Learning about then WordPress Themes Builder’s Guide

WordPress Themes Builder’s Guide

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).

(source: WordPress.org)

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 â€¦

(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

[post_index]

How to Create A WordPress Home Page

Learn how to create a static WordPress home page.

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:

http://yourdomain.com/grandmas-favorite-chicken-recipes

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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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

A Basic Guide To WordPress Widget Tutorial

WordPress Widget Tutorial

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!

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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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 Customize The WordPress Dashboard

Customising Your WordPress Dashboard Section

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.

***

Has this article helped you in any way? Did we leave something important out? Feel free to add your thoughts below or share this information with your friends.

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

Fix a Poor Website Design with WordPress

In this article we’ll show you the simplest and most inexpensive way to fix issues with your website design.

Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed website 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 with you.

Let’s take a look at a few key design problems that can affect your web site:

Web Site 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 colours. 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 in away from your site. 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 be 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:

Subpar 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. Subpar functionality is not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organization. Itâ€™s vitally important, therefore, 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 unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that youâ€™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 around in. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they 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 on how to download and access your information.
Organization – If your site isnâ€™t organized 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 organized, 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 helpdesk, 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 optimization 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 a 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.

Now … what if you have arrived 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 Website 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 WordPress site 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 flexible and customizable 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 subpar 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.

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!

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 isnâ€™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 and how WordPress can help you build a better online. 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.

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 Create A Static WordPress Homepage

A Static WordPress Homepage

A typical website mostly has a page termed static which could also be considered a shop front. This is the page that the visitor lands on when they get to your website.

This page is must be given priority regarding impression because it is the first thing that the visitors sees upon arrival on your page. A visitor types your domain name into a web browser and lands of this page. On the other hand a visitor could navigate to this page through a search engine or directory listing.

The static page 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 page, the page and its content are normally intrinsically part of the home page file (e.g. www.mywebsite.com/index.html), so if you want visitors to see different content on your homepage 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 page 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 pages which contain the full article (e.g. “click here to learn more” …).

With WordPress, however, you are given the flexibility to create as many pages as you want and then specify which of these pages you want to designate as static WordPress Homepage for your site.

Better still, you can also replace the static WordPress Homepage of your website as often as you like, without having to edit any of its content, simply by creating a number of different pages you can point to as the site’s static page, and then selecting the page you want to show as your static WordPress Homepage.

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 page 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 catalog 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 page ultimately converts better)
Or even land on a “pre-launch” page if your site hasn’t officially launched yet!

This tutorial shows you how to easily create a static home page in WordPress.

How to create a static WordPress Homepage: Step-By-Step Tutorial

To set any page in your site to display as the Home Page, 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 page: Click on the drop down menu and choose the page you want to set as the Home Page (you can choose any of the pages showing in the dropdown menu)

Click the Save button after selecting your options to update the settings and set your new home page

After saving, click on Visit Site (tip: right-click and open the link in a new tab to open the homepage in a new browser window without leaving your WP dashboard) …

The page you have specified in Front page displays > A static page should now show as your site’s home page

You can specify a different home page for your website as many times as you want, just by repeating the above process and selecting another page …

Your newly-selected page will become the new home page immediately …

When you select any page to become the homepage of your site, WordPress reassigns the domain root to the URL of the page.

What this means is that if you select the page with the following URL your site’s home page:

http://yourdomain.com/grandmas-favorite-chicken-recipes

The above page 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 page you have specified as the new home page into your browser, WordPress will direct you to the home page.

Also, if you select another page as the home page, WordPress reassigns your old home page back to its original URL …

Congratulations! Now you know how to show any WordPress page as the 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.

How To Add Images To WordPress Posts

A Featured Image (previously known as a “Post Thumbnail”) is an image that you choose to represent your Posts, Pages or Custom Post Types.

Featured images can be used to make your posts look more attractive and enticing to your readers, thus increasing the overall appeal of your site.

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to add images to WordPress.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about how to add images to WordPress

Add Images to WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Note: Whether a Featured Image displays on your WordPress posts or not is determined by the particular theme you have chosen for your site. Featured images tend to be favoured by WordPress themes with “magazine-type” layouts, which use an image to represent each post. This image might be displayed only on the home page and appear on its own, or alongside an excerpt of the post.

You can find Free WordPress themes that display featured images by going to the WordPress Theme directory and using the “featured-images” search filter when searching for themes …

If choosing Premium Themes, just make sure that the theme supports featured images.

For tutorials on using WordPress Themes go here: How To Install WordPress Themes Automatically

How To Set A Featured Image For Your Posts

As we’ve just discussed, some themes allow you to specify a featured image in your posts. So, if you plan to use featured images, make sure that the theme you have chosen for your site supports this feature.

If your theme does not support Featured Images, then see this tutorial: How To Customize Your WordPress Theme To Display Featured Images.

To add a featured image to your post, make sure that the Featured Image box in the sidebar of your Edit Posts screen is visible …

If you cannot see the Featured Image box in your Edit Post screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your screen …

Make sure that the checkbox next to the Featured Image in the Show on screen section is ticked…

Next, click on the Set featured image link inside the Featured Image box …

This will open up the Set Featured Image.Screen as a popup window. Select the image you want to use as your featured image by clicking on it, then click on the Set featured image button …

The image you have selected has now been added to your post as a Featured Image …

Another way to set a featured image in a post is to click on the Add Media button in your Edit Post screen…

This will open up the Insert Media screen in your Media Gallery. Click on the Set Featured Image link in the Insert Media menu …

Next, select the image you want to use as your featured image by clicking on it, then click on the Set featured image button …

Your image will be set as the featured image of your WordPress Posts.

Remember to click Update to save and publish your new post settings …

Now, when you preview your site, you will see that your post displays the featured image you have specified…

Your featured image will continue to display even if you change WordPress themes on your site, as long as the themes support featured images …

To remove a featured image from a post, edit the post, then scroll down to the Featured Image box and click on the Remove featured image link …

You can also use plugins for managing and enhancing the use of featured images on your site in a number of different ways. For more details, see this tutorial: WordPress Plugins – Featured Images

WordPress Posts are 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.

