog and display the new date and time. The link for the post will also be updated to reflect the new publication date.
Note: When you reschedule a post, it will not redistribute to the email subscribers. If you need the post to be redistributed to your email subscribers, use the option below.
Edit Post Status
You can republish a post simply by changing the status of the post to Draft, clicking Update, and then clicking Publish again …
When you do this, the post will automatically redistribute to your blog subscribers. However, the publication date and time will remain the same, so the post’s link and position in your timeline will remain the same.
Tip: If you want a republished post to display first on the blog, you can just make it “sticky” …
Work Flow Automation Feature – Un-Scheduling A Blog Post
If you’ve scheduled a blog post to publish later, but then change your mind and decide to publish it immediately, just head back to the Edit Post screen for a scheduled post.
In the Publish feature, click on the “Edit” link next to the date a post is scheduled to publish:
Now, just enter today’s date and time (tip: if you’re not sure of the exact time just type in an hour or two earlier than the current time showing on your clock) as a scheduled post time and click on OK …
Click Publish …
Your post will be published right away …
Troubleshooting Scheduled Posts
If your scheduled post failed to publish when the scheduled time arrived, check the following:
Is your timezone set correctly in your Settings > General section?
Check the Post Status. Did you save the post as a “Draft” instead of scheduling it?
Did you click the “Schedule” button after modifying the date/time settings? For the post to publish, the Schedule button must be clicked.
Did you schedule too many posts for publishing? Are you using bulk post scheduling plugins to queue up thousands of posts? Depending on the resources of your web server, you could experience problems. If so, try decreasing the number of scheduled items and see if this solves the issue.
Automating Post Scheduling With Plugins
You can automate various aspects of publishing and scheduling posts in WordPress with plugins.
Queuing Posts For Publishing
Queue Posts is a free WP plugin that lets you place new posts and pages in a queue for later publication at a specified interval …
Whenever you create a new WordPress post or page, the plugin gives you the option of queuing it for later …
This is great if you are scheduling a number of posts for publishing at a later date and would like these to be published in a specific order, or between specific times and intervals …
Bulk Schedule WordPress
There are a number of WordPress plugins designed for “autoposting” or “autoblogging” (add content automatically to WordPress sites).
Auto Post Scheduler is a free WordPress plugin that will schedule ‘auto post checks’ to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically.
Use a plugin like Auto Post Scheduler to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically. There’s no need to schedule post times individually and recycling old posts can revitalize traffic.
This plugin is especially useful if you are importing a large number of posts, as you can set the Auto Post Scheduler to publish posts at whatever frequency you choose as well as setting a range of other options …
Although you may not want all of the features of an “autoblogging” plugin, a plugin like WP Robot includes a module that allows you to bulk import posts or article files into your WordPress site, and then set these to automatically publish at regular or random intervals at a future time.
Want more help with WordPress? Feel free to add your thoughts below and share this tutorial with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP-related products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images and information used in this review have been supplied from the plugin’s website and sites that provide Premium WordPress Services
WordPress offers two option about publishing your content online. You either publish your content through the post or pages. It’s better to understand why there are posts and pages before you decide on which one to use for a particular content.
This tutorial outlines the major differences between the posts and the Pages. You will have an understanding of when to use a post or a page.
The focus is the specific ways to use Posts and Pages and what to do with these in separate tutorials.
The video below also reveals a step by step tutorial about how to use both to publish content on your site.
WordPress Posts vs Pages – Understanding The Main Differences
You can publish content online using either the post or preferably, the page.
Your visitors and readers will probably not be bothered about whatever mean you use in publishing content on your site. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that you understand the main differences between these two fundamental building blocks. Your online presence will be more effective when you choose the most appropriate one for the right purpose.
Let’s take a look, then, at what the main differences are, starting with WordPress Posts …
Note: Many of the specific features of Posts and Pages mentioned below are explained in more detail in separate tutorials.
WordPress Posts.
Regular “blog” entries are typically written using posts.
By default, Posts are entries listed by date and typically displayed in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page, so that the most recent entry shows above the older entries …
Posts display on your blog home page and individual pages. They are marked as “sticky posts” display before other ones (this is explained in more detail in a separate tutorial).
Posts can be referenced in sections of your web site like Archives, Categories, Recent Posts, and several widgets. They are also display in your our WordPress RSS feed, as shown in the example below …
They often display a comments section below the main content, allowing visitors to comment on your posts …
Posts can also be added to categories …
And they can also be referenced using tags …
See the “Related Tutorials” section further below for tutorials on how to use Posts.
WordPress Posts vs Pages – Similarities
Here are some of the main similarities between Pages and Posts:
Pages and Posts both have Titles and Content, and use the same method to insert these (e.g. Title fields, visual editor, text editor, etc….)
They use your WordPress Theme template files to help maintain a consistent look throughout your site.
They allow you to use keyword-template
Both Pages and Posts are viewed as “content pages” by search engines.
Depending on the theme and the plugins you have installed on your site, Pages and Posts both give you control over search engine settings like Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords.
Depending on the theme and the plugins you have installed on your site, both can be set to display in your menus and widget areas.
Although very similar in many respects, Pages, however, have several key distinctions that make them different from Posts.
WordPress Pages
They typically live outside of the normal blog chronology and are used to “showcase” content that is less time-sensitive than Posts.
In essence, they are mostly used to present readers with information about you or your site that is unlikely to change, and other common pages found in websites such as:
About Us
Contact Us
Product / Service Pages
Scheduled Events
Copyright
Disclosure
Legal Information
Earnings Disclaimer
Reprint Permissions
Company Information
Privacy Statement
Site Map
Resources
etc …
A Page in WordPress is not listed by date, and do not use tags or categories.
You can use them to organize and manage your content.
For example, you can organize the main topics of your content into “Parent” pages (where each of the main topics gets its own page), and then add subtopics for each of your main topics into “Child” pages (subpages) …
You can add as many “child” pages as you need to organize your content into “topic hierarchies”, as shown in the example below …
They can also be displayed in the sidebar of your site using the Pages widget …
In the example above, a “Pages” widget is used to display links to five main pages and three “nested” subpages.
As well as displaying a page in sidebars using widgets, some WordPress themes also display them in the menu tabs in the header and footer sections of your site…
They are also displayed in your t can also use different Page Templates. These Page Templates can include Template Files, Template Tags and other PHP code that provides unique, complex or sophisticated display features of a page on your site.
For example, here are just some of the sales page templates made available to users of a popular WordPress theme called OptimizePress …
At the simplest level, they should be used for non-blog content. In fact, if you were to remove all Posts from your WordPress site, you would have something that closely resembles your typical “non-blog” website (i.e. a site comprising only of “static” pages.)
What WordPress Pages Are Not
A Page is not a Post. Pages are not processed by the WordPress Loop, which is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts and to cycle post data (like time, category, etc.) through your blog’s main page. Note, however, that some defaults can be changed through the use of certain plugins.
They cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. This means that Pages can only be organized according to a hierarchy where you specify and assign Pages and SubPages, and not from referencing Tags or Categories.
They are not files. Unlike websites that have static pages made of code, which are then saved as files on your server, Pages are stored in your WordPress database just like Posts, where they only exist as digital data inside database tables.
They are not included in your site’s feed. Note: there are plugins available that will add your pages to your site’s RSS feed.
Because Posts are referenced from many different areas of your WordPress site (Archives, Categories, Searches, Tags, RSS Feeds, other page views, etc …), and Pages are typically only accessed from their one published location, many WordPress SEO experts argue that it is generally better to post content that you want to attract more exposure from visitors and gain better results from search engines using Posts, rather than Pages.
What Type Of Content Can Be Added To WordPress Posts or Pages?
With WordPress you can easily add or edit the following types of content into your Posts and Pages: Text You can add plain, formatted and/or hyperlinked text in a variety of fonts and styles to posts and pages…
WordPress offers the option of using both a Visual Editor and an HTML Editor for adding content as text.
Meta text can also be added to WordPress Post and Pages although this will depend on the configuration of your site’s settings and plugins. E.g tittles, keywords and description that appears on search engines), create custom excerpts, etc.
In the section below, there are tutorials on how to add text based content to WordPress Post and Pages. Check out the related section below.
Media
You can add or embed media content into WordPress such as videos, audio files, downloadable files (e.g. PDF documents), images (photos, logos, graphics, banners, etc) and more.
For step-by-step tutorials on how to add media-based content to WordPress posts and pages, see the “Related Tutorials” section below.
Scripts
With WordPress you can add scripts into your posts and pages using code like JavaScript, short codes and plugins. Many of these scripts also allow you to control the content that appears on your site from an external or remote location (e.g. Manage advertising banners or subscription forms).
Content can also be added to WordPress posts vs pages by inserting code directly into your file templates. Please note, however, that in order to add and edit file templates, you will need to have at least a basic understanding of code languages like HTML and PHP.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
For step-by-step tutorials on how to add scripts and code to WordPress posts versus pages, see the “Related Tutorials” section below.
WordPress Blog Post Ideas: How To Create Great Blog Content.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to keep coming up with new ideas for creating content that you can write and blog about on your site.
You will also learn how to create great quality content that will get your reader’s hooked. They will be eager to learn more about your business and keep coming back to your site.
At the end of the tutorial we’ll also share with you a simple, yet highly effective plan of action for creating and adding fresh new content to your blog on a regular basis.
Adding new content on a regular basis is one of the secrets of growing your presence successfully online and getting ahead of your competitors. You will learn an effective system for doing this … even if you are too busy to blog!
Watch the videos below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about creating great content for your WordPress site …
Video: Content Creation – Part 1
Video: Content Creation – Part 2
Business Blog Post ideas Content Writing Tips
I guess you already have a WordPress blog up and running. There are two major hurdles that you’ll have to deal with before moving forward:
Knowing what to “blog” about
Getting past the idea that you are just “too busy” to write and publish content on your site on a regular basis.
Both of the above are the most common reasons given by most people for not getting started blogging, and both can lead to failure through inaction.
The great news, is that if you are willing to learn how to overcome these two main challenges, your business will grow and you will have an edge over your competitors, because this is what is also stopping them from growing their presence successfully online.
Here are some great tips to help you start blogging about your business successfully:
Tip #1 – Everyone Is Also “Too Busy” – Just Get Started!
We all have only 24 hours a day and guess what? Everyone is already using every single one of those 24 hours!
Can you imagine the extra time you’ll gain if you only spend few hours each week running your business. You’ll have more time to answer questions from your customers and you will spent only one hour a week, adding posts to your site that fully answer those questions. You’ll direct your prospects and customers to your site, instead of spending your valuable time on the phone answering the same questions over and over again.
Avoid making the common mistake of thinking that you will do things when you have “spare time” (who has time to spare?) Instead, find that extra hour or two each week to add content to your site that will help you grow your web presence and leverage more of your time.
Tip #2 – You Don’t Have To Be A Writer
Most business owners have no difficulty talking about their business to others in social situations, special functions and industry or networking events.
In fact, if given a chance, most business owners can easily talk for hours on end about their business to anyone who is willing to listen.
In essence, all you are doing when you are blogging, is talking about your business in writing.
You don’t have to be a writer to publish content online about your business.
Just write as if you’re having a “one-on-one” conversation in a room with a potential prospect or your ideal customer.
If you focus on educating people about the benefits of your business and the problems that your products and services can help to solve, you will be training visitors to become better customers and build your authority online as the “go to” expert in your field.
Tip #3 – Write As You Would Normally Speak
You don’t need to be clever or entertaining – just write as you would speak to someone about your business. For example, pick a common problem that many of your customers seem to experience before choosing to buy your products or services and address that problem in your blog post.
Talk about the benefits and advantages of your solution. Give your readers some insider tips to help make the buying decision easier. Let them know what results they can expect after buying from you. Show them how much support and training is available if they need help.
Just be yourself and write in a conversational tone. Imagine how you would speak if you were engaging in a one-on-one conversation with a very happy (or an irate) prospect or customer, and write your imagined conversation down into a plain text file, then save it.
Tip #4 – Find A Writing Style For Your Blog Posts And Articles That Feels Authentic And Natural To You
Once you get used to blogging about your business and have enough data to be able to start measuring your results and assessing your general readership, you will find a structure and style that works best for you.
For example, you may discover that you have a natural knack for providing unbiased product reviews and comparisons, and that visitors and potential customers are gravitating towards your site for advice backed by solid research before buying.
Or, you may discover that you really like to engage with your readers through interactive areas of your blog like the comments section. Or maybe, your posts provide great answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for your visitors, and these help to reduce the time that prospects are spending in a pre-purchase research, which may be taking up your and your staff’s valuable time.
Whatever you discover works best, it’s good to establish certain principles in the way you structure your content early on.
WordPress Blog Post IdeasWordPress Blog Post Ideas
Tip #5 – It Doesn’t Have To Be Written By You
The content on your site doesn’t have to be written by you! There is a range of options available for content creation, including:
Delegating
Outsourcing
Guest Blogging
Content Curation
Authority Publishing
etc …
These methods will be covered in more detail in future tutorials and blog posts.
