How To Use The WordPress Mobile App Theme – Media

In this tutorial you will learn how to add photos and videos to your site using the App for mobile devices.

For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version of the WordPress mobile app – Media The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).

Go here for more information about WordPress For iOS.

Complete the step-by-step tutorial below to learn how to add photos and videos to your site or blog using your mobile device.

The WordPress Mobile App – Media

You should have already set up your WordPress App. If not, see this tutorial.

Tap on your WordPress app icon to log into your account …

The App gives you access to the following Media-related functions:

Quick Photo – Take photos with your mobile device and add them to your posts.
Quick Video – Shoot videos with your mobile device and add them to your posts.

Quick Photo

To insert a photo into a post tap on the Quick Photo menu …

This will immediately launch the camera application in your mobile device.

WordPress Mobile App Theme

Take a photo with the camera and click Save to keep the image, or Discard to try again …

The application creates a new WordPress post and inserts your photo. Add some content, edit your settings and you are ready to publish your post …

After adding an image to your post, you can adjust the image settings by tapping on the image. This brings up the Image Settings screen …

The Image Settings screen allows you to edit the following settings on your image:

Image filename – Change your image filename.
Image caption – Add an image caption. This field is optional.
Horizontal alignment – Choose from the following options: “None”, “Left”, “Center” and “Right.
Width – Use the slider to adjust the image width.
Use as featured image – Check the box in this field to set your image as a featured image.

After adjusting your settings, click on OK to save your new settings, or Cancel to exit the Image Settings screen without saving your settings.

WordPress Mobile App Theme

Quick Video

To insert a video into a new post tap on the Quick Video menu …

This will immediately launch the video camera application in your mobile device.

Record a video and click Save to keep it, or Discard to try again …

The application creates a new post and inserts your video. Add some content, edit your settings and you are ready to publish your post …

Note: If your video uploads to your site … great!

In some instances, however, you may find that posting a video using the WordPress App results in errors and your video not displaying on your post.

In the screenshot below, for example, after adding a new video to a post and publishing it, the video screen size was too large …

And no video displayed …

On another occasion, nothing even showed up on the screen …

WordPress Mobile App Theme

There are many reasons why you may be experiencing problems with your videos when you use the App. It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to help you troubleshoot issues with videos.

Here are some suggestions:

Make a test post with your mobile device. If you experience issues with videos not displaying on your site after publishing your post, then do not use the Quick Video method. Instead, capture videos with your device as you normally do, download the video file to your computer and then use the media uploader to insert the video into your post.
Contact your webhost. You may need to add file-extensions/mime types to your server in order to play the files.

Congratulations! You now know how to use the Mobile App for adding media to your WordPress site via a mobile device.

WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.

How To Use The WordPress Mobile App – Admin

In this tutorial you will learn how to access a number of administrative functions in your site using the App for mobile devices.

For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version of the mobile app. The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).

Go here for more information about WordPress For iOS.

Complete the step-by-step tutorial below to learn how to access a number of administrative functions in your site using your mobile device.

You should have already set up your App. If not, see this tutorial.

Tap on your app icon to log into your account …

If you have added multiple sites to your App, tap on the drop-down menu at the top of menu section and select the site you want to administer …

The administration functions for the site you have selected can be accessed by tapping on the following menus …

Stats – View stats about your site’s activity.
View Site – Displays your site in your mobile browser.
View Admin – Access the administration area of your site

Stats

To view statistical data about your site on your mobile device, tap on the Stats menu icon …

Note: In order to view your site’s statistics, you will need to have an account set up with WordPress.com.

If you have an account already set up with WordPress.com, then enter your account’s login details to access your stats …

If you don’t have an account with WordPress.com, then go to WordPress.com and register for a free account …

Next, you will need to install the Jetpack plugin to enable stats for your self-hosted site. This plugin was developed by the WordPress team to deliver many of the features available in the hosted versions (i.e. WordPress.com) to your self-hosted WordPress site.

After installing and activating the plugin, add your site to WordPress.com …

Next, log into your site and click on Jetpack in your WP admin menu to access the plugin’s main page …

Click on the Stats > Configure button …

Configure your plugin’s Stats settings and click on the Save configuration button …

Once you have installed and configured the Jetpack plugin for your self-hosted site, select Stats from your app’s menu and enter your WordPress.com login details to view your site’s statistics …

View Site

To view your site in your mobile browser, tap on the View Site menu …

Your site will display on your browser …

View Admin

To view your admin area, tap on the View Admin menu …

You will be taken inside your site’s dashboard area …

You can navigate through the menus and perform many of the administration functions from your mobile device, just as if you had logged in from a PC or laptop.