Publish Your WordPress Site in Another Language

Publish Your WordPress Site In Another Language And Reach A Wider Global Audience!

Have you ever wondered if WordPress could set up to display your content in other languages?

The answer is… Yes, absolutely! You can set up a WordPress Blog in another Language or blog to provide your content in almost any international language you can imagine.

Although WordPress displays content in U.S. English by default, the software has the built-in capability to be used in any other language. WordPress also makes available themes, translation files, and support available for different international languages.

In this tutorial you will learn about WordPress’ international language capabilities and how to create a multilingual WordPress blog with the help of various WordPress plugins.

See the video below, and then complete the rest of this tutorial to learn how to translate your WordPress Blog into another language.

How To Publish Your WordPress In Another Language: Tutorial

The WordPress community has already translated WordPress into over 70 languages. You can set up a WordPress site or blog to display your content in any of the languages below as your site’s default language:

Azeri
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Bengali
Basque
Belarusian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch

Esperanto
Estonian
Faroese
Finnish
French
Gaelic
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Magyar
Icelandic

Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kazakh
Khmer
Korean
Kyrgyz
Kurdish
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay

Mongolian
Myanmar
Nias
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Sakha
Serbian
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian

Spanish
Sundanese
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Uighur
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
& more…

Using WordPress In Other Languages

To use WordPress in a language other than English, do the following first:

Check the above table, or go here to see if WordPress is available in your language of choice: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_in_Your_Language
If the language you want is not listed, read the “Introduction” section in the above page for alternative options. These options include links to the WordPress Language File Repository and access to translation teams where you can check to see if a translation is currently in progress.

How To Use WordPress In Another Language

To install an international language version of WordPress, you have two choices:

You can follow the instructions provided in your language listed here: WordPress in Your Language. These will show you how to install WordPress in another language.
If specific instructions are not available, then follow the instructions below to manually install language files into your WordPress site or blog. This will convert (i.e. Translate) the key terms on your site into the language of your choice.

Manually Installing Language Files

Here are the steps you need to follow to manually install an international language version of WordPress on your site. This will convert the key terms used throughout your site, but not your actual content. For help translating your actual content, see the next section of this tutorial where we explore language translation plugins.

Note: If you make an error in the steps or you do not specify the correct language, WordPress will default back to English. If you need help with these steps, please feel free to contact us.

First, you need to download the .Mo language file (Machine Object file) for your language (see WordPress in Your Language for help on this). This file is typically included in the translated versions of WordPress …

Note: Do not try to edit .MO files directly (you need special software editors to do this).

The naming convention of the .MO files are based on the ISO-639 language code (e.g. pt for Portuguese) followed by the ISO-3166 country code (e.g. _PT for Portugal or _BR for Brazil). So, for example, the Brazilian Portuguese file would be called pt_BR.MO, and a non-specific Portuguese file would be called pt.mo.

Note: For a complete list of country codes and language codes, see the bottom of this page.

After downloading the language files to your computer, extract the contents and locate the .MO file (typically, this will be located inside the “WordPress > WP-content > languages” directory) …

Important: Always back up your WordPress files and database before making changes to your WordPress application! If you need help with this step, contact us or refer to our tutorials on how to back up your WordPress files and database.

Open up your FTP software and create a new folder in your /wp-content or /wp-includes server directory called /languages. Next, upload the .mo file to the languages folder you have just created in your server …

Next, download your wp-config.php to a location in your computer that you will be able to easily find. Note: It’s always a good idea to download an additional copy of files you plan to modify to a “backup” folder …

Open your wp-config.php file in a text editor (remember to always back up your files before making any changes to your site) and change the following line to add the filename of your language translation file …

Edit this line according to the .mo file you’ve just downloaded. For example to change your WordPress site to use Brazilian Portuguese, you would change the above line to the following:

You can also use the above method to change your WordPress default language from en_US to some other variant of English. For example …

Below is an actual example of a wp-config.php file that has just been modified as shown above …

Once you have added your language code, save your wp-config.php file.

Upload the modified wp-config.php file to your WordPress installation root directory, replacing the existing wp-config.php file …

You will be asked to confirm whether you want to overwrite the existing file on your server. Click the “Overwrite” button to proceed …

Once again, ensure that you have a full back up of your WordPress files and data before making any changes to your site. This way, if anything goes wrong, or you just want to restore WordPress to its previous configuration, you can easily reverse any damage by simply re-uploading a copy of the unmodified wp-config.php file you have just backed up to your server, overwriting the newly modified file.

Open your Internet browser and bring up your site. Your site or blog should now display many of the key terms in the newly-installed language …

Note: If you are dealing with multiple WordPress site installations (e.g. WordPress MultiSite), then you can either set the language on a per-blog basis through the “Site language” option in the Settings >General subpanel, or set the default language for the entire network under the Network Admin > Settings panel (“Default Language”).

Once you have converted the core WordPress terms on your site to the new language, the next step to having your site be published in a complete different language is to translate the content of the site itself. This can be partly achieved through the help of translation, or multilingual plugins.

We cover a number of WordPress plugins that will help translate your site’s content into another language in a separate tutorial here: WordPress Plugins – Multilingual Plugins For WordPress

Using WordPress Site in Another Language – Additional Information

Below are some additional information tables you may find useful regarding using WordPress in other languages:

Country Codes

The ISO 3166 standard defines two character codes for many countries and territories:

AD – Andorra AE – United Arab Emirates AF – Afghanistan AG – Antigua and Barbuda AI – Anguilla AL – Albania AM – Armenia AN – Netherlands Antilles AO – Angola AQ – Antarctica AR – Argentina AS – Samoa (American) AT – Austria AU – Australia AW – Aruba AX – Aaland Islands AZ – Azerbaijan BA – Bosnia and Herzegovina BB – Barbados BD – Bangladesh BE – Belgium BF – Burkina Faso BG – Bulgaria BH – Bahrain BI – Burundi BJ – Benin BM – Bermuda BN – Brunei BO – Bolivia BR – Brazil BS – Bahamas BT – Bhutan BV – Bouvet Island BW – Botswana BY – Belarus BZ – Belize CA – Canada CC – Cocos (Keeling) Islands CD – Congo (Dem Rep) CF – Central African Republic CG – Congo (Rep) CH – Switzerland CI – Côte dIvoire CK – Cook Islands CL – Chile CM – Cameroon CN – China CO – Colombia CR – Costa Rica CU – Cuba CV – Cape Verde CX – Christmas Island CY – Cyprus CZ – Czech Republic DE – Germany DJ – Djibouti DK – Denmark DM – Dominica DO – Dominican Republic DZ – Algeria EC – Ecuador EE – Estonia EG – Egypt EH – Western Sahara ER – Eritrea ES – Spain ET – Ethiopia FI – Finland FJ – Fiji FK – Falkland Islands FM – Micronesia FO – Faeroe Islands FR – France GA – Gabon GB – Britain (United Kingdom) GD – Grenada GE – Georgia GF – French Guiana GG – Guernsey