Blog Content Creation: Getting Started
The simplest way to create an article for posting to your WordPress site is to write it in a plain text file (e.g. note pad), and then save it to your computer.
Don’t worry about formatting or editing at this stage. Just write.
When you are ready to post and publish what you have written, simply open your text file, then copy and paste it into the blog post content areas.
WordPress Blog Post IdeasWordPress Blog Post Ideas
Your Post Title
Keep the title of your post brief (no more than 7 – 10 words) and to the point.
Try to include your main keyword in the title.
Aim to make your title as compelling as possible, in order to attract the reader’s interest.
Below are some examples of post title and post title ideas to help you get started:
How To Avoid Getting Ripped Off When Buying A Used Vehicle
Top 10 Property Investment Buying Tips For First Time Investors
Leasing Fitness Equipment – 7 Common Pitfalls To Avoid
5 Essential Things To Look For When Shopping For Baby Products
Marriage Counselling – A Basic Guide For Beginners
How Pet Aromatherapy Can Improve Your Best Friend’s Health
Remodeling Your Home – 5 Guaranteed Ways To Save Money
Buying Organic – Why It May Not Be the best Option For You
Video: How To Write Effective Post Titles
Your Post Content
For best results, we recommend writing 500-700 word (4- 5 paragraph) posts and articles that focus on one or more of the following areas:
Educating your readers
Informing visitors about the value of your products or services
Providing benefits, useful tips, training, or references to valuable resources about your business, industry, passion, or field of expertise
Delivering honest product recommendations, reviews and comparisons
Highlighting controversial issues that require and encourage further discussion,
At the end of your post, you should always include a link or call to action in the closing paragraph that requires visitors to take “action” step that will help you move your business forward.
For example, you could ask visitors to take any of the following action steps after reading your post:
Asking visitors to visit the ordering page of your website, or e-commerce store
“Liking” your post or subscribing to your Facebook page
Watching a video or subscribing to your YouTube channel
Following you on Twitter
Connecting with you on LinkedIn or Google+
Going to your newsletter sign up page
Visiting the site of a recommended supplier via an affiliate link
Accessing additional resources on your website
Subscribing to your updates list for more information or training tips
Taking advantage of a special offer
Downloading a FREE report
etc…
By providing useful content to your readers and delivering massive value on a regular basis, you will position yourself as an expert in your field, and build trust and a regular, loyal readership. Once authority and trust is established, you will find people responding positively to your recommendations and your offers.
Here are some of the basic principles of good business blog copy writing:
Use your main keyword in your title and create an engaging title. You want your post titles to catch the eye of visitors who are browsing your site and get them to read the rest of your post.
Make your post educational and informative for readers. Try to avoid blatant self-promotion and focus on giving your readers value instead. The more value you provide to your blog readers, the more trust, confidence and authority you will build with them and this will greatly improve the reputation of your business online. Great posts also get shared around the web, giving your business and site additional exposure. Consider adding content sharing features to your blog to make sharing and bookmarking of posts easy for visitors.
You can publish posts any size you want, but generally posts and articles with a minimum of 500-700 words (4-5 paragraphs) work very well for human readers and search engines.
Make sure you use the main keyword and keyword variations you want to rank well for in your post. SEO experts recommend introducing your main keyword in the first paragraph and using it as a bold hyperlinked anchor text (i.e. link the keyword to a different page on your site that is relevant to the keyword, e.g.: your main target keyword.)
Don’t stuff keywords in your content. Search engines like Google are very savvy to this trick and may penalize you for “keyword stuffing”. Use your keywords appropriately and in the right context and you will do well with both your blog visitors and search engines.
Always have a “call to action”at the end of your post. You want to inform and educate your readers about an aspect of your business, and then direct them to a desired outcome, such as subscribing to your newsletter, contacting you via your site’s contact form, filling in a survey, adding an item to your shopping cart, etc …
What To Blog About …
So … what can you write about? Here are some great ideas for articles and information you can post to your blog (the list below should keep you going for a while):
Latest news about your industry
Latest news about your business
Latest news about your suppliers / vendors / channel partners
Product / Service tips (how to spot quality, how to avoid paying too much, “The 5 things you need to know before you buy XYZ product”, etc ..)
Explain the benefits of your products (focus on one product or product line at a time)
Product / Service features (explain what the features mean and help customers choose the best value for money)
Provide product or service reviews
Provide product or service in comparisons to other well known brands / leading competitors (you can keep the brand names and companies anonymous by talking about the features that ‘Brand X’ or ‘Company Y’ have which are popular and how your products compare)
Provide third-party information your customers would find useful, educational, informative, entertaining, etc. (e.g. something you just read about in an industry publication or saw in the news)
Provide a product training information series
FAQs (Publish the questions you get asked the most and answer these online)
“How-To” tutorials (in written form, audio recordings, podcasts, videos, or a combination of all of these).
Explain how your products, services or solutions helped others to solve problems, save money, save time, etc …
Publish customer stories and testimonials
Profile your best customers (works well if you sell to other businesses)
Profile members of your team (helps to build a sense of familiarity with your visitors)
Profile your best suppliers
Special offers, competitions, prizes and giveaways
New product releases, new range of products, etc …
New things coming soon to your business
Product recalls (e.g. industry-wide recalls)
Customer service information (e.g. explain how to return a product, refund policies, etc.)
Links to resources and information your visitors and customers might find useful
Top 10 lists
“5 Things You Should Know About [insert your solution here] …”
“5 Things To Beware Of When Buying [insert your product here] …”
etc …
If the above is not enough to get you inspired or motivated, then keep reading for more blog content writing ideas …
Fast Content Creation Formula
You can create an almost endless amount of blog posts using the “fast content creation formula” below that combines your areas of expertise with things like numbers, lists and time periods …
Numbers = 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 25, etc …
Lists = Top / Best / Worst / Most Controversial / Most Liked / Least Known / Most Hated / Most Beneficial / Most Harmful / etc …
Time Periods = Current / Previous / Next / This Week / This Month / 6 months / 1 Year / 2-3 Years / 3-5 Years / 5 – 10 Years / etc …
For example:
5 Practical Things You Can Do This Week To Overcome Insert Topic Here At Work
10 Ways To Lose Insert Topic Here Fast
7 Controversial Methods For Achieving Insert Topic Here
10 Least Known Innovations That Changed Our Industry Forever
Insert Topic Here: Myth or Fact? The 7 Myths About [Topic]
What You Can Write About – Content Writing And Blog Post Ideas …
(click image above to enlarge)
Your Industry
How does your industry compare with others? What are the similarities or differences? What can other industries learn from yours?
Describe (3 / 5 / 7 / 10) ways your industry (has changed / will change) in (the past / next) (6 months / one year / 3-5 years)
What are some of the (recent / proposed) (laws / legislations / trends) that (have affected / will affect) your industry
How is your industry (better / worse) now than before?
What are the top (3 / 5 / 10) recommended resources, books, publications, videos, podcasts about your industry?
What (recent/popular) movies or books make reference to your industry? How accurate are these references? What are the myths and what are the facts?
What industry (conferences / events / seminars / workshops / training courses) have you attended recently? What did you learn at these events that you could share with others so they can benefit from your experience?
What is the key (conferences / events / seminars / functions) that will take place in your industry this year and why should people attend these?
What is the (best / worst) tips or advice you have been given about your industry? Did you follow these? What happened?
What is (unique / special) about your industry and why? Why should people get involved in your industry? What kind of people are ideally suited for your industry?
What (is wrong / needs fixing / needs more attention / needs more funding) in your industry?
What do most people in your industry know about that we still haven’t discovered or heard about yet? What’s the “biggest” secret insiders don’t want us to find out about your industry?
What are the best places to (advertise / find new leads / recruit new staff / get more exposure / get free publicity) for your industry?
Who are the (“superstars”/up and coming stars) in your industry that you would most like to meet (and what questions would you ask them?)
What should people know about your industry / line of business before deciding to pursue a career in it?
What should people avoid doing when they first join your industry?
What’s the (hottest / most debated) topic in your industry right now? What was the (hottest / most debated) topic in your industry last year? What has changed and how has this affected your industry?
What are some of the comments being made about your industry on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc? What’s your (personal/company) view on these?
Who are the people in your industry that should be followed on Twitter? Create and post a list.
What are the new (invention/innovation/application) would completely transform or revolutionize your industry if it was actualized?
What (new angle / new ideas / fresh perspective) can you bring to an old industry topic, that would (start / reignite) a new debate or discussion?
Why is x still the best / most effective / most preferred / most widely used way / method / option / choice for doing y?
Create a fun / exciting competition, challenge, poll, or survey and post about its progress and results.
Create lists about your industry. These can be fun (e.g. “The 25 Lamest Excuses Given By Customers In The X Industry When Asked To Do Y”), or factual (e.g. “10 Ways To Create A Greener X Industry”)
Create charts that explain industry processes in simple terms
Create a list or glossary of common (acronyms / jargon / terminology / funny expressions) used in your industry and explain what these mean in simple terms
Create videos, infographs, reports, lists, memes about your industry and post these on your blog
Interview / profile a successful person / leader / rising star in your industry
Transcribe or publish a presentation / talk / speech you recently made, or a conversation you recently had with [person] about [topic]
Subscribe to Google Alerts / search for relevant press releases and news about your industry and write about that.
What does Wikipedia have to say about your industry?
Comment / provide a summary or opinion about anything newsworthy about your industry
Your Business / Company
Share interesting facts about your company history. How did your business start? Who started it? Where was it started? Why was it started? How did you learn to do what you do? What challenges did you face in the beginning? How have things changed from the past to the present day?
Elaborate on your Mission, Vision, Goals, Values and Principles. What are the main areas that your company focuses on? What strategies and objectives are you currently pursuing? How does this translate into practise? How are investors, shareholders, members, customers currently benefiting from your past / current decisions?
Describe your company culture and what you like best about it.
What makes you different / better than your competitors? Why?
Publish your recent press releases or any interesting news that you or others have published about your business.
How are you contributing to the community? What worthy causes do you support or plan to start supporting? What awards have you won? What awards do you plan or hope to win?
How are you using Social Media / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Google+ to grow your business? If you’re not using social media, why not?
What is your most successful marketing / sales / branding campaigns? What social media campaigns, viral videos, advertising campaigns, memes (online quizzes, surveys, pictures with funny captions that get shared around the internet) have you seen recently that attracted your attention? Why? What can you share about these that could help others?
What style of management do you use? How does that make you more effective at responding to customer needs / adapting to changes in the market?
Analyze your statistics, see what kind of search visitors are entering in search engines to find your site, then either create content or invite guest bloggers or authors to contribute articles on your site about specific topics your readers want to learn more about.
What is your company’s favourite team-building / corporate / customer event? What do the people who participate in these learn? Can you share actual feedback from participants?
Post videos and photos of your company events, functions, parties, workshops, training sessions, get together, team-building activities, etc. with descriptions and explanations for your readers.
Give people a video tour of your premises / office / facilities.
What questions are people asking on forums and on Yahoo! Answers related to problems or challenges that your business can help to solve?
What are the main challenges in your business?
What mistakes have you made, how did you correct / rectify / address these, and what have you learned from this experience?
What are the problems or issues you most often get asked about by customers, or objections your salespeople hear most frequently from prospects? Turn these into FAQs
What tools and resources does your business use to deliver superior customer service or quality products and services? (You don’t need to give away trade secrets – just talk about the benefits that your tools and technologies deliver to customers!)
Why should site visitors join your Newsletter or subscribe to your Updates? Give 3 to 5 reasons.
Who are your best suppliers / vendors / channel partners / customers? Can you profile or interview them? Can you provide actual case studies and feedback of their experiences doing business with you?
Use your WordPress site “Commenting” features to educate other visitors further about your business when replying to comments left on your site.
Provide an end of week / end of month / end of quarter “round-up” of events.
Share what’s coming up next for your company, new developments, exclusive announcements, etc.
Your Products And Services
Write about the unique advantages / properties / benefits of using your products or services. Why are your products or services superior? How are your solutions different from those of your competitors?
Give 5, 10, 25 or 50 reasons why people should use your products or hire your services. Explain the benefits of being a customer of your products or services.
Create video tutorials showing customers how to use your products, or videos that show you performing services for customers (e.g. event management, restoration services, etc …)
Create charts, infographs, videos, diagrams, lists, etc … that explains in simple terms how your products or services work, or how they can help to solve a complicated issue or a difficult problem for users
Provide tips on unusual, innovative or “out-of-the-box” ways to apply your products or services that most users may not have thought about and advanced tips for users.
Describe the most common type of problem users in your market experience and how your product or service helps to (address / eliminate / overcome / reduce) this problem.
Turn your customer support emails or phone calls into FAQs.
Create a list of your most popular products or services and link to their URLs
Create a list of your most frequented, visited posts and pages.
Become an affiliate reseller of complimentary products and services to those that you offer and promote/review these on your site.
Publish a special tip or free gift for your Twitter followers, or newsletter subscribers only.
Explain how customers can get free stuff, special discounts, exclusive offers, etc.
Ask for feedback and then reward or give stuff away occasionally to customers or site visitors who post the best feedback, testimonial, comment or idea on your site, or make the best suggestions for improvement.
Write about the new products or services you are about to release and how these will benefit users.
You And Your People
Share information on your blog about your hobbies, passions, achievements, the causes you support, likes, dislikes, etc. and encourage your colleagues and staff members to do the same.
Share your successful strategies and tips with others. Some examples are: how you achieve personal goals, how you remain productive working from home, how you maintain work & family balance, stay fit / healthy / motivated / positive / focused / organized, how you come up with new ideas, how you translate good ideas into actions, tools, resources and apps that you can’t live without, etc …
Share your best / fun stories, and recent insights or observations
What books / audio books / music are you reading / listening to right now. Would you recommend these? Why? Why Not?
What restaurants have you recently discovered or events have you attended that you would recommend to others?
Describe a time when something went terribly wrong and how you overcame / got through it.
Introduce the members of your staff (especially new members) and put a spotlight on your (best / most active / most trusted) customers / vendors / affiliates / suppliers / channel partners / blog commenters, etc …
Build a user community on your site and post questions regularly, then let your community answer it.
Provide written and video testimonials of real satisfied customers.
Post your social media URLs and explain how customers and visitors can connect with you online.
As you can see, there are so many things to blog about in your business and share with your online audience.
In fact, everything you can say about your business, you can blog about!
Think about this …
If you take action and start publishing content about your business on your blog, you will already be ahead of many of your business competitors.
Why?
Because:
a) Most of your competitors are stuck with static websites that they can’t easily update
b) Most business owners are just “too busy” to work “on” their business, because they spend all of their time working “in” their business.
By the way … if you’re just too busy to work “on” your business, then you need to get yourself a copy of Michael E. Gerber’s classic business book: “The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It”. It will change the way you approach your business.
Your WordPress Blogging Action Plan: The 5-Step Formula
We’d like to share with you now our secret “5-step” action plan formula for growing your business with a blog … even if you’re just “flat out too busy!”
Create an “ideas folder” in your computer or mobile device for storing article ideas. Use the title of the post or article you have in mind as the title of the document. Develop a habit of regularly adding ideas to your “ideas folder.”
If you can’t or don’t have the time to write the articles yourself, consider either assigning the task to one or more your staff members, or outsourcing the content creation to freelance writers (see below for resources that will help you do this).
Set aside a specific time each week to write (or outsource) a batch of posts or articles and schedule them to be posted on your blog at intervals of every 2 – 4 days. Give yourself at least 1-2 hours per week.
Remember that you don’t have to be a writer to write great content for your blog. Just write exactly as you would speak if talking to someone about your business. Keep the tone conversational and focus on writing your content as if you are talking to just one person (e.g. your ideal prospect or customer)
The important thing is to create and add new content to your blog consistently. Ideally, you should be publishing 1-2 articles or posts a week. If you can’t, then even once a fortnight is great, as long as it is done consistently.
Develop a regular routine of posting content to your blog and your site will not only attract more visitors, but they will get to know, like and trust your business more … a sure recipe for business growth and an increase in sales!
Writing Business Blog Content – Your Options
When it comes to writing the actual content for your business, company, or corporate blog, here are your main options:
Option 1: Write the content yourself.
Option 2: Rewrite existing content and make it unique.
Option 3: Outsource the writing to professional writers or article writing services.
Option 4: Invite guest authors or bloggers to post content on your site.
Let’s take a look at each of these options in more detail:
Option 1: Write the blog content yourself
This is the option that will get you the best results in terms of readership loyalty and conversions.
Blog posts written by the owner of the business or blog / website (or anyone else who cares as deeply about your business as the owner) typically come across as being naturally sincere and more authoritative. The writing also tends to include many industry-related terms or phrases (i.e. jargon), which works great for both readers and search engines.
An effective content writing strategy you can use if you decide to write your own blog content, is to follow the A.I.D.A. principle.
A.I.D.A. stands for:
Attention – Get your reader’s attention with a headline, or in this case, the title of your post and make sure to use your main keyword in the title as discussed earlier. For example, an article about Content Management Systems (CMS) might be entitled “Content Management Systems – Avoiding The 5 Most Common Mistakes Made When Choosing A CMS For Your Business.”
Interest – Help your reader maintain interest in your post by writing about things that relate to them and their situation. This could be issues, problems, frustrations, benefits, challenges, etc. that are commonly experienced by people who need your products or services.
Something that all experienced and successful sales copywriters know, is that people will read extremely long sales letters and remain keenly interested, as long as the subject of the sales letter is all about them (i.e. the prospect) and how they are going to benefit if they buy and use the products or services.
Desire – Once you learn how to create compelling and engaging content that interests and helps your readers, the next step is to create a desire for your readers to take action. For example, you can write a detailed and interesting review of the top products in your business category and then let your blog readers know that there is no need for them to continue looking around, because your solution, product or service is the cheapest, best, most cost-effective, most robust, best supported, best value for money, etc … (if it isn’t then don’t exaggerate, just focus on the aspect that makes your solution better than your competitor’s and try to create a desire based on that fact – e.g. you deliver locally, free shipping, etc.)
Action – Once your reader is interested and has a desire, it’s only sensible to direct them towards an action that will benefit both them and you. Be very specific about the type of action you want your reader to take after reading your post, and focus on one action only, whether it’s clicking a “buy” button, filling in a newsletter subscription or the contact form, watching a video, filling in a survey, etc …
The A.I.D.A. principle is not very effective when used to create your own blog content, and it is also important for the other options we’re discussing here, so be sure to familiarize yourself with it.
Option 2: Rewrite Existing Content
If creating new content from scratch is too difficult, the next best option is to rewrite existing content and make it 100% unique. There are several ways you can do this:
Research, Copy, Paste & Rewrite: Do a search online on the topic you want to write about, then go through the sites that come up on your search results and copy and paste information snippets relevant to your article into a text file or Word document. You can source material this way from a whole range of different places, such as government sites, other business websites and blogs, forums, product review sites (e.g. Amazon), audio podcasts, videos, etc. Once you have enough information gathered, don’t simply rewrite the content – use it as a template for providing a fresh angle on the topic and creating your own unique content.
Use Content Rewriting Software: Avoid using “automated” software applications and content rewriting scripts that promise to deliver you better search engine rankings, but only end up creating garbled and unreadable rubbish for real human readers.
There are great software programs available that help you save time in the process of researching and gathering content from various online sources, and then allow you to intelligently rewrite and combine the content into a unique and highly readable article.
Two content rewriting software tools you should check out are Instant Article Wizard. and The Best Spinner. Visit their sites for video demos, examples, testimonials and more information.
Buy Quality PLR Articles And Rewrite These: PLR stands for Private Label Rights. What a PLR article service often does, is leverage group buying power by hiring professional writers to write content, then selling a limited number of the same content to members (e.g. 150, 500 or 1,000 copies). For example, if you need Travel related articles, you can become a member of a Travel PLR site, and receive new articles each month on travel-related topics.
You will need to rewrite PLR articles, however, because a number of other members of the PLR site will also own the same content as you. At best, you should review, edit and rewrite as much of the article as you feel is necessary to feel comfortable putting your name on it, and to ensure its uniqueness. At the very least, you should give the article a new title and add your own introduction or rewrite the opening.
Please note: PLR articles can vary greatly in quality, so make sure you check out the supplier thoroughly before you commit to spending any significant amount of money.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some great PLR sites you can check out:
PLR Mini Mart – This PLR site was started by Tiffany Dow, a very successful ghostwriter who has written articles and content for many online business owners.
EasyPLR – This is a very popular PLR site for business owners looking for quality, engaging and informative content to post on their blogs or send in their newsletters, etc. The site makes its PLR content available only to low limited numbers of content-buyers (usually only around 100-150 per PLR pack) and uses teams of professional writers to create niche-specific content. You can buy content only for the topics you need.
All Private Label Content– This is another great PLR site that allows you to buy specific content packs on the topics you need, or become a member of specific niches.
Option 3: Outsource Your Article Writing
The last option to consider is outsourcing the writing of your blog content to professional writers, experienced freelance writers, or using professional content creation or article writing services.
When outsourcing to freelance or professional writers, you can look at online services like Elance or Freelancer. These sites let you post a project and freelance writers then bid for the work. You then hire the writers and manage the process, or sign on with a service that manages the writers and the content creation process for you and charge you a nominal fee for the content they produce on your behalf.
When you’re first starting out, outsourcing your blog content writing to a service like like Elance or Freelancer may not be practical, because it takes time and experience to discover good writers.
Some of the pitfalls to watch out for are:
Writers that are inconsistent with their turnaround time (e.g. from time of request to time of delivery)
People who bid cheaply for the work, then deliver content that is really poor or plagiarized
Spending a lot of time recruiting new writers to replace the bad ones you hired.
Learning how to manage the outsourcing process (you can end up becoming an article-writing manager, which is not something you really want to do).
If you don’t know where to start looking, here are some established article-writing services we recommend you check out:
SEO Writers -This article writing service is used by thousands of business clients worldwide. It uses only professional writers who are native English speakers and who are highly trained to write content that is both engaging to human readers and optimized for search engine. Their prices are very affordable and they offer quick turnaround times.
Articlez – This article writing site also uses 100% American sourced writers while offering a competitively priced service when compared to other content outsourcing options and quick turnaround times on content delivery. You can create a FREE account and purchase content as you go.
TextBroker – This service provides unique, customized content for articles, blog posts, travelogues, product reviews, press releases and more. Incidentally, if you plan on using the TextBroker article-writing service, we recommend you also check out the WPTextBroker plugin, which allows you to order articles and receive ready to publish content for your blog directly from your WordPress administration panel.
The above services will manage and audit the writers on your behalf and provide a reliable turnaround time. All you have to do is submit the work to be done and they will handle the rest.
For other outsourcing needs, there are a number of sites like Fiverr that lets you hire people to do things for you for $5.
NOTE: No matter how good the writing is, you should always review the content to make sure it’s exactly what you want to send out to your readers. It’s not uncommon when using professional writing services to find you need to make some tweaks and adjustments to your articles to ensure quality.
Option 4: Invite Guest Authors To Post Content On Your Site
Another option you have for getting content added to your site or blog on a regular basis is to allow other authors to post on your site.
WordPress allows you to specify different roles for your registered users. Depending on the role you assign, users then have certain privileges and access to restricted parts of your site.
By assigning different people the role of “author” for example, they can post content to your site, but not access any of your site’s administration features.
Next Step – Getting Started
The best way to start is to take action.
Let’s do this now. Open up a new text file on your computer, or grab yourself a pen and a notepad or sheet of paper, and write down 10 blog post ideas that will help you grow your business.
Do it now. Write down …
Product Post Idea
Company Post Idea
Industry Post Idea
Event Post Idea
Customer Tip Post Idea
Reseller Training / Customer Service Post Idea
What Area Of Your Business Could You Educate Prospects About To Eliminate Objections?
What Problem Could You Help Others Solve?
What Solution Could You Review To Help Prospects Buy?
What Is Your Most Common FAQ?
Other Idea For Content
Have you written down at least 10 post ideas for your blog? Great!
As stated earlier, commit to posting 1-2 articles every week on your site. Spend 1 hour or less on each post (it gets really easy to do this and the content will just flow out of you once it becomes a regular habit).
If you can’t commit to writing 2 posts per week, then even posting new content to your blog once a fortnight is great, as long as it is done consistently. By investing just 2 hours a week, you will be working “on” your business and you should start to see some positive benefits in a very short time.
Some Last Thoughts For Business Owners …
Instead of answering the same questions about your business over and over again every time you meet a new prospect or someone who is interested in your business, you can simply create a page on your site that answers this question and refer people to it.
Use your site to provide FAQs, address sales objections, add videos to demonstrate how your products work, offer readers a downloadable report with more information, and much more.
As you practise referring people to your helpful posts and pages, less and less of your valuable time will be used by people who are just “curious”. You will be educating prospective customers to do “research” in their own time, and to contact you when they are more “serious” about doing business with you (i.e. when they have moved from being suspects to being prospects.) Your time can then be spent working on other areas of your business that need your attention, or that offer a more profitable return on your investment of time and effort.
We hope you have found this information useful and we wish you great success blogging about your business!
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images and information on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s own website and sites that providePremium WordPress Services
One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.
Do you use WordPress for business? Learn what plugins are and how you can use these to expand your site’s functionality.
Understanding the Benefits of WordPress Plugins
One of the main features of the WordPress software is that you can easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using applications called plugins.
About Plugins
Like most of us, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new game or business productivity tool?
You download and install an app!
An app is a piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.
(Just as there are social sharing apps for smart devices…)
A plugin is very much like an app. You install a software that adds new functionality to your website or blog…
(… There are also social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)
Typically, adding a new feature to an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if website developers have to create new code or modify code or install scripts that integrate into your current site.