GH – Ghana GI – Gibraltar GL – Greenland GM – Gambia GN – Guinea GP – Guadeloupe GQ – Equatorial Guinea GR – Greece GS – South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands GT – Guatemala GU – Guam GW – Guinea-Bissau GY – Guyana HK – Hong Kong HM – Heard Island and McDonald Islands HN – Honduras HR – Croatia HT – Haiti HU – Hungary ID – Indonesia IE – Ireland IL – Israel IM – Isle of Man IN – India IO – British Indian Ocean Territory IQ – Iraq IR – Iran IS – Iceland IT – Italy JE – Jersey JM – Jamaica JO – Jordan JP – Japan KE – Kenya KG – Kyrgyzstan KH – Cambodia KI – Kiribati KM – Comoros KN – St Kitts and Nevis KP – Korea (North) KR – Korea (South) KW – Kuwait KY – Cayman Islands KZ – Kazakhstan LA – Laos LB – Lebanon LC – St Lucia LI – Liechtenstein LK – Sri Lanka LR – Liberia LS – Lesotho LT – Lithuania LU – Luxembourg LV – Latvia LY – Libya MA – Morocco MC – Monaco MD – Moldova ME – Montenegro MG – Madagascar MH – Marshall Islands MK – Macedonia ML – Mali MM – Myanmar (Burma) MN – Mongolia MO – Macao MP – Northern Mariana Islands MQ – Martinique MR – Mauritania MS – Montserrat MT – Malta MU – Mauritius MV – Maldives MW – Malawi MX – Mexico MY – Malaysia MZ – Mozambique NA – Namibia NC – New Caledonia NE – Niger NF – Norfolk Island NG – Nigeria NI – Nicaragua

NL – Netherlands NO – Norway NP – Nepal NR – Nauru NU – Niue NZ – New Zealand OM – Oman PA – Panama PE – Peru PF – French Polynesia PG – Papua New Guinea PH – Philippines PK – Pakistan PL – Poland PM – St Pierre and Miquelon PN – Pitcairn PR – Puerto Rico PS – Palestine PT – Portugal PW – Palau PY – Paraguay QA – Qatar RE – Reunion RO – Romania RS – Serbia RU – Russia RW – Rwanda SA – Saudi Arabia SB – Solomon Islands SC – Seychelles SD – Sudan SE – Sweden SG – Singapore SH – St Helena SI – Slovenia SJ – Svalbard and Jan Mayen SK – Slovakia SL – Sierra Leone SM – San Marino SN – Senegal SO – Somalia SR – Suriname ST – Sao Tome and Principe SV – El Salvador SY – Syria SZ – Swaziland TC – Turks and Caicos Islands TD – Chad TF – French Southern and Antarctic Lands TG – Togo TH – Thailand TJ – Tajikistan TK – Tokelau TL – Timor-Leste TM – Turkmenistan TN – Tunisia TO – Tonga TR – Turkey TT – Trinidad and Tobago TV – Tuvalu TW – Taiwan TZ – Tanzania UA – Ukraine UG – Uganda UM – US minor outlying islands US – United States UY – Uruguay UZ – Uzbekistan VA – Vatican City VC – St Vincent and the Grenadines VE – Venezuela VG – Virgin Islands (UK) VI – Virgin Islands (US) VN – Vietnam VU – Vanuatu WF – Wallis and Futuna WS – Samoa (Western) YE – Yemen YT – Mayotte ZA – South Africa ZM – Zambia ZW – Zimbabwe

***

Language Codes

The ISO 639 standard defines two-letter codes for many languages, and three-letter codes for more rarely used languages:

Usual Language Codes
aa – Afar ab – Abkhazian ae – Avestan af – Afrikaans ak – Akan am – Amharic an – Aragonese ar – Arabic as – Assamese av – Avaric ay – Aymara az – Azerbaijani ba – Bashkir be – Belarusian bg – Bulgarian bh – Bihari bi – Bislama bm – Bambara bn – Bengali; Bangla bo – Tibetan br – Breton bs – Bosnian ca – Catalan ce – Chechen ch – Chamorro co – Corsican cr – Cree cs – Czech cu – Church Slavic cv – Chuvash cy – Welsh da – Danish de – German dv – Divehi; Maldivian dz – Dzongkha; Bhutani ee – Éwé el – Greek en – English eo – Esperanto es – Spanish et – Estonian eu – Basque fa – Persian ff – Fulah fi – Finnish fj – Fijian; Fiji fo – Faroese fr – French fy – Western Frisian ga – Irish gd – Scottish Gaelic gl – Galician gn – Guarani gu – Gujarati gv – Manx ha – Hausa he – Hebrew (formerly iw) hi – Hindi ho – Hiri Motu hr – Croatian ht – Haitian; Haitian Creole hu – Hungarian	hy – Armenian hz – Herero ia – Interlingua id – Indonesian (formerly in) ie – Interlingue; Occidental ig – Igbo ii – Sichuan Yi; Nuosu ik – Inupiak; Inupiaq io – Ido is – Icelandic it – Italian iu – Inuktitut ja – Japanese jv – Javanese ka – Georgian kg – Kongo ki – Kikuyu; Gikuyu kj – Kuanyama; Kwanyama kk – Kazakh kl – Kalaallisut; Greenlandic km – Central Khmer; Cambodian kn – Kannada ko – Korean kr – Kanuri ks – Kashmiri ku – Kurdish kv – Komi kw – Cornish ky – Kirghiz la – Latin lb – Letzeburgesch; Luxembourgish lg – Ganda li – Limburgish; Limburger; Limburgan ln – Lingala lo – Lao; Laotian lt – Lithuanian lu – Luba-Katanga lv – Latvian; Lettish mg – Malagasy mh – Marshallese mi – Maori mk – Macedonian ml – Malayalam mn – Mongolian mo – Moldavian mr – Marathi ms – Malay mt – Maltese my – Burmese na – Nauru nb – Norwegian Bokmål nd – Ndebele, North ne – Nepali ng – Ndonga nl – Dutch nn – Norwegian Nynorsk no – Norwegian nr – Ndebele, South nv – Navajo; Navaho ny – Chichewa; Nyanja oc – Occitan; Provençal	oj – Ojibwa om – (Afan) Oromo or – Oriya os – Ossetian; Ossetic pa – Panjabi; Punjabi pi – Pali pl – Polish ps – Pashto; Pushto pt – Portuguese qu – Quechua rm – Romansh rn – Rundi; Kirundi ro – Romanian ru – Russian rw – Kinyarwanda sa – Sanskrit sc – Sardinian sd – Sindhi se – Northern Sami sg – Sango; Sangro si – Sinhala; Sinhalese sk – Slovak sl – Slovenian sm – Samoan sn – Shona so – Somali sq – Albanian sr – Serbian ss – Swati; Siswati st – Sesotho; Sotho, Southern su – Sundanese sv – Swedish sw – Swahili ta – Tamil te – Telugu tg – Tajik th – Thai ti – Tigrinya tk – Turkmen tl – Tagalog tn – Tswana; Setswana to – Tonga tr – Turkish ts – Tsonga tt – Tatar tw – Twi ty – Tahitian ug – Uighur uk – Ukrainian ur – Urdu uz – Uzbek ve – Venda vi – Vietnamese vo – Volapük; Volapuk wa – Walloon wo – Wolof xh – Xhosa yi – Yiddish (formerly ji) yo – Yoruba za – Zhuang zh – Chinese zu – Zulu
Rare Language Codes
ace – Achinese awa – Awadhi bal – Baluchi ban – Balinese bej – Beja; Bedawiyet bem – Bemba bho – Bhojpuri bik – Bikol bin – Bini; Edo bug – Buginese ceb – Cebuano din – Dinka doi – Dogri fil – Filipino; Pilipino fon – Fon gon – Gondi gsw – Swiss German; Alemannic; Alsatian hil – Hiligaynon hmn – Hmong ilo – Iloko	kab – Kabyle kam – Kamba kbd – Kabardian kmb – Kimbundu kok – Konkani kru – Kurukh lua – Luba-Lulua luo – Luo (Kenya and Tanzania) mad – Madurese mag – Magahi mai – Maithili mak – Makasar man – Mandingo men – Mende min – Minangkabau mni – Manipuri mos – Mossi mwr – Marwari nap – Neapolitan nso – Pedi; Sepedi; Northern Sotho	nym – Nyamwezi nyn – Nyankole pag – Pangasinan pam – Pampanga; Kapampangan raj – Rajasthani sas – Sasak sat – Santali scn – Sicilian shn – Shan sid – Sidamo srr – Serer suk – Sukuma sus – Susu tem – Timne tiv – Tiv tum – Tumbuka umb – Umbundu wal – Walamo war – Waray yao – Yao

Congratulations … you have completed the tutorial on using WordPress in other languages.

How To Add Gravatar To Your WordPress Site

In this tutorial you are going to learn about Gravatars and how to add one to your WordPress site.

Most internet users are familiar with avatars. An avatar is an icon, or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality, such as a forum, chat, website, or any other form of online community where the user(s) wish to distinguish themselves from other users.

What Are Gravatars?

Short for “Globally Recognized Avatar”, gravatars make it possible for a person to have one avatar across the entire web. Avatars are usually an image that the user will create themselves.

It’s essentially the same thing as an avatar, but they are all hosted on a single server and are called up by encrypting the users’ email address using a special algorithm.

Instead of having one avatar display on a forum that you often frequent, and another avatar display on a blog you visit, you could have the same avatar display on both sites.

Watch the short video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about adding one to your WordPress site …

How To Add Gravatars To Your WordPress Site – Video

Why Use Gravatars

Providing users with avatars has become a convention in web-publishing. Enabling Gravatars on your WordPress site simplifies the process for everyone involved.

Benefits for Site Administrators

Adding user Gravatars requires very little effort
There is no need to maintain additional Plugins
You don’t have to manage user accounts, or their images, to allow blog commenters to use Gravatars on your site

Benefits for WordPress Users

Users don’t need to register for every site they visit just to use one
Users can update them across multiple sites by uploading a single image in a central location.

How To Add Gravatars To Your WordPress Site – Tutorial

If you browse different web sites you have probably noticed that many users have a picture displayed above or next to their name…

These pictures are called “avatars.” WordPress uses a specific type of avatar called “Gravatars” — short for “Globally Recognized Avatar”.

By default, WordPress displays Gravatars at 32px x 32px. To change the default WordPress Gravatars size on your site, you will need to edit the code in a template file.

Unlike standard avatars, Gravatars follow you around the web and automatically appear whenever you post a comment on a WordPress site. WordPress integrates Gravatars into every WordPress site.

Once registered with Gravatars, the service matches your WordPress profile information to the email address registered with one and displays your custom image next to comments and (optional) elsewhere on the WordPress site…

If a visitor chooses not to sign up with one, the default icon set by the site’s Administrator will appear next to their name (this is explained further below).

To use Gravatars, first create an account here (it’s FREE):

http://www.gravatar.com

Once you have an account set up, you will need to complete your profile, and select the email address and the image you want to associate with your yours

Yours will then be integrated with your WordPress account and follow you around the web…

How To Control Gravatars On Your WordPress Site

Although WordPress sites now automatically integrate using Gravatars, you can change the following settings:

Whether Avatars (aka, Gravatars) are displayed on your site or not.
Which rating of Avatars are shown.