This also applies to creating a new website. Companies often spend up front on bells and whistles they may simply not need.
As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a modular approach when growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.
Imagine being able to:
1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web presence up and running fast, then…
2) As new features are required, add new software modules with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website or blog, to give your web site an entirely new range of practical functionality, and…
3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your site?
Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!
Benefits Of Using WP Plugins
We started this article by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.
In fact, many plugins can be installed on your sites.
Plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare this to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. “Paid”) plugins cost very little.
Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to enhance the WP software.
WP plugins allow you to get started simply with a basic web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
WP plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your website easily, quickly and cheaply.
WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
WP plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can manage themselves.
Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new enhancements and features.
Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and could require some configuring.
Plugins – Powerful, Flexible… And (Many Are) Completely FREE!
Like WordPress themes, thousands of plugins are available to WordPress users… Often at no cost!
As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.
In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your website.
For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for users…
As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in lots of ways. From installing features that will enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …
To increase your business visibility across social media and search engines…
You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your site like a customer testimonial and event bookings management…
And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online… All for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create custom functionality for you…
Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive…
For example, your web visitors can easily:
Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
Contact you using contact forms
Engage in online discussions with your team members through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
Engage with members of your team via live webcam conferencing and chat room facilities
Call your business from their mobile phones while browsing your pages
Open a support ticket
And so much more…
You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects…
Some Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins
There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably start to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
Install only those plugins you really need to use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for additional information.
If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. Two years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress is updated often and older plugins can create issues.
Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can create errors, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.
As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.
One last thing on the topic of plugins:
If there is any feature you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be quite reasonable.
And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be created for your business for a very reasonable price.
Hopefully this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your web site. See our published posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.
Want more help with WordPress? Please tell us what you think below and feel free to share this article with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
***
Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images and information on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s own website and sites that providePremium WordPress Services
A great list of responsive subscribers has the potential to become your most reliable and constant source of profit. In this blog post we review a conversion-boosting mailing list builder for WordPress called Thrive Leads.
Savvy marketers know the power of mailing lists.
This is because a list of email subscribers gives you traffic on demand and access to repeat customers.
Marketing studies show that, on average, 50%-80% of visitors to your web site who leave will never return. That’s a lot of money and opportunities you’re missing out on. Marketing research also shows that it takes an average of 7 interactions with your business before a purchase decision is made. It’s so important, therefore, to look for a strategy that will help you interact repeatedly with site visitors.
How can you do this, however, if most visitors leave and never return?
One of the main purposes of a business is to build a relationship with your customers. The best way to do this, is to get them to sign up to your newsletters with their email address.
Building a list is an essential aspect of building a successful online business. A great mailing list has the potential to become your most reliable and constant online source of profit.
If you sell one or more products on your website, or your business relies on traffic, then list-building is essential, because it is the key to having access to repeat visitors and relationship-building.
Now … there are many ways and effective strategies to build a list of email subscribers, but until now, it was very difficult to find an affordable and simple solution that gives users access to almost, if not all of the most effective methods available to capture visitors’ email addresses on your website.
Announcing …
Thrive Leads – WordPress List Building Plugin
Plugin Description
Thrive Leads mail list-building plugin for WordPress could easily become the ultimate list-building plugin for WordPress. It lets you build a list of subscribers quickly using a wide range of opt-in forms, split-test different offers, improve your conversions, and get traffic on tap, working directly from your WordPress dashboard …
As mentioned earlier, there are many different ways and effective strategies to build an opt-in list, and almost all of these methods and strategies require using opt-in forms.
One of the key differences between Thrive Leads and other solutions that allow you to collect email addresses is that Thrive Leads comes with a range of flexible and powerful conversion boosting technologies and list-building strategies already built-in.
The Thrive Leads mailing list builder for WP is developed by Thrive Themes, a conversion-focused WP theme developer. As such, the plugin was developed to help WordPress users not just build a mailing list, but to build it faster.
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Thrive Leads to build a list of subscribers quickly and get traffic on call on your website:
It’s A Plugin For WordPress Users
The Thrive Leads mailing list-building plugin for WordPress eliminates the need to install multiple plugins . This not only reduces the possibility of plugin conflicts, but also keeps your website’s loading speed down.
Easy, Fast & Simple To Install
Thrive Leads installs just like every WordPress plugin. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
The Thrive Leads plugin has made it very simple to set up one or more opt-in forms, use their pre-designed form templates and start collecting subscriber details. No technical skills or design skills are required.
To get the most out of the plugin, you will want to implement all of the advanced targeting, testing and reporting features. If you are a complete beginner, allow 20-60 minutes to learn how to use all of the plugin’s features. Fortunately, Thrive Themes provides extensive training content, case studies as well as a responsive support team that is available to help you out.
Every Kind Of Form Your Business Needs
With the Thrive Leads plugin, you can begin to capture subscriber email address using pre-designed templates, and every kind of form you will ever need.
For example, you can use the plugin to add unblockable “pop-up” forms …
Insert slide-in forms …
You can use it to place great-looking in-line forms anywhere inside your content, or the bottom of your blog posts using a simple short code …
Insert a form into any widget area of your site …
You can add 2-step opt-in links that open a light box form when visitors click on a link …
And even add ribbon forms to your site that display at the top of the screen and remain “sticky” even while the visitor scrolls down the page …
As you can see, Thrive Leads integrates every kind of subscription form you need in one single WP plugin …
And it gets even better …
Thrive Leads Features
Thrive Leads offers many features to website owners. Here are just some:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure
Be up and running in no time. As already mentioned, the plugin developer provides extensive training content and tutorials, webinars, case studies, plus a dedicated support team.
This tool not only integrates every type of opt-in form your business needs into one single plugin, as you’ve just seen, but it also lets you run all your list-building campaigns directly from your WP administrator account.
All-In-One List Building Strategies
Thrive Leads integrates the following list-building strategies into one easy-to-use tool:
Design And Deploy
Thrive Leads provides dozens of built-in professionally-designed and web optimised form templates that can be fully customised to suit your needs, with no technical skills required.
Simple “point and click” technology and a visual editor lets you create, modify and customise your forms …
Powerful A/B Testing Engine
Split testing is the fastest way to boost your conversion rates and accelerate your list growth.
Thrive Leads comes with a powerful A/B testing engine that makes it easy to test a whole range of variables, including:
Split-Test Multiple Designs And Content
The Thrive Leads plugin lets you test different opt-in form designs and content, and provides a “set and forget” feature that automatically eliminates the losing variations, and display only the campaigns that convert well after enough data has been collected.
You simply start testing and the plugin takes care of the rest, automatically increasing your conversion rates over time.
A/B Test Form Triggers
Thrive Leads lets you customise when and how your forms should appear to visitors.
For example, you can set up:
Time-basedtriggers to display a buy button on your screen after 35 seconds
Scroll-depthtriggers where a message will appear only when your site visitors scroll down at least 40% of the web page
Exit-intent triggers that can detect when someone is about to leave the page and presents them with a pop-up form.
Additionally, you can test if the form performs better when displayed instantly, or when the form animates into view (e.g. slide in). You can test many triggers against one another to further increase your conversion rate.
Test Form Types
The plugin also lets you perform A/B tests on different form types. For example, you can test a widget form on your sidebar vs a “sticky” ribbon form and see which type of form creates better results for your business.
Split-Test Offers
Thrive Leads even lets you test entirely different offers.
For example, you can connect different forms to different email campaigns to help you determine which campaign offers yield the best conversion results for your business.
Not only does the Thrive Leads plugin give you enormous flexibility when it comes to split-testing your forms, but you can easily duplicate any existing form – even make multiple copies, then change the element(s) you want to test and instantly start running your A/B split test again, and and you can do all this in just a few minutes.
Additional features of Thrive Leads include:
Smart Targeting Features
You can create hyper-targeted offers for your visitors with three targeting levels (Easy, Advanced, Ultimate). You have granular control over how you target your offers to make your offers highly relevant.
For example, you can create a “catch-all” offer to show on all posts and pages or only your blog posts, or specify exactly where kinds of offers — even specific designs — will display across your entire website based on certain rules you set (e.g. a ribbon form on the Front Page only), including which post types, archive pages, etc. or, conversely, where to exclude forms from displaying on your site.
You can even create specific “content upgrade” offers for posts that receive the most traffic over time. Use this feature to create hyper-targeted and extremely profitable lists.
You can even use different lists with different services and different forms.
Advanced Lead Generation Forms Supported
Advanced form features supported include multiple fields, check boxes, radio buttons & drop-down menus.
Fully Mobile Responsive
Your forms and list marketing campaigns will show up correctly on any device or screen size.
Thrive Leads has also been tested for compatibility will all popular web browsers.
Reports For Actionable Insights
The Thrive Leads plugin gives you access to detailed reports that let you see exactly how your opt-ins and A/B tests are performing over time.
Additionally, you have access to a “lead sources” report that shows you exactly where your most valuable traffic comes from, allowing you to plan your campaigns for getting the most highly qualified traffic from your best sources.
Seamless Integration With Major Autoresponders & Leading Email Marketing Solutions
If your autoresponder allows HTML forms to be embedded then Thrive Leads with work seamlessly with your service.
Also, you can use different lists and different services for different forms, so you’re not dependent on any one solution.
As you can see, Thrive Leads gives users opt-in testing capabilities that extend far beyond what other list-building software provide.
Testimonials From Customers
Here are some of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have submitted regarding the Thrive Leads plugin:
“Your stuff is beautifully designed, fast and has great options for marketers that you just don’t see with other themes. Great, great job! Absolutely love Thrive!” David Coleman
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“I really look forward to more training from the Thrive Themes team. Love the product and want to get better!” Cristina Favreau
Plugin Support
As mentioned earlier, Thrive Themes provides extensive tutorials, webinars as well as a responsive support team that is available to provide users with any assistance they need.
The plugin interface provides video tutorials that explain exactly what you’re seeing and how to use the plugin. You can also access an extensive knowledge base of tutorials, training webinars, case studies and list building strategies, so you can learn how to get the most out of the Thrive Leads plugin.
The software is well-supported, and users get 1-year updates with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, thirty day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Price
The Thrive Leads plugin is available in the following editions:
Single Site Edition – This option lets you install & activate the plugin on one single domain. Includes all plugin features, plus Free, unlimited updates, with 1 year of support included. Cost = $49.00.
Unlimited Sites Edition – The Unlimited Sites license allows you to install & activate the plugin on unlimited domains that you own and operate. Includes all plugin features, and Free, unlimited updates, with 1 year of support included. Cost = $97.00.
Agency – The Agency option lets you install & activate the plugin on all websites that you own and operate, and on all of your client sites. Includes all plugin features, and Free, unlimited updates, with 1 year of support included.. Cost = $199.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Thrive Leads depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the website and there may be additional up sells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Even on an existing site with hundreds of posts, you can install the plugin and use the targeting feature to retroactively show the most relevant and higher-converting opt-in forms across your entire website.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive Leads website.
We Recommend
Building a list is absolutely essential for building a successful online business. When it comes to growing a list, the only way to improve your results is by continually running tests and then analyse your performance to find out what works best on your site. Thrive Leads makes available to WordPress users a powerful tool that, until recently, only marketing professionals had access to, and at great expense.
With Thrive Leads, you have complete control over exactly where and how your opt-in forms show to visitors, and intelligent reporting that helps you improve your opt-in rates. There are other form of plugins and solutions for list-building, but the main difference is that other list-building plugins focus more on functionality, such as enable the user to create and add popups to their site. Thrive Leads starts with this type of functionality, but the real focus of the plugin is on conversion optimisation.
As Thrive Themes state on their website …
“It’s not just about helping you build your mailing list. It’s about helping you build your mailing list as fast as possible!”
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP-related products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images and information used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s own website and sites that provide Premium WordPress Services
Typically, most websites have a home page that acts as the virtual “reception desk” of your business and greets all visitors who arrive on your site via the front door.
The front page of your site is important, because it is generally the first thing a visitor sees when they arrive on your site if they type in your domain name in their web browser, or navigate to your website from a search engine or directory listing.
The main content can also serve as a landing page to attract your visitors’ attention, let your visitors know who you are, what you do and also to help them find their way to important areas on the site.
In a static website, the home and its content are normally intrinsically part of the home file (e.g. www.mywebsite.com/index.html), so if you want visitors to see different content on your home when they arrive on your site via the main URL (i.e. www.mywebsite.com/), you would normally have to edit the content of the page itself, or log into your server and change file names around.
WordPress makes everything easier for users, especially if you don’t want to mess around with stuff like editing web code in server files.
By default, WordPress acts as a “blog” and presents a changing list of recently-published posts, with the headlines and an excerpt of the content displayed for each article published, and links pointing to separate post which contain the full article (e.g. “click here to learn more” …).
With WordPress, however, you are given the flexibility to create as many posts as you want and then specify which of these posts you want designated as the home page of your site.
Better still, you can also replace the home page of your website as often as you like, without having to edit any of its content, simply by creating a number of different posts you can point to as the site’s static page, and then selecting the post you want to show as the main post.
This feature can be very useful. For example, you may want visitors arriving on your site’s home page to:
Watch a video presentation
Read an important announcement on a separate post before navigating to the rest of your site
Promote a different “book of the month” each month, or “product of the month”
Promote seasonal information (e.g. a “Season’s Greetings” themed offer as the new year approaches)
View different sections of your e-commerce catalogue at regularly-spaced intervals (e.g. daily or special occasions (e.g. sports events in your region)
View information on “split-test” sales pages (create two or more sales pages with similar content to test different page elements, e.g. pages with or without a sales video, price points, different font sizes, etc., then display one version as the home page for a specific period of time and then replace with the other version for the same period of time to see which post ultimately converts better)
Or even land on a “pre-launch” post if your site hasn’t officially launched yet!
This tutorial shows you how to easily create a static home front in WordPress.
Step-By-Step Tutorial To Create WordPress Home Page
To set any post in your site to display as the Home Post, go to your admin menu and select Settings > Reading …
In the Reading Settings screen, do the following:
Front page displays: select “A static page …”
Front: Click on the drop down menu and choose the post you want to set as the Home Post (you can choose any of the pages showing in the drop down menu)
Click the Save button after selecting your options to update the settings and set your new WordPress home page …
After saving, click on Visit the Site (tip: right-click and open the link in a new tab to open the home page in a new browser window without leaving your WP dashboard) …
The post you have specified in Front displays > A static page should now show as your site’s home.
You can specify a different home post for your website as many times as you want, just by repeating the above process and selecting another page …
Your newly-selected posts will become the new home page immediately …
When you select any post to become the homepage of your site, WordPress reassigns the domain root to the URL of the post.
What this means is that if you select the post with the following URL your site’s home page:
The above post will automatically be given the following URL for as long as it remains the site’s home page:
http://yourdomain.com/
Notes:
If you type the “old” URL of the post you have specified as the new home page into your browser, WordPress will direct you to the home page.
Also, if you select another post as the home page, WordPress reassigns your old home page back to its original URL …
Congratulations! Now you know how to set any post as the WordPress home page.
Has this tutorial helped you? Did we leave something important out? Feel free to add your thoughts below and share this tutorial with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP-related products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images on this page have been sourced from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WP Services
WordPress widgets make it easy to customise the content on the sidebar of your website. Learn how WordPress widgets work, why widgets can make life easier for non-technical users, and how widgets can help you to add new functionality to your web site.
There are loads of great things about using the WordPress web publishing tool to build and manage your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout with no coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress also lets you quickly and easily add, remove, and manage various types of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using a unique feature called a Widget.
In this WordPress Widget Tutorial you will learn what widgets are, what makes widgets so useful, and how widgets can help you to expand the functionality of your web site.
Widgets – What Are They? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Newbies
A WP widget is a small block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or list item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to program PHP code.
Now don’t worry if the above sounds too “geeky” to you. As you are about to discover, widgets are perfect for “non-techies”.
Widgets eliminate the need to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance the functionality of your site.
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:
Easily add, edit and remove sections of code in parts of your site without touching any code, and
Rearrange the functional layout of your theme on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the great functions you can add to your WP site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
list of pages
site categories
blog post archive
menus displaying only selected pages
links to resources
posts that you want to promote
comments
clickable text ads
quotations
polls
content from RSS feeds
newsletter subscription form
video
social media buttons
display widgets from external sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we have explained plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and even alter the design of your website or blog.
As you will see shortly, WP themes can affect how widgets display on your website and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can extend your site’s performance.
Widget Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide what is called “widget” areas on your site where you can add widgets to.
Normally, this is going to be in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in the site’s header, in the footer, sometimes even below or above your content.
It all depends on the kind of theme you have installed on your site or blog.
As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their site using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes a number of different widgetized areas …
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WP theme …
How Do I Access My WP Widgets?
The Widgets panel is found within your WP admin area and can be accessed from the dashboard menu by going to Appearance > Widgets ….
This brings up your Widgets area in your browser window …
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you have available.
On the right hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
Widgets dragged from the “Available Widgets” section to “Widget Areas” like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately and available to visitors on your site.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an “Inactive Widgets” section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site without losing their settings.
By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widget for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc) and active widgets.
These widgets are available in the default WordPress theme “right out of the box” and display items like “Search”, “Archives”, “Meta”, etc immediately to your site visitors …
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
Widgets Features: “Drag And Drop”
Widgets are great, because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them within your Widgets area just by using “drag and drop” …
Using “drag and drop” technology also lets you easily reorder the layout of your website’s “widget” sections.
A newsletter opt-in form,
A “contact support” button, and
A couple of “click to phone” sales buttons from a widget WordPress plugin …
If you took a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
If we change the order these widgets in the Widget Area using the drag and drop method …
The widget features have now been reorganised in the sidebar …
As you can see this instantly changes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the “click to call” function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the “contact us” banner (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Let me just show you some more things worth knowing about widgets:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to your live website.
You can do a bunch of edits to widgets in “preview” mode, like adding, removing and reorganising the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you’ve done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
Widget management is a great feature of WordPress. You can work in “preview” mode inside the WordPress Theme Customise screen (Appearance > Customise) and see how your widget content will appear prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or change widgets “on the fly” using the Widget editor area as shown previously.
WordPress Widget Tutorial – Configuration
As I have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorder how information is displayed in “widget areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using using “drag-and-drop” …
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the layout in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions within the sidebar widget area.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customised instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, customise features on page elements like a member login section, or just add features like a page index, or a drop down menu of your content categories, a post archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ad banners, quotations or polls, RSS content, product catalogue images, social media share buttons, and more..
Most widgets offer additional options that allow you to further configure them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors, but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
How To Use WordPress Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your “Active” widget area.
There are some tips and tricks for using widgets, however, and we will soon be adding more detailed step-by-step tutorials to this site showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus many cool tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress using widgets, so stay tuned and come back soon!
Related Posts
If you are a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WP web site publishing software please see our related posts section.
Did you enjoy learning about WordPress Widget Tutorial? Please post a comment below or take a moment to share this article with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product details used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WP Services
How To Plan A Business Web Site That Works – A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners
Having a plan for your website is considered by web experts as being the most important piece of building a successful web site. In this blog post we explain the importance of planning your web site and how to save money getting a website.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series of articles designed to help you understand the website planning process.
Are you thinking about starting a website or a blog for your business?
One of the most important decisions you have to make is if you should build your web site yourself, or get someone else to help create your site.
Both choices have pros and cons. Whatever option you select will depend on many factors such as:
Your budget
How much time you have available
Your priorities
Level of urgency
Your level of technical skill
Your level of commitment to supervise and manage the project
etc …
If your budget is limited and you want to save money, you could decide to develop the web site yourself, but it goes without saying that you will then need to invest some time figuring out how to put things together.
Website Planning Structure – What You Need To Know First
Whether you decide to build a website yourself or get someone to build it for you, the first crucial step is to plan your website. In this article we explain why planning your website is important and what to do before you spend your money getting a website built for your small business.
The planning is regarded by many online marketing experts as being the most important step of the entire process of getting your website for your business. Careful planning in the early stages of your business development process helps to avoid costly mistakes later and results in a better end product.
Below, we have compiled a comprehensive primer for non-technical users aimed at helping you better understand the process of planning a website for your business. We will also cover what to do and what not to do when planning a website or blog, and give you tips on how to brief your website designer to ensure that you end up with a website that will perfectly meet your budget, suit your needs and deliver you the type of results you expect.
Important: Before even thinking of setting up a website or registering a domain name for your digital business, it is absolutely important that you first do a little market research.
Building a successful digital presence requires more than just having a professional web site set up. It requires in addition to many other things, a commitment to develop and implement an ongoing online marketing strategy.
The Website Planning Structure Simplified
So … you have decided that you need a website.
Let’s start, then, with an overview of the website planning process.
Study the process chart below, and let’s work step-by-step through the information on this page together.
Once you have downloaded and printed out the flowchart, grab some paper and a pen, or whatever you use to take notes, so you can write down your thoughts and ideas as we take you through the process. Also, make sure that you will not have any distractions over the next 30-35 minutes.
Step 1 – Website Goals
Regardless of the kind of website you are planning to build, the first step is to define clear goals for your web site and make these goals as specific as possible.
Ask the following questions:
What kind of web site am I planning to build? Will it be a professional services website, a portfolio site, a personal blog, or some other kind of website?
What specific objectives do you want to achieve with the website?
For example, your goal could be to:
Sell products or services online – you might want an e-commerce site. Depending on your needs, this could also include the addition of a private product download area that only customers can access.
Build a list of subscribers – you may need a simple site built with a “squeeze” page (landing page), or a direct sales letter where all online visitors get directed towards,
Have a services site that will help build credibility and trust for your professional services or brand, post news, announcements and updates, etc.
Get more exposure online for your existing business – you might need to build a blog built on a separate domain, or added to your existing website to provide tips or training information to existing and potential customers, or help grow your authority and expertise in your target market.
Or something else …
Record whatever goals you want your web site to help you achieve on your worksheet, a blank sheet of paper, or wherever you are recording this information.
Once your goals have been written down, go through your list and pick the goal that is most important to you.
Write this goal down in your planning sheet (in “Your Website Goals” section) as “Goal 1“.
Now, review your list and repeat this process to find two more goals and write these down in your process chart as “Goal 2” and “Goal 3“.
You’ve probably heard the old business saying “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
But, what if you already can’t manage?
Building a website is going to pile on a ton of extra responsibilities on your plate.
Your website planningprocess is an integral aspect of your business marketing planning processes. It’s important, therefore, that you continually refer to your marketing plan to make sure that you have the resources and capabilities available to implement the strategies to help you achieve your goals.
So, with this in mind, do the following right now:
After deciding on at least 1-3 goals and written these down in your planning chart, return to “Goal 1” and ask yourself this question: “how will I measure this goal?”
In other words, how are you going to quantify and review your results? How will you know if your site is helping you achieve your objectives?
For example, your website’s goal could be getting a certain number of leads every week through your site’s contact form, or signing up “X” numbers of opt-in subscribers per campaign, etc …
Also, think about the resources and costs associated with managing the process of monitoring your goals. If you need to, revise your business plan to accommodate your findings.
Note: Keep your goals as flexible as possible at this stage, so you can adjust these as more feedback is collected from your website.
Step 2 – Naming Your Site
Once you have clearly identified your site’s goals, the next step is to come up with an appropriate name for your website.
This is an important step of the website planning process, so take your time and think carefully about coming up with a good name for your site.
Brainstorm your ideas or mastermind with others. Contact a few customers (or potential customers if you haven’t launched your business yet) and get their input.
Try to think beyond just the name of your company, especially if your business name isn’t something that immediately brings up your products or services to mind. Remember, most online users have probably never heard about you.
Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Who would be searching online for the very thing your company sells? What would they be typing into a search engine or browser to find you? Once you know this, try to come up with a name that would entice your potential clients.
Note: You can be creative and clever with the name, but try to avoid being “too creative”. the same can be said about choosing a catchy, memorable or a stand out name. You can have a fun or quirky name, but it’s best to try and avoid web site names that may sound offensive (and definitely stay away from trademarked or registered names or phrases – you’ll just be inviting trouble!)
If you go online, you can easily find out what other companies in your industry or niche are naming their sites. Study your competitors, especially sites that occupy the search results that you would like your site to come up in.
For example, if you are thinking of starting a cooking blog, a quick online search for “cooking blog” reveals a number of great site names like: “Smitten Kitchen”, “Cooking With Amy”, “A Chef’s Daughter”, “Worth The Whisk” and more …
So … this is the time to get inspired. Make a big list of names and then start narrowing the list down.
Once you have narrowed your list of names down to the best contenders, repeat the same process as above to create a description, tagline or unique value proposition for your website.
Make your description concise and inform the reader with as few words as possible what the site is all about. For example, in one of the food blogs we came across while searching online, the site description was “Fast, Fresh, and Simple Recipes Easy Enough for Tonight’s dinner.”
Including keywords in your website’s name and description can also be useful.
Once you have completed this step, the next step is to look at your domain name. If you plan to add a blog to your existing web site and decide that this blog should have its own domain name, then register a new domain name for your site.
There are different strategies you can use to register domains for your web site. For example, you can register keyword-rich domain names (i.e. domains that contain the keyword phrase you would like to rank well for in the search engines), expired domain names (domains that the previous owner has decided not to renew and that can be registered again, other top level domain names and domain name extensions, etc.)
Tip: Subscribe to our site for cost-effective strategies on registering domains and tips on developing and implementing a successful digital marketing strategy.
Step 3 – Managing Your Web Technology
Once you have settled on a name and description for your website, the next step is to create a clear plan to manage the technology that is going to host, support and drive your online business vehicle.
We strongly encourage you to consider getting your website built with WordPress.
WordPress is not only a robust platform to build a website with, but it is also easy-to-manage and great for non-technical users.