To control how yours is used, log in as an administrator and go to the Settings > Discussion Administration Panel …

Scroll down to the “Avatars” Section …

The “Avatars” section presents you with several options:

Avatar Display: This section lets you toggle Gravatar on and off for your site.
Maximum Rating: When users create a profile on one, they are given the opportunity to rate their image as G, PG, R, X based on its appropriateness. Select the radio button for the maximum rating you would like displayed on your site.
Default Avatar: WordPress allows for you to select what type of image you would like to display when a commenter does not have an account. Selecting one of the “generated” icons give you and your users some of the benefits of a Gravatar without requiring them to have an account. The icons that say “generated” next to them take the email of the commenter and link it to an auto-generated image. Now, every time that commenter posts to your site, they will have the same unique image next to their name.

Remember to click the Save Changes button when finished to save your new settings …

How To Customise Your WordPress 404 Error Page not found

When a visitor tries to access a page on your site that doesn’t exist, WordPress will automatically display something called a error page.

The error page is essentially a page that lets your visitor know that whatever they are looking for cannot be found at that specific URL location.

It may seem like a very small thing, but addressing errors and taking care of your page can make a big difference not only to how visitors perceive and experience your site, but they can also help you recover what would otherwise be many lost opportunities to keep visitors on your site and potentially turn them into prospects and new customers.

Where Is My WordPress 404 Page not found.

Before we go any further, if you are not familiar with error pages, you can see what your own site’s page looks like (or even check to see if you have one), by typing a url into your internet browser for a page that you know doesn’t exist on your site (e.g.mysite.com/adfgegrgertgrf) …

WordPress is set to automatically look for the file 404.php when an error 404 is reached. A basic error page is included with the default WordPress theme, but may be missing from some themes. If this file is not present, then it will display a basic error message like the example shown below …

In this tutorial we look at some of the ways you can customize your default WordPress 404 page and provide your visitors with a better experience when they land on your site and don’t find what they were expecting to see.

WordPress 404 Page Not Found Error – Your Options

There are a number of things that can lead to a “404” or “Page Not Found” error:

Your post or page has been deleted or moved to another location
Changes have been made to your permalinks or your page slug
Changes have been made to a post category or category slug
Code in your index.php or search.php files has been modified, resulting in invalid addresses being returned
Web server files (e.g. “mod_rewrite”) have not been installed, or are missing. Tip: If you are trying to use Pretty Permalinks (Search-Engine Friendly URLs) and you are getting errors, check with your webhost that mod_rewrite has been installed and is working correctly.
You have published or promoted a wrong link (e.g. a link containing a misspelling)
Your visitor has simply typed the wrong URL into their browser

Whatever the reason for getting an error page may be, it’s important to acknowledge that your visitor has made an effort to come to your site, and that they are probably going to be left feeling slightly confused or disappointed after arriving on your site and not finding what they expected to see.

So … What are your options when this happens?

You could just do what most people do and ignore the errors, but this will not create a positive outcome for either your visitor (disappointment), or for you (loss of opportunity). If a visitor follows a link to your site and are presented with a page instead of the content they were looking for, it’s highly unlikely that they will search your site to find it. Most likely, they will simply assume that the content no longer exists on your site, and simply look elsewhere.

Additionally, ignoring your “page not found” issues can affect a search engine’s ability to index your site’s pages and impact the bounce rate on your site.

This could lead to poor search engine rankings. One or two errors may not present much of a problem, but if your site is filled with errors, it’s possible that your site will be penalized for having too many invalid links, and this can affect your rankings in the search engines …

If you choose to do nothing, then at least know that, depending on your theme, WordPress will automatically serve up a “404” page, and this page may include the option of allowing your visitors to search for content on your site …

If anything, this is better than giving your visitors no option but to click the “back” button on their browser, leave your site and go somewhere else.

Another option is to automatically send all visitors to your home page or another page on your site using a redirect script or plugin when a bad URL is detected. From a visitor’s point of view, however, this may not be very useful or helpful and could add to their confusion and/or lead to more disappointment.

Ideally, you would take steps to prevent a 404 page from showing in the first place. Some of the ways you can prevent “page not found” errors include the following:

Plan to set up well-structured permalinks from the beginning to avoid changing these the future
Be proactive: monitor incorrect incoming links, then contact the owners of the websites that are linking to your site and request that these links be corrected. Most site owners will be more than happy to oblige.
Don’t remove old content on your site unless it’s absolutely necessary to do so, and if you have to, make sure to set up proper redirection and follow correct page migration procedures.

Useful Tips:

Look at your site’s analytics, or search online for terms such as “tracking inbound links”, or “reputation management tools” to find tools that can show you which sites are linking to your site.
Use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to detect and redirect broken links on your site.

In addition to taking steps to prevent errors, the best thing you can do is to be as upfront and helpful as you can be. Think of ways to turn errors into opportunities. Acknowledge the fact that the content they are looking for is missing and try to help your visitors find what they are looking for.

At the very least, your 404 page should provide helpful information and some useful navigation options for your visitors. Explain to them why the page can’t be located and offer suggestions for helping them get to the right area of your site to continue searching.

Here are some ideas to help you create a useful error page:

Write a clear and simple greeting with apologies for the inconvenience
Add site branding elements to reassure visitors that they are still on your site, and to give a clear indication of the industry and category your site or business belongs to
Add helpful navigation options like a search form, links to relevant, recent and/or popular content
Add links to your home page and your sitemap
Add a link to your contact page with a simple request for reporting the error
Add a tag cloud to your page
Add some promotional content or information about your offers and services (optional)
Add a notification and/or tracking system to help you identify errors on your site.

Customizing Your WordPress 404 Page

A WordPress error page is an actual page file that can be edited. It is typically included with most WordPress themes. You can find this page by going into your server (e.g. via FTP, cPanel, etc.) and looking for a page called 404.php located inside the wp-content > themes > name of theme folder …

Once you have located the page, you can edit it to improve your visitor’s experience by placing helpful information in your 404 pages (you can even monetize your error pages by placing ads in it).

Below are just some examples of simple customizations you can make to your WP 404 page.