WordPress is also the world’s most popular CMS platform, and, as you can see below, WordPress powers almost 50% of the world’s CMS-driven websites.
A WordPress website is ideal for publishing your content and communicating with users and potential clients.
A website or blog built using the WordPress platform allows you to better interact with site visitors, and makes things like posting content, special offers, promotions, news and announcements about your product or services, company or industry very easy, even if you have little to no technical web skills. No coding is, in fact, required to publish content on a WordPress site, and managing essential tasks like backups and software upgrades can easily be automated.
In fact, many businesses no longer use a traditional website built using traditional website building applications. More sites are now being powered with “blogging” software like WordPress, which can provide businesses and their users with all of the functions and capabilities of a regular website.
If you would like to have better management and control of your business online and don’t have the time, need or desire to learn technical “web coding” languages such as HTML, then we recommend that you consider using a WordPress-powered business website or blog.
Website Hosting & Website Management
In addition to using to build your website or blog using the WordPress CMS platform, you should also plan how you are going to host your site, and if you are going to outsource your website or blog management to someone else, or manage your own website or blog.
We use and recommend WordPress for most business applications, and we provide more information about the benefits of using WordPress and information on areas like domain name registration, finding a good host and website management in other articles on this site.
Step 4 – Your Target Audience
Once you have completed the initial planning steps above, then it’s time to define who your target audience will be.
Key information about your target audience includes the following:
Demographics
Needs and wants
What kind of problems your target audience is facing, or will experience in the future
How they like to consume information
How they view themselves
What they may expect from you or your business
It’s important to try and create as accurate a profile of your target website visitors as possible. Try to picture the actual person that you will be communicating directly with and presenting your information to.
Begin this process by asking important questions, like:
Who is your ideal reader for your website?
What kind of information will users be looking for on your website?
What problems and difficulties are your users going to experience that you will help them solve online? What types of solutions are people searching online for these issues?
Is your target audience technology-savvy? How does your audience consume digital information? Does your audience prefer videos to images and text? Do they need downloadable content (e.g. price lists, schedules, timetables)? Do you need to create visual, audio or multimedia content regularly in order to engage your target audience?
Where are they located? Do geographic location and factors like education, religion or income level affect the success of your business? If so, what segments of the population will your website or blog be marketing to and how will you find these demographics online?
How does your target audience see themselves? Who do your target users interact online with? What magazines and books are they reading? What else do they buy, or consume online?
What will your visitors expect from your site? What kind of information are you willing to provide online for free or for a fee? What kind of information will you not be providing to them for free?
Having the ability to define your website’s key target audience is an important step in the website planning process and it will help you communicate better with your web developer and everyone else assisting you in developing your website, and ensure that you get the exact type of website that you want.
If you don’t have access to accurate research information about your target audience, then start with your “best guess” based on your experience and research.
Also, try not to narrow your criteria too much. You could be going after a niche that is just too small, or an online opportunity that may not be sustainable.
Finally, unless you plan to build a portal website and have the resources to do so, avoid trying to make your website or blog appeal to an audience that is just too broad, or you’ll just end up putting yourself in an untenable position when it comes to developing and implementing an effective content strategy for your site, as you will see when we continue exploring the website planning process in another section.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of how to design a website planning structure to build a professional website
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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP-related products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WordPress Services
Is your website or blog built with WordPress? If so, and you are logging in and out of your admin area on a regular basis, you may want to customise the Dashboard.
If you are new to WordPress, you may want to see this step-by-step tutorial on how to navigate your site’s administration area: How To Use Your WP Control Page
Is your site built with WordPress? If so, and you have to log in and out of your admin area regularly, you may want to customise the Dashboard.
In this tutorial, you will learn a number of quick and easy ways to customise the back end without editing any web code.
De cluttering The Dashboard
As your site gets bigger, the information in your dashboard can start looking very busy …
Fortunately, you can “tidy up” your WP dashboard by hiding, minimising and rearranging the layout of your panels.
Hiding WP Dashboard Elements
The Screen Options feature is found in the top-right corner of your WordPress dashboard screen, in the header area …
In the main Dashboard, clicking on the Screen Options tab allows you to configure options like which panels of your screen you want to view or hide.
By ticking or un ticking boxes, you can organise your admin dashboard, and access only useful information …
Minimising Information Elements
You can minimise the information blocks inside your dashboard area by clicking on the symbol in the corner of a panel’s title bar …
This helps you keep your working space uncluttered. You can expand/collapse as much of the information inside your dashboard as you like …
Rearranging Information Elements
You can also rearrange the content blocks inside your WordPress dashboard using “drag and drop” …
Many panels inside your admin area can also be further configured when hovered over with your mouse. For example, here is a panel with no mouse hovering …
Hovering over the panel’s title bar, however, displays additional configuration options …
As well as being able to reorganize content inside your dashboard, you can also change the colour scheme of your admin area directly from within your WordPress settings, or by using plugins …
To change the colour scheme of your WordPress dashboard, click on the “Howdy, Your UserName” tab and choose Edit My Profile…
You can also get to this screen by clicking on Your Profile in the admin menu …
Remember to click the Update Profile button at the bottom of your screen to update your settings …
Your new admin section colour scheme will take effect immediately …
Hopefully, this tutorial has shown you a number of easy ways to customize your WordPress Dashboard without editing web code or adding additional plugins. All it takes is a few clicks of the mouse.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next page,you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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Disclaimer: We are not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All details on this page have been sourced from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WP Services
This depends on how your site is configured regarding the settings and plugins. You can also add “meta” text to posts and pages (e.g. Titles, keywords and descriptions that appear to search engines), create custom excerpts, etc.…
If you want more information about adding and formatting text-based content in WordPress Posts, see the “Related Tutorials” section at the bottom of this page..
2 – Media
You can add or embed media content into WordPress Posts such as videos, audio files, downloadable files (e.g. PDF documents), images (photos, logos, graphics, banners, etc) and more.
For more information about adding media in WordPress Posts, see the “Related Tutorials” section at the bottom of this page.
3 – Scripts
WordPress allows you to add content directly into posts and pages using scripts like Javascript, shortcodes and plugins. Many of these scripts allow you to control the content that appears on your site from an external or remote location (e.g. Manage advertising banners or subscription forms).
Content can also be added to WordPress Posts, by inserting the code directly into the file templates.
For more information about adding scripts in WordPress Posts, see the “Related Tutorials” section at the bottom of this page.
How To Create A New Post In WordPress for Online Marketing Services.
To create a new post in WordPress, log into your WordPress site, then go to your Dashboard navigation menu and click on Posts > Add New…
A blank new Post is created. You can now start adding your Post title and body content either by typing or pasting your content in …
Description Of WordPress Post Modules
The Post Administration Panel section contains a number of modules that allow you to control your Post settings …
1 – Post Title
This module contains a field where you enter the title of your post …
Please note the following:
You can use phrases, words and characters for your Post title.
Choose a unique title for every new post you create, as using identical post titles can create problems.
You can use common symbols like commas, apostrophes, quotes and hyphens in your Post title. Your Post title will display these symbols, but WordPress will automatically remove them in the “post slug” to create a valid, user-friendly URL for your post.
2 – Post Editing Module
This is the large, blank area where your content gets added into …
For the types of content you can add into your Post, see the “Types Of Content You Can Add To WordPress Posts” section above.
3 – Publish Box Module
The Publish Box module contains a number of important buttons, options and settings that control the status of your post …
Post Status
The available Post Statuses are: “Published”, “Pending Review”, and “Draft”. A “Published” post is publicly available to online visitors on your site. A Post whose status is set to “Draft” is not published and can only be seen by you. “Pending Review” is similar to a “Draft” Post, but needs to be reviewed and approved for publication by a user with “Editor” permissions.
The Publish section also includes a Preview button that allows you to view your post content before publishing it and making your post live on your site.
Post Visibility
You can specify a number of visibility settings for your posts. Setting a post to “Public” makes it visible to all website visitors after the post has been published. You can also make a post “Password Protected” (this makes the content in your post accessible to anyone with the correct password), or “Private”, which makes the post visible only to you and to other users logged into your site who have editor or administrative privileges.
Additional settings in the Publish Box section allow you to change publication dates (even schedule posts to be published at a later date), copy your post to a new draft, or set your post for deletion by moving it to the trash.
Note: If your Post has not been published yet, a Save Draft button will display in the Publish Box section if your post status is set to “Draft” …
Or Save as Pending, if your post status is set to “Pending Review” …
Clicking the Publish button gets your post to become “live” on your site …
You can also edit the time when your post gets published by clicking the Edit link above the “Publish” button and specifying the date and time when you want your post to be published …
4 – Post Format Module
Some WordPress Themes allow you to customize your post’s presentation using Post Formats. This is explained in more detail in a separate tutorial.
5 – Post Categories Module
Post categories help you classify your post into topics and keeps your content organized for your readers …
When you assign your posts to categories, readers can then browse specific categories to see all posts listed under that category.
You can add a new category as you are entering a new post by clicking the + Add New Category link in this section …
You can also manage your categories by selecting Posts > Categories in your Administration menu …
Tags are like micro-categories or index entries for your posts …
Posts that have similar tags are linked together. A list of related posts is displayed to readers when they click on one of your post tags. Note: Depending on your WordPress Theme, tags may or may not display in your post …
You can add new tags to your posts by typing in your comma separated tags into the “Tags” box and clicking the Add button …
If your WordPress theme allows you to display Post Thumbnails, then the “Featured Image” module will be visible on the “Edit Post” (and Edit Page) screens, provided the option has been selected in the Screen Options area (see next section below) …
Some screen modules on the Post Administration Panel are hidden by default if they have not been saved before, and will only display if selected in the Screen Options area …
Below are the modules that can be activated in your Screen Options area …
Excerpt
The Excerpt module lets you add a brief “teaser” or post summary that will display in selected areas of your site, such as your Blog page, category, archives, and search post pages …
Trackbacks are a way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them …
If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. For blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, and separating each address with a space.
Custom Fields provide a way to add specific information to your site and / or modify the way your posts are displayed …
Custom Fields are normally used in conjunction with WordPress plugins, but you can manually edit the information added by plugins to your post in this section.
The Discussion module is used to turn the discussion options on/off for a specific post …
This module is used to enable interactivity and notifications on your posts on a post-by-post basis.
You can check boxes to Allow Comments and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on your posts. If you uncheck Allow Comments, then no visitors will be able to post comments on that specific post. If you uncheck Allow trackbacks and pingbacks, then no one will be able to post pingbacks or trackbacks to that specific post.
Note: If you are editing a previously published post, the Discussion module will also show any comments you have received for the post.
This module lets you edit the post slug, which is also known as your Permalink URL …
The post slug is a user-friendly post URL address created from the post title …
Permalink
Permalink stands for “permanent link“. When you set a Permalink for your post, WordPress will find your post and change all links on your site to point to the correct post URL even if you change the post slug, change the post category, or move your post to display under a different parent page.
The permalink is automatically generated based on the title you specify for your post and is shown below the title field as soon as you save or publish your post.
Punctuation such as commas, quotes, apostrophes, and invalid URL characters are removed and spaces are substituted with dashes to separate each word in your permalink.
You can manually change your permalink URL by editing the post-slug (see above).
This module displays a list of all your site’s registered authors and allows you to change the post author attribute by selecting a new author from the drop-down menu …
Note: This section only displays on your post if you have multiple registered users on your site with authoring rights. For a detailed tutorials on managing WordPress users, go here: WordPress User Management
Add Content To Your Post
After creating a new post, the next step is to add content to it.
Practice Accessibility: Stay compliant with web standards for accessibility and help your users by including ALT and TITLE descriptions on links and images (e.g. <a title=”Descriptive Title Goes Here” href=”http://yourdomain.com/”>Hyperlinked Text</a>.
Use Paragraphs: Make your content more readable by breaking up your writing into paragraphs. Tip: If you use double spaces between your paragraphs, WordPress will automatically detect these and insert <p> HTML paragraph tags into your writing.
Use Headings: If you plan to write a long post, then use headings to break up your post sections. In HTML, headings are set using tags like h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on. You can also add headings by highlighting content in the body of your post, and then selecting one of the heading options from the “Format Style” drop-down menu in your Visual Editor.
Use HTML: You don’t have to use HTML to create richly formatted posts, as WordPress will automatically do this if you use the Visual Editor. Having some basic knowledge of HTML, however, will allow you to control different styling elements in your content (e.g. boxes and headings.
Spell Check and Proof: Check your spelling and proof everything before publishing your content. There are a number of spell check Plugins available for WordPress. You can also write your posts in a text editor that has spell checking, then copy and paste your content into WordPress after checking all the spelling and proofing your content thoroughly.
Think before you post: Everything you make public can be seen by many people and logged by search engines, making it harder to take things back. Take a moment to think about what you are writing and review your posts before publishing. Don’t rant … think!
Consider your readers: Consider who will read your content and take any appropriate measures and precautions you think may be necessary when writing your content or protecting your privacy.