You can add links to the main sections of your site …

(source: AudioBookOne.net)

You can add links to relevant, related, or your latest content …

(source: ProBlogger.net)

You can add a friendly or funny message to greet your visitors with …

(source: JustinTadlock.com)

You can even add a touch of your own creativity …

(source: Agens.no)

In short, you can customize your error page however you like.

Note: Always make a backup of any files you plan to modify. Editing your WordPress 404 page requires some knowledge of editing PHP files, even if it’s doing something as simple as changing the greeting your visitors see when they land on the page – …

If you are not comfortable with editing code, please ask someone with experience in web design or PHP coding to do it for you. See the resources section at the bottom of this page for more information about editing your WordPress 404 page template.

WordPress Error 404 Page Plugins

Here are a number of WordPress plugins that will help you customize your WordPress 404 page and/or prevent, manage, or handle WP errors.

Custom 404 Error Page

The Custom 404 Page plugin lets you customize your WordPress 404 page from your WordPress dashboard. You can select different background colors, choose your text and font settings, add your own custom greetings, and even add links to useful pages …

When visitors arrive on your error page, they will now be greeted by a page that looks slightly more personal and useful than the default WordPress error page …

The video below shows you how to use the Custom Error Page plugin … Clever Error

The CleverError plugin replaces your 404 page with an “intelligent” screen that tries to guess what your visitors are looking for, using a contextual search feature and links to your home page to try and prevent users from using the back button and leaving your site …

404 Redirected

According to the plugin developer, the 404 Redirected plugin allows you to “convert your 404 traffic by providing your site visitors with a better browsing experience and eliminate 404 URLs on your site.”

The 404 Redirected plugin allows you to control your dead links and redirects from your admin panel …

404 Redirected records all URLs that users have visited leading to errors …

And then allows you to easily create 301 and 302 redirects to valid pages on your site, to help prevent those errors from happening again …

Notes:

301 = Permanent Redirection
302 = Temporary Redirection

Redirects can be created based on the best possible match for the URL the visitor was most likely trying to reach.

404 Redirected plugin also lets you provide suggestions on your 404 page for users to click on …

Note: In order to use the “suggestions” feature of this plugin, you will need to insert the line of code below into your existing 404.php page …

To access your 404.php file from your WordPress dashboard, select Appearance > Edit from your WordPress administration menu…

Wherever you insert the above line of code is where suggestions to other pages will appear on your 404 page …

As stated earlier, always make a backup of any files you plan to modify, and if you do not want to edit code yourself, then please ask someone with experience to help you.

Auto Redirect 404 in 301 for Trashed Posts

In terms of search engine optimization, it’s better for search engines think that content on your site has moved rather than disappeared.

This plugin allows you to redirect posts that have been sent to the trash to your homepage (or to another location that you specify).

The plugin lists deleted page URLs that are being visited, so you can redirect visitors to another page, instead of the 404 page …

Note: This plugin is used for posts or pages (or categories, tags, media, etc.) that have been deleted from your site. If a visitor searches for something that does not exist on your site, they will be presented with your theme’s usual 404 page.

404 To Start

The 404 of Start plugin is a simple plugin that allows you to completely bypass the 404 error page and send visitors directly to your home page, or to any other page of your choice.

The plugin allows you to specify whether to make your redirects permanent (301) or temporary (302) and gives you the option to receive an email notification whenever an error occurs …

Note: If you plan to use a customized 404 page, then do not use this plugin, as your visitors will never see your custom 404 page – they will be sent directly to your home page or whatever page you have specified.

Tip: This plugin is useful if you provide content containing links or references to posts or pages on your site that have been scheduled for publishing at a future date.

Simply create a temporary notice page (e.g. “This page coming soon”) and use the 404 to start plugin to redirect all not found links pointing to content that has not been published yet to your temporary page. Remember to set the destination page as a “302” (i.e. Temporary) redirect.

404 Error Monitor

This is a simple plugin that logs errors on your WordPress site. It also logs useful information like referrer, user address and error hit count.

This plugin is useful for monitoring the errors, especially from external referrers, or if you plan to create manual redirection links.

Note: You don’t need to use this plugin if your current 404 strategy already provides you with a way of monitoring the errors.

404 Notifier

If you’ve decided to move things around on your site, you might overlook a few redirects and end up with some broken URLs.

This plugin will help you catch any broken URLs so you can fix them. It logs the errors on your site and notifies you of these via e-mail or RSS.

Smart 404

Instead of displaying an unhelpful error page on your site when a visitor reaches content that doesn’t exist, you can install the Smart 404 plugin, and it will make an effort to guess what your visitors were after.

The plugin will perform a search of your posts, pages, tags and categories, using keywords from the requested URL. If there’s a match, it will redirect to that content instead of showing the error. If there’s more than one match, the 404 template can use some template tags to provide a list of suggestions to the visitor.

The Smart 404 plugin is also useful if you have recently changed your permalink structure. With minimal or no adjustment, old permalinks will still work.

Google 404

The Google 404 widget is a quick and easy way to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with useful information designed to help them find the information they need. Where it can, the Google widget will also suggest other ways for the user to find the information they need, thus increasing the likelihood that they’ll continue to explore your site.

You should set up a Google webmaster account and submit an XML sitemap of your blog to ensure the Google 404 widget works effectively.

Dunstan-Style Error Page

This plugin lets you create a custom error page similar to the one used on Dunstan Orchard’s 1976design.com/blog.

The custom 404 error page created by this plugin provides useful information to your visitors, including useful links, links to your most recent posts, a search box, the option to contact you and report the error, and more.

How To Customise Your WordPress 404 Error Page not found

More Useful 404 Plugins

The plugins below provide more advanced or unusual options to address 404 errors on your site. Redirection

Redirection is a very useful WordPress plugin that helps you manage 301 redirects, keep track of errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.

This plugin is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation, as it allows you to map your old URLs to your new ones …

Permalinks Moved Permanently

This simple but effective plugin is useful if you change the permalink structure of your site and don’t want to lose any incoming links pointing to your old page URLs.

If you just migrated your WordPress blog from one permalink structure to another, and you don’t want to lose the traffic that accesses your blog through the old permalinks, then consider using this plugin.

Here’s how the plugin works: Right before the old permalink generates a 404 error page, this plugin grabs the slug from the end of the request and checks to see if a post with the same slug is located somewhere else on your site. If so, the plugin will generate a “301 Moved Permanently” error and forward your visitor to the new location of your post.

In addition to redirecting your visitor to the new link, it will also automatically redirect visitors and search engine spiders to the new location in the future.

Useful 404s

This plugin sends you email notifications that specify the cause of your errors, allowing you to create more useful 404 pages. The developer of this plugin credits the following article for inspiring the creation of this plugin: A More Useful 404.

WP 404 Images Fix

This plugin lets you replace images missing from your posts that return a 404 error with an alternative default image of your choice. You also have the option to add a class to the img tag or hide the image if it’s missing.

NotFound.org 404 Page

This is a different type of 404 plugin, as it allows you to turn your error pages into an online “billboard” for helping to locate missing children …

NotFound.org is an organization dedicated to finding missing children. It began its services in Europe, but plans to expand to other countries. According to the site …

Thousands of children go missing every year across Europe. Thanks to the NotFound project, you can make a difference. Install our application and a picture of a missing child automatically gets published on every ‘page not found’ of your website. Together, we can find them.

The goal of this plugin is to make it really easy for WordPress users to implement the NotFound.org missing child page instead of their standard 404 page.

404 Error – Additional Resources

Here are some additional useful resources that can help you deal with 404 errors on your WordPress site:

For resources that can help you check for “dead links” (i.e. links on your site that point nowhere), go here: Check For Dead Links
For the official WordPress documentation on creating an Error 404 page, go here: Creating An Error 404 Page

Congratulations! Hopefully now you have a better understanding of what errors are, and some of the ways you can customize your WordPress 404 page to provide not only a better experience for your visitors, but also help to minimize lost opportunities on your site.

How To Insert And Format Images Into WordPress Posts And Pages

Adding images to your content can help make your website or blog look more attractive, lively and professional. Images can also help to create a better impression with your readers and deliver a stronger presentation in your sales message.

In other tutorials, we show you how to upload images and other media files to your WordPress site using the Media Library.

We also show you how to edit images in your WordPress Media Library.

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to insert and format images into your Content.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using images in your WordPress content.

How To Insert And Format Images Into WordPress Posts And Pages: Step-By-Step Tutorial

There are several ways to source images for inserting into your posts and pages.

You can:

Insert an image from your site’s Media Library
Upload an image from a folder in your hard drive
Insert the URL of an image stored in an image folder either in your own server or on another server (e.g. a remote file storage location).

Important: Make sure that you have permission to use the image(s) on your site. Image licensing companies and owners of copyrighted images will take legal action against you if you use images on your site without permission or violate the terms and conditions of your licensing agreements.

How To Insert Images From Your WordPress Media Library

Make sure that you have already completed this tutorial.

To insert an image from your WordPress Media Library, go into your Posts or Pages section and open (edit) your post or page, then place your mouse cursor where you want your image inserted into the content …

Click on the Add Media button above the content editor window …

A pop up window will display the Insert Media options. Select the Media Library tab to view all media you have uploaded to your WordPress site …

Select All media items from the Media Library drop down menu to view all media items uploaded to your site …

You can also view only the media items you have attached to your post or page by selecting Uploaded to this post from the Media Library dropdown menu …

Note: You can also use the Media Library drop down menu to filter and display only images, audio and video files.

Select the image you want to insert into your post or page and then click on the Insert into post button …

Your image will be inserted into your post or page …

Note #1: You can also insert an image gallery from your media Library into your posts and pages. For more details see this tutorial: How To Add Multiple Images Into WordPress Posts And Pages Using An Image Gallery …

Note #2: To exit the Insert Media screen without performing an image action, just click on the “X” at the top of the window …

How To Upload Images From A Computer Hard Drive

To add your own images to a post or page, first, make sure that you already have an image created and ready to be uploaded or inserted in an “images” or graphics folder in your computer.

Next, go to your WordPress Visual Text Editor and click inside the post or page where you want the image to be inserted. The image will be inserted wherever your cursor is flashing.

Click on the Add Media button above the content editor window …

A pop up window will display the Insert Media options. Select the Upload Files tab to display the media uploader, then either drag-and-drop your image file into the box that appears in the screen with a dotted border, or click on Select Files to locate and upload your image …

Note: For a detailed tutorial on using the WordPress Media Up-loader go here.

Locate the image you want to upload, then select it and click Open in the File Upload window …

Your image will begin uploading …

Once your image has been uploaded, it will display as the selected item. Click the Insert into post button …

Your image will be inserted into your post or page …

How To Insert An Image From A URL

Important: Do not link to images hosted on an external server without permission – this is called “hotlinking” and it’s frowned upon by most webmasters and website owners, as it uses up their bandwidth and costs them money. You can set up your own external data storage account for hosting images and files remotely using a service like Amazon S3.

To insert an image from a URL into a post or page, click on the Add Media button …

The Insert Media screen will open on your browser window. Click the Insert from URL link in the Insert Media menu …

Enter your image URL in the Insert from URL field, your image title in the Title field and click Insert into post …

Useful Tip: If you use a content editor enhancing plugin like the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, you can quickly and easily insert images into posts and pages by simply clicking on a menu icon …

This will bring up an Insert/Edit Image box like the one shown in the screenshot below, allowing you to enter an image URL, image description, title, etc. before inserting the image into your post or page…

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPres Posts Or Pages

Once you have uploaded and inserted an image into your post or page using one of the methods shown above, the next step is to format your image so it displays well on your site.

In this section you will learn a number of different ways to format images in WordPress.

How To Format Images In The Insert Media Screen

Before inserting an image into a post or page, the Insert Media screen gives you a number of options for editing and formatting your image file …

To learn more about editing media in the Media Library, see this tutorial.

The Attachment Display Settings allow you to specify a number of formatting options for your image:

You can select an Alignment for your image …

Left: Place the image on the left of your post or page content. Text is wrapped around the image.

Center: Center your image on the post or page. Text is not wrapped around the image.

Right: Place the image on the right of your post or page content. Text is wrapped around the image.

None: No image alignment. Text is not wrapped around the image.