Make use of comments: Comments allow your site visitors to interact with you and share their ideas. You have control over your site’s comments and you can delete any comments that you don’t want published on your site, so consider this fact when deciding whether to allow people to comment on your site. Also, make sure that visitors can contact you privately if they need to (e.g. use a contact form).
Worry about the design later: How your site looks is important, but it’s not essential to getting your point across. In fact, because WordPress is so flexible when it comes to web design, you can just start writing to grow a readership, and then change your entire site’s look with just a few clicks of the mouse anytime you want, using “WordPress Themes”. Remember that content is what attracts your readers, not just the look of your site.
Use pictures and videos: Images and videos help make your posts and pages colorful and interesting and help readers engage better with your content. See our tutorials on adding images and adding videos to your posts and pages for more details.
Save your posts: Save your posts regularly to prevent losing your work to accidents or computer errors. You can do this without publishing your content, as the section below will explain.
Write regularly: We have created a tutorial that will help you come up with an almost limitless source of content you can write on your site and ensure that you never run out of ideas. Go here to learn more.
Saving Your WordPress Posts
After adding content to your Post, it’s time to save it.
By default, WordPress will auto-save your work at regular intervals …
This helps to prevent losing your content if something unexpectedly goes wrong with your computer, or if you click something that accidentally closes your post, browser window or application while you’re working.
WordPress also records the date and time of your post when the post is first auto-saved. You can change this by editing the “Published on:” settings …
Until your content is “published”, your post will not be visible to online readers. Instead, it will be saved as a “Draft” …
You can save your Posts as a draft or publish it online using the “Save” and “Publish” functions in the Publish section of your Post screen …
To save your post as a “Draft”, go to the Publish section of your Post screen and click on Edit …
Select Draft from the drop-down menu and click OK …
With “Draft” displayed in the “Status:” field, click on Save Draft …
Your Post will be saved and updated as a draft post. Click on Preview post to view your saved content …
You can also preview your post in a new browser window without saving or publishing it first by clicking on the Preview button in the “Publish” section …
When you are ready to publish your post and make it go live to site visitors, click on Publish …
Once your new post is published, click View Post to open your published post in a new window browser …
Review your post to make sure that all of your content has been added, formatted and is displaying correctly …
Note: Once your post is published, the button changes from “Publish” to “Update“…
You can always change the status back from “Published” to “Draft” or “Pending Review” by clicking on the Edit link in the Status field and selecting an option from the Status drop-down menu …
Congratulations! Now you know how to create and publish a new post! If you need to make any adjustments to your post content, see this tutorial: How To Edit And Delete WordPress Posts
Posting Content To Your WordPress Site – Quick Summary Of The Steps Involved
The screenshot below summarizes the steps involved in creating and posting new content to your WordPress site:
Click Posts > Add New, then add your post content (post title & body)
Add your search engine optimization metatags into the SEO section. This will only take an extra minute or two, but it will help you get your content indexed faster and rank better in search engine results (see tutorial on How To Improve Your WordPress Site’s SEO)
Select a Post Category to file your post under (make sure you have already set up your site’s Permalinks)
Add keywords to your Post Tags section (use the same keywords you entered into the SEO section)
Publish your post
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional online marketing services
WordPress Website Design for Small Business Owners
This multiple part article series for business owners will help them to understand why WordPress is the best blogging platform to help you to grow your business and become successful online.
WordPress … do you know much about it?
You might have heard about WordPress Website or perhaps you haven’t. You might have this belief that this is none of your business. This could be because of the technical details surrounding this software, thereby concluding that this great software is a piece of code is for loving techies and geeks such as website developers and designers.
I understand why you may feel this way. Maybe you believe that, as a business owner, you should be focusing on your business and not on technical things like websites. That’s why businesses employ website developers, website designers and webmasters to build and manage their websites, isn’t it?
In the Digital Economy, as a business owner, you can no longer think in terms of “looking after a business” and “owning a website” as being two separate things. An online presence has now become an integral part of your business, whether or not you care to admit it, and growing your business online, is just as important as growing your business offline.
Think about the following:
What About Competition?
No matter what business you are in, there is global competition at the local business level. You may not be targeting customers in your local area online, but your competition most certainly is. You need a web presence that helps you stay competitive in the new global economy.
Having A “Static” WordPress Website Design Is Not Enough
Your business cannot afford to not have a digital presence anymore. Having a “brochure-like” website is no longer sufficient.
You need to be continually marketing your business online with new content, social media, different channels and different content formats in order to remain competitive and target potential customers.
Do You Communicate With Your Potential Customers Online?
Marketing “to” your website visitors is not as effective as talking “with” your potential customers, responding to their enquiries or concerns in a timely manner and addressing their ideas and suggestions.
Users want acknowledgement “on tap” and they need to know that their feelings matter.
This requires having an effective “master” plan and an online vehicle that allows you to grow your business online successfully.
Learn How To Grow Your Business Online With A Powerful Online Vehicle
Although it’s accurate to say that lots of web developers and web designers love using WordPress, it is not just for “techies” and “geeks.”
If you truly understood how much this blogging platform can help grow your business online, you would be really excited too!
Learn How To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Blog – Article Series
In this multi-part series of articles for business owners and non-technical users, you are going to learn why WordPress is the vehicle that can help your small business grow and succeed online.
Over the entire course of our instructional articles, we address the following areas in great detail:
What kind of businesses choose WordPress,
Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
How to generate more traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
Are you ready to begin learning more about WordPress? Great! Then click on the link below to get started:
Some Surprising Statistics About WordPress
Don’t Have A Website For Your Small Business Yet?
Planning your WordPress website design or blog is considered by many online business experts to be the most important part of building a successful website. Read this article to learn the importance of planning your business web site and how to build a better web site for your business:
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional Site.
Apply This Web Site Planning Process And Build A Better WordPress Website Design
Disclaimer: We are not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress-related products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product information used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WordPress Services
Split WordPress Posts Into Multiple Pages for Web Content Management System.
If you read news or magazine publications online, you are probably familiar with long articles that publishers split into several pages to make it easier for readers to digest the information without having to scroll down one very long page.
Depending on the content you have written for web organisation and the amount of information that you are trying to convey to your readers, your own posts can also end up becoming extremely lengthy.
If you think that one or more of your posts are too long and could have a negative impact on your readers, don’t worry. WordPress has an amazing feature that allows you to split your long posts into multiple pages. This will help to make your content more manageable, this feature is not popular because blog posts are usually short. There are only few WordPress users that need the feature, however you don’t have to use the feature.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to split long posts into multiple pages for Web content management system.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to split your WordPress Posts into multiple pages for web organisation…
How To Split Long WordPress Posts Into Multiple Pages for Web Management: Step-By-Step Tutorial
To split a long post into multiple pages, log into your WordPress administration area and go to the Posts section of your site by clicking on Posts > All Posts …
Locate the post you want to split into two or more pages and click the Edit link below the post title to open it in the Post Edit screen …
Make sure the Visual Editor tab is active, then scroll down your post until you find a suitable location in the content to insert a page break, and click on the spot with your mouse button to place a blinking cursor on the page …
The menu item we are looking for is the Insert Page Break button …
You can also use Alt Shift P keys to insert a page break into your content …
After clicking on the Insert Page Break button a “tag” with a dotted line will be added to the location where your cursor was placed …
In some instances, it can be helpful to add some navigation text before and after the page break tag to help your readers …
Once you have finished editing your post, publish or republish it, then open the post in a new browser window and scroll down to the location in your content where you have added a page break. You should see a section with clickable page numbers, as shown in the screenshot below …
Clicking on the page numbers will navigate the readers to different pages of the same post.
When a post is split into multiple pages – a page number corresponding to the page of each split section is added to end of the post URL. For example:
http://yourdomain/post-title
http://yourdomain/post-title/2
http://yourdomain/post-title/3
etc …
Web Management – Additional Notes
The Insert Page Break button may or may not be visible on your menu. If you cannot see the Insert Page Break button in your menu, switch to the Text editor and place the following code in the location where you want the page to be split …
Note: It’s important to add the code in the Text editor, as shown in the example below …
If you publish your post and see the “nextpage” tag displayed on the post instead of a page break, then the error was most likely caused by pasting the code inside the Visual editor, instead of the Text editor …
Web Content Management System
If you don’t want to add the code suggested above, then you can use either the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, which we cover in a separate tutorial, or the NextPage Buttons plugin to add the next page button to your menu …
NextPage Buttons is a simple WordPress plugin that puts the <!–nextpage–> buttons back into the WordPress editor toolbar.
Congratulations! Now you know how to split long posts into multiple pages for Web Management.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional Web content management system.
How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews
Depending on the theme you have chosen for your site or blog, WordPress allows you to display excerpts, or a short version of a post, in certain locations on your site, instead of displaying the entire post.
Excerpts are ideal for areas of your site where displaying quick summaries is preferable to displaying full content, such as search results, news feeds, tag, category, monthly and author archives, etc.
You could write these excerpts yourself, but if you choose not to, WordPress will automatically create a basic excerpt for you instead.
Additionally, you can also create Post “previews” that allow your visitors to preview the content of your post and then choose whether to continue reading the rest of the post of not
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to use WordPress excerpts and previews.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use WordPress post excerpts …
WordPress Post Excerpts: Step-By-Step Tutorial
Depending on your theme, post excerpts can display in areas of your site such as:
Your search result pages …
Your RSS feeds page (note: to view your site’s RSS feed page add “/feed” to the end of your site’s URL, e.g. http://yourdomain.com/feed, or http://domain.com/blog/feed) …
How To Use WordPress Post page Excerpts And Post Previews
And other parts of your site where displaying summaries is preferable to displaying full content.
How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews
Manual Excerpt vs Automatic Excerpt
The manual WordPress excerpt is often confused with the automatic excerpt, or with the “teaser” (i.e. the part of a post that appears on the front page when you use the “More” tag – see further below for details).
While both are related to the manual excerpt, they are interpreted differently by WordPress, depending on the code used inside your theme’s templates.
When a post has no manual excerpt:
WordPress will generate an excerpt automatically by selecting the first 55 words of the post if the post template uses the the_excerpt() template tag.
WordPress will look for the “More” tag and create a teaser from the content that precedes this tag, if the post template uses the the_content() template tag.
We will show you how to use both of the automatic excerpt methods described above, as well as the manual method in this tutorial.
Using Post Excerpts
The Excerpt box displays below your post content in the Edit Post screen and lets you add a brief “teaser” or post summary that will display in selected areas of your site, such as those mentioned earlier …
The Excerpt field is hidden by default if it has not been used before. If you can’t see the Excerpt box, click on Screen Options at the top of your Edit Post screen …
Make sure that the checkbox next to the Excerpt option is selected …
You should now see the Excerpt box displayed below your post’s content editor area …
Note: Not all themes display post excerpts by default. If your theme displays excerpts, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post content as the Excerpt, or any content you add before placing the <!–more–> quicktag (see further below to learn how to use the “More” Tag).
If you add content into the “Excerpt” field when editing your posts, WordPress will use this information instead of its automatic excerpt method.
Let’s take a look at how this works …
Here is an example of a couple of posts that were published without manually adding an excerpt to the posts. WordPress simply takes the first 55 words of the post’s content and publishes it as the post summaries …
The same thing happens wherever summaries are displayed. For example, here is how WordPress would display the automatic excerpt in your site’s RSS feed page if no excerpt was manually added to the posts …
Now, let’s add some content into the Excerpt box for each of the example posts shown above.
Here’s the excerpt we’ll add for example post #1 …
Here’s the excerpt we’ll add for example post #2. Note that the excerpt we’ve typed into the Excerpt box is longer than 55 words …
When we update the posts and go back to the blog post summaries, you can see that WordPress is now using the post excerpts that we have added manually to the posts …
The same thing happens wherever post summaries are displayed. For example, here is the site’s RSS feed page for the posts with manually added post excerpts …
Note: WordPress will ignore the 55-word limit and publish whatever content you enter into the Excerpt box.
How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews
Additional Information Related To Excerpts
Post excerpts replace the full content of your posts in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in your WordPress Reading Settings …
WordPress Post Previews
In addition to being able to customize your post excerpts and increase the length of your post summaries by entering your own content into the Excerpt box, you can also control how your posts display to visitors on your site using the built-in “More” tag and various post preview plugins.
WordPress “More” Tag
The “More” tag (Alt Shift T) let’s you specify a post “preview” for your content, followed by a link that allows your site visitors to continue reading the rest of your post.
To insert a “more” tag, decide where your post preview should end and click on the spot with your mouse to add a cursor …
Next, click the “Insert More Tag” menu button in the visual editor as shown below, or hold down the Alt Shift T keys …
The tag will be inserted into your post …
You can also add the “More” tag below directly into your content using the Text editor …
Here’s how the “more” tag will look when inserted correctly into your content …
After your post has been published or updated, only the content that appears before the “more” tag will show in your preview, with a link to continue reading the post …
When your visitors click on this link, the full post will display …
Note: If you don’t see the post preview when you visit the page, go back to the editor screen and make sure that you have inserted the “more” tag (i.e. <!–more–>) into your content via the Text editor, and not via the Visual editor.