You can also associate your image with a Link To destination …

Custom URL: Select this option to link your image to a URL of your choice (e.g. your home page or product page). Clicking on this image in a post or page will send the visitor to the URL location specified in the Custom URL field …

Media File: Select this option to link your image to the folder where your image file has been uploaded. Clicking on this image in a post or page opens up a full size copy of your image on your visitor’s browser …

Attachment Page: Select this option to link your image to the media attachment page. Clicking on an image inserted into a post or page with this option will open up the file’s attachment page (see this tutorial for information about attachment pages) …

None: Select this option if you want to remove all links to the image. When an image with this setting is inserted into a post or page and someone clicks on it, nothing will happen …

You can also choose a Size for your image …

Note: You can change the default size of your image thumbnails in the Media Settings page …

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPress Posts Or Pages

Adjusting Image Placement And Size

You can move an image around your text by selecting it with your mouse, then dragging and dropping it into a different area of your post or page editor window …

To edit an image once it has been inserted into your post or page, click on the image with your mouse and select the Image Edit icon …

The Edit Image screen will open up …

In the Edit Image screen, you can do the following:

Size: This allows you to scale your image from 100% down to 60% of its current size. This is useful if you want to adjust the size of your image to something other than the default full size, Large, Medium, and Thumbnail size options presented when you insert the image. Slide your mouse over the settings to enlarge or reduce the size of your image, then click to set the size option.

Alignment: This is where you control how your text aligns or wraps around your image. Select either left, centre, or right alignment and the image preview will change to show you how this will affect the image and text on your page.

You can also specify a Title for your image, Alternative Text (Alt text), Caption, and Link URL (See the previous sections of this tutorial and this tutorial for more details about these options.)

When you’re done editing your image, click Update to save your new settings, or Cancel to exit the screen without saving your changes …

How To Resize Images – In-Content Image Resizing

You can resize your image directly in the Visual editor by clicking on the image, selecting any of the standard resizing handles and move the mouse to make the image smaller or larger …

Note: the image may become distorted or blocky, depending on how you resize it.

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPres Posts Or Pages

How To Resize Images – Adding Thumbnail Images To Posts

To add a thumbnail image to your post, place your cursor where you want the thumbnail image to appear in your content and click on the Add Media button …

This will bring up the Insert Media screen …

Select the image you want to insert into your post as a thumbnail and then choose Attachment Display Settings > Size > Thumbnail from the dropdown menu in the Attachment Details column …

Click Insert into post…

Your thumbnail image will be inserted into your post in the location where you placed your mouse cursor …

Note: To change the default size of your thumbnail images, see this tutorial.

Using The Advanced Settings Tab To Edit Your Image

To access the Advanced Settings tab, click on the image edit icon…

Click on the Advanced Settings tab…

In the Advanced Image Settings section you can:

View the Source URL of your image (if your image is stored in a different server, enter the full URL to the image here)
Enter a custom Size for your image or click on the Original Size button to restore the image to its original size
Enter a CSS Class – You can add or override CSS classes for your image here.
Add Styles – Apply individual CSS styles to the image.
Adjust Image properties like adding a border (enter “0” for no border, or specify a border width in pixels, e.g. “2”), vertical spacing and horizontal spacing (enter the number of pixels for these).

Below the Advanced Image Settings you will find the Advanced Link Settings section. This includes the following options:

Title: Enter text here to display the image title as a tooltip (the text will appear when visitors hover their mouse button over your image).
Link Rel: You can add link rel attributes to your images (e.g. nofollow).
CSS Class: Use this field to apply a CSS class to the link.
Style: Use this field to apply individual CSS styles to the link.
Target: Select whether you want the link to open in a new window or the same window.

Remember to click the Update button to save any changes made to these settings …

Tip#1 – If you notice that an image appears to be distorted, or if you replace an image on your server with another image of a different size, then click on Image Edit > Advanced Settings > Original Size button to restore the image dimensions to its correct size …

Remember to click the Update button to save your settings …

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert and format images into WordPress posts and pages.

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 making progress to building a professional WordPress Site.

Related Tutorials

WordPress Customisation Guide

WordPress gives you the ability to fully customise your site or blog and create a unique “look and feel” for your website.

The step-by-step tutorials in this training section how to customise your WordPress site to match your individual taste, style and needs.

Note: We will be adding more tutorials to this section on a regular basis.

WordPress Customisation Tutorials

To access any of the tutorials in this section, just click on a link from the list below.

[post_index category=’WordPress Customisation’]

Back To WordPress Training Tutorials Index

WordPress Themes Builder’s Guide

A Revolution In Web Site Design

Benefits And Advantages Of WP Themes

Responsive WP Themes

WordPress Tutorials Index

Learn how to create a static WordPress home page.

Step-By-Step Tutorial To Create WordPress Home Page

WordPress Widget Tutorial

Widgets – What Are They? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Newbies

Widget Themes

How Do I Access My WP Widgets?

Widgets Features: “Drag And Drop”

Widget Management – Preview Widgets

WordPress Widget Tutorial – Configuration

How To Use WordPress Widgets

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Web Site Design Issues

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WordPress – Unique Website Design Features

WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience

A Static WordPress Homepage

How to create a static WordPress Homepage: Step-By-Step Tutorial

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Country Codes

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How To Customise Your WordPress 404 Error Page not found

Where Is My WordPress 404 Page not found.

Customizing Your WordPress 404 Page

WordPress Error 404 Page Plugins

How To Customise Your WordPress 404 Error Page not found

More Useful 404 Plugins

404 Error – Additional Resources

How To Insert And Format Images Into WordPress Posts And Pages

How To Insert And Format Images Into WordPress Posts And Pages: Step-By-Step Tutorial

How To Insert Images From Your WordPress Media Library

How To Upload Images From A Computer Hard Drive

How To Insert An Image From A URL

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPres Posts Or Pages

How To Format Images In The Insert Media Screen

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPress Posts Or Pages

Adjusting Image Placement And Size

How To Resize Images – In-Content Image Resizing

How To Insert and Format Images In To WordPres Posts Or Pages

How To Resize Images – Adding Thumbnail Images To Posts

Using The Advanced Settings Tab To Edit Your Image

WordPress Customisation Guide

WordPress Customisation Tutorials