The visual editor will convert the characters “<” and “>” into their HTML entities (i.e. “<” and “>” and published the tag incorrectly, as shown below …
WordPress Plugins – Post Excerpts
In addition to using the “more” tag, there are also plugins available that can give you more control over your post excerpts. Let’s have a look at some of these plugins … Advanced Excerpt
This plugin adds several improvements to the default method used by WordPress to create excerpts:
Excerpts created with this plugin installed retain their HTML markup
You can trim the excerpt to a specific length using either character or word count.
The plugin counts only “real” text (HTML is ignored but kept)
The excerpt length and the ellipsis character are customized
Completes the last word or sentence in an excerpt
Adds a read-more link to the post summary
Ignores custom excerpts and uses the generated one instead
Simply install the plugin, then navigate to Settings > Excerpts, and configure the plugin options. Save your settings by clicking on the “Save Changes” button and you’re done …
If you don’t want to use the automatic excerpt feature of WordPress, and you are not keen to write your own post summaries, you can try letting a program write your excerpts instead.
Summy is an excerpt extraction plugin. It generates excerpts for your posts by applying various algorithms for automatic summarization extraction. It then scores your text’s sentences, based on extended configuration options, and returns the highest ranked …
Summy will analyze your post’s sentences and use the highest ranked sentences using its built-in algorythm and your setting options to decide what best describes your post. The plugin developer warns that “Summy’s summaries are not perfect and you might also need to do some editing before publishing your content but they are a lot better than random 55 words”.
How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews
WordPress Plugins – Page Excerpts
Some plugin developers have also created plugins for users who may have a need to display page excerpts. Here are some you can check out
This plugin adds the same functionality to pages as the excerpt feature in posts. This is useful for certain themes and plugins that make use of custom page excerpts.
This plugin comes in the form of a widget that lets you display an excerpt of a page in a sidebar area of your choice. You can configure options in the widget settings …
And the page expert will be displayed on your sidebar as shown in the example below …
You can also have multiple page excerpt widgets active at the same time, so you can use different excerpts to point to different pages.
The Evermore plugin automatically displays short previews of your posts on your home page. Each preview includes a link to the full post, which can be added either at the end of the paragraph, or on a separate, new line.
Evermore is very simple to use – just install it and it will start working straight away. You can customize the length and appearance of the previews globally, by specifying the minimum number of paragraphs or characters to display for a post …
Sometimes, the first paragraph of a post can be very short (just a short sentence, or a picture). The settings allow you to add extra paragraphs and make your previews a more reasonable length.
Using the settings shown in the screenshot above would result in post preview like the one shown below …
Useful Tip: To stop Evermore creating a preview for a particular post, include the tag below somewhere in the post …
The above tag won’t appear when people view your post, but Evermore will see it and display the full post to visitors instead of just a preview.
If you plan to use the Evermore plugin, a good companion plugin to add as well is Seemore.
After clicking a (more…) link in a post preview, readers often find themselves scrolling up the page to make sure that they haven’t missed anything.
Seemore changes the (more…) link so that visitors see the entire post, and not just the content after the (more…) link.
Congratulations! Now you know how to use WordPress excerpts and how to create post previews.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
If you are looking for a simple way to publish and format your content online. Or better still a web content managementstrategy, the WordPress Gallery Visual Editor provides a simple way for you to achieve this.
The good news is, you do not require and HTML knowledge or a coding experience before creating a professional looking web pages with embedded images, media, etc…
This tutorial is about learning how to use the WordPress Galley Visual Editor for web content management strategy. You will discover what:
The menu buttons do
How to format a text
How to resize the text editor
And More!
The video below gives you a complete step by step tutorial on how to use the WordPress Visual Gallery Editor for an online content management strategy to produce a professional look.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/HIK3Xdm91VQ[/youtube]
A Simple Guide To Formatting Text In WordPress.
The WordPress Gallery Visual Editor for web content management strategy is awesome because of the great feature of WYSIWYG, (What You See Is What You Get). This feature enables you to format a text, you’re able to create hyperlinks, add images and media posts and pages. You’re able to do much more with simple clicks.
WordPress Gallery Visual Editor Buttons Explained
If you’re familiar with the MS Word text editor, understanding the functions of the WordPress visual editor interface for web content management strategy will not be a problem at all.
Here is a brief description of the function of each of the WordPress Visual Editor buttons shown in the screenshot above:
1. Title Field – Type the title of your post or page in this section.
2. Permalink – By clicking on the edit button, you will be able to change the permalink of your posts and pages. This is quite handy, especially if you desire to shorten or change the URL of your post or page.
3. Media Manager – You can manage and insert media into your post by clicking on the upload button. You can upload media files such as: pictures, videos, audio etc.) from your computer, an external URL, or from your site’s own media library.
4. WordPress GalleryVisual Editor Tab – By clicking this tab you will have access to WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
5. Text Editor Tab – By clicking on this tab, you can view and make changes to the code behind your content. This tab allows you to add content in the WYSIWIG mode by switching between the two tabs. You are able to make changes to the underlying code through switches.
6. Bold – You highlight a text and then click this button to make it bold afterwards.
7. Italics – You highlight a text and click this button to italicize the word.
8. Strikethrough – Formats selected text as
9. Unordered list – Use this button to create an unordered list like the example below:
List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
Etc…
10. Ordered list – Use this button to create an ordered list like the example below:
List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
Etc…
11. Block Quote. Use this function to create a block quote. Simply select the text you want to display in the block quote and click the button.
To exit the quote press the “Enter” key to create a line of space and then click the block quote button again and this will end the command and return your text to normal.
12, 13 & 14. Alignment buttons – Use these buttons to align text and objects inserted into your posts or pages:
12. Align Left
13. Align Center
14. Align Right
Press the “Enter” key and leave a line of space to end the align command
16. Unlink. By highlighting and selecting a text, this button will unlink or remove the hyperlink.
17. Insert More Tag. Clicking on this button will allow you to insert a read more link wherever you position your cursor. Once you publish a post, all text added before publishing will insert this tag and display as normal. All content added after the tag will only be displayed to visitors after clicking on the read more link…
Important: The “Read More” tag does not work on WordPress “Pages”. It is only used on the Home page that shows your latest posts (i.e. your Blog Page).
18. Spell Checker. This button helps to check the spellings of your content. You can select a different language from the drop down menu.
19. Toggle Full Screen Mode. The main function of this button is to toggle between the full screen and the editor normal screen mode. This is very good for checking the placement of items on the page. It’s also helpful because you will not be distracted by other page’s elements when working on a content…
20. Show/Hide Kitchen Sink. Click this button to toggle the WordPress visual editor between minimal mode (one row of buttons) and enhanced mode (two rows of buttons).
21. Format Style. Use this feature to format text. When you create a new post or page and start typing into the content area, the text is formatted as “paragraph” (i.e. normal) by default.
To create headings for your content, highlight an area of text and select different format styles from the drop down menu (e.g. heading sizes ranging from h1 to h6) …
22. Underline. Select an area of text and click this button to underline text.
23. Align Full. Use this button to justify your content and display your text neater on your page. This button will adjust the spacing in your text to try and square up every line of text so that the line ends are not “ragged” (as is the case when text is aligned left by default).
24. Select Text Color. Select an area of text, then click on this button and select from the color options in the dropdown menu to change the color of your selected text area …
Note: You can expand the selection of colors available in the color palette by clicking on the More colors button …
You will then have access to an almost limitless choice of colours.
Useful Tip: If you are familiar with the Hexadecimal (HEX) color system, you can just type in the code for the specific color you want into the Color field.
The example below shows the HEX color codes for some of the most commonly used “web safe” colors (i.e. colors that display correctly across most browsers and monitors) …
25. Paste as Plain Text. Click the button marked with a “T” to paste the content of your clipboard into your content editor area as plain text.
26. Paste from Word. Click the button marked with a “W” to paste in text from MS Word.
Note: Pasting text directly from MS Word into your WordPress content editor can introduce unnecessary code into your content and result in errors. MS Word and some other text editors store code that is not directly visible when copying text from a document into the clipboard …
27. Remove formatting. If you notice unwanted formatting code in your text (or your content isn’t displaying as you intended after your post or page has been published), then select all text and click this button to clear all formatting on the page.
Tip: Here is a quick and useful way to test and remove any errors that you suspect may be caused by poor formatting tags without losing your original content.
Before using the “Remove formatting” function, switch to the “Text” tab, then select and copy all of your text to the clipboard …
Paste the content from your clipboard into a new plain text file, then go back to your content and go through the “Remove formatting” process. Now, if something goes wrong, at least you have a backup copy of your content with all the original formatting preserved.
Here’s a line of indented text (indented by pressing “enter” button).
This line has been indented further to the right by pressing the indent button one more time.
31. Undo. Click this button to undo your previous commands. This is useful if you have accidentally deleted a section of text, or formatted text wrongly and need to backtrack.
32. Redo. Click this button to reinstate a change or deletion that you have undone.
33. Rich Editor Help. Click this button to bring up the WordPress Editor Help feature …
Tip #1: WordPress Content Editor – Power User Shortcuts
As well as using the menu buttons in your Visual Editor toolbar to insert and format content, you can also use the key combinations below as you type. This can help you create and format content faster …
Tip #2 – How To Resize The WordPress Visual Text Editor Box
WordPress provides a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Visual Editor for creating and editing your posts and pages. By default, WordPress normally displays around a dozen lines of text in its WYSIWYG Editor …
Depending on your content writing or editing needs, this may not be enough. So, how can we make the text editor larger? Well … before the WordPress 3.5 version upgrade, one of the options for increasing the size of the WordPress text editor, was to go into your Writing Settings area and specify the number of lines you wanted to display in the post box …
Although the above option no longer seems to be available post WordPress version 3.5, it’s still quite easy to resize your text editor.
All you have to do, is log into your WordPress admin, then go into your Post or Page area (create new or edit), and click and drag the bottom right-hand corner of your post box to resize it …
Your Text Editor Box is now resized …
Another useful way to enlarge your working space, is to click on the Distraction Free Writingmode button (Alt Shift W) in your WYSIWYG toolbar menu …
This gives you a “full screen” mode to work with when editing or reviewing your content …
To return to your previous setup, just click on the Exit fullscreen link at the top of your screen …
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress makes editing content and deleting posts a relatively simple and easy process.
In this tutorial you will learn how to add photos and videos to your site using the App for mobile devices.
In this tutorial you will learn how to access a number of administrative functions in your site using the App for mobile devices.
As mobile devices usage increases, more and more WordPress users will look for ways to continue working while “on the go”.
In this tutorial you will learn how to manage your settings.
Congratulations! You now know how to use the WordPress Mobile App settings area.
Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress has simplified the process of web design and web development.
WordPress is a powerful blogging platform because of its ability to add new applications that will enhance the performance of your website.
You can take advantage of the WordPress built-in commenting features and add plugins that will make your site even more interactive and allow you to better engage with your visitors, customers and registered users / members. …
In this tutorial you will learn how to edit your WordPress user profile.
Note: If you plan to run a corporate website, you may not want some of the Profile screen fields displayed to users. If this is the case, see the “tips” section below to learn how to remove unnecessary fields from the User Profile screen.
WordPress makes publishing and formatting content online easy by providing users with the option of using a rich, visual editor that does not require knowledge or experience of code (e.g. HTML) to create professional-looking web pages with embedded images, media, etc …
Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed web site can end up costing you valuable business.
WordPress has a really cool feature that allows you to postdate or backdate posts. This is a very useful feature that many WP site owners haven’t discovered yet.
At the simplest level, they should be used for non-blog content. In fact, if you were to remove all Posts from your WordPress site, you would have something that closely resembles your typical “non-blog” website (i.e. a site comprising only of “static” pages.)
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to keep coming up with new ideas for creating content that you can write and blog about on your site.
others in social situations, special functions and industry or networking events.
One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series of articles designed to help you understand the website planning process.
For the types of content you can add into your Post, see the “Types Of Content You Can Add To WordPress Posts” section above.
You can add new tags to your posts by typing in your comma separated tags into the “Tags” box and clicking the Add button …
If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. For blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, and separating each address with a space.
Custom Fields are normally used in conjunction with WordPress plugins, but you can manually edit the information added by plugins to your post in this section.
The post slug is a user-friendly post URL address created from the post title …
Note: This section only displays on your post if you have multiple registered users on your site with authoring rights. For a detailed tutorials on managing WordPress users, go here: 
Your “Tags” pages … 
Note: Not all themes display post excerpts by default. If your theme displays excerpts, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post content as the Excerpt, or any content you add before placing the <!–more–> quicktag (see further below to learn how to use the “More” Tag).
The same thing happens wherever summaries are displayed. For example, here is how WordPress would display the automatic excerpt in your site’s RSS feed page if no excerpt was manually added to the posts … 