Congratulations! You now know how to use the Mobile App admin section.

How To Edit Your WordPress User Profile

In this tutorial you will learn how to edit your WordPress user profile.

You will also learn how to set up an “about the author” information box that will be associated with all the content you post online and how to use this feature to better promote yourself and/or your business online.

The Profile section lets you specify how your name will be displayed on your site, your e-mail address for administrative purposes, and other personal information and personal options related to your WordPress user account.

Watch the short video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about editing WordPress user profiles …

To edit your user profile, go to the Profile screen, which is accessible from the main navigation menu by going to Users > Your Profile …

Or by clicking on the “Howdy, Your Name” link at the top of your WordPress admin section and selecting “Edit My Profile” …

The Profile section contains a number of subsections that allow you to manage information about your user account:

Personal Options
Name
Contact Info
About Yourself
Change Password

Let’s go through each of these options now …

User Profile Fields

You can always access your profile by clicking on your username, which is displayed in the top right hand side of the screen and selecting “Edit My Profile” from the drop-down menu
You can ignore this section, unless you specifically want to customize aspects of your WordPress site administration area that are only viewable to you (and no one else) such as disabling the visual editor when writing, changing the admin area’s colour scheme, or enabling keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation.
Tip: If you ever experience issues when trying to add code to your posts or pages (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor button in this section
Important: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” checkbox enabled to display the Toolbar in your WordPress administration area. To learn more about the WordPress toolbar, see this tutorial: Your WordPress Site Administration Area
The username cannot be changed in the User Profile section by anyone, including the site administrator (although you can change your username if you know how to edit your WordPress database, but this will affect your login, as this username is required for logging into your WordPress site!). You can, however, change the data in the First Name and Last Name fields.
If you want to display a different author name on your posts other than the one you originally registered or installed WordPress with, then change the Nickname (required) field and select your new nickname from the Display name publicly as drop down menu. You can add multiple nicknames. All your posts, comments will display your new nickname, instead of the name you registered with.
Tip: Go here for a step-by-step tutorial on How To Change The Author Name On Existing WordPress Posts.
Make sure that your correct email address is entered in the Email (required) field.
Enter your website address in the Website field. If you have another website or business blog that you want to display as your website, then enter the URL for that website or blog instead. You can enter details for the other Contact Info section fields, or just ignore these.
In this section, add a personal or business description for your visitors and blog readers.
Use the New Password section only if you are required to change your login password. You will need to enter your new password twice before the system can accept the password change.
Click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile.

Note: Adding certain plugins to your site (e.g. social media features), may insert or remove fields in your User Profile screen (e.g. add a field for “twitter” username, etc…)

User Profile: Important Notes

WordPress only requires your e-mail address and a nickname. Your email address is used only for your blog administration.
Your email address is never sent to any other site (including WordPress) and it is never displayed on your site (unless you publish it, or use a specific WordPress theme that displays your email address).
Only registered users of your blog have access to the e-mail address you provide.
Each user’s email address must be unique.

WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Information

Your WordPress Profile section has a number of fields that allow you to enter additional contact information such as your AIM screen name, your Yahoo! Messenger ID, and your Jabber / Google Talk name …

Normally, you would just leave these fields empty. Some WordPress theme developers, however, may choose to customize their templates to display this and other contact information.

If this is the case, then you can choose to set up accounts with these services (if you haven’t already done so) and then add your details into the appropriate fields in the Contact Info section.

Currently, WordPress provides default fields for the following services:

AIM

AIM is a desktop and mobile chat application that allows you to chat with friends or collaborate on a group project online …

Yahoo! Messenger

Yahoo! Messenger allows you to connect and chat with friends from any web browser or mobile device …

Jabber / Google Talk

Google Chat software allows you to chat with friends and share files online …

Note: If you plan to run a corporate website, you may not want some of the Profile screen fields displayed to users. If this is the case, see the “tips” section below to learn how to remove unnecessary fields from the User Profile screen.

Useful Tips Related To Your User Profile

Tip #1: Your user profile gives you an additional opportunity to promote your business to your site visitors.

A link to the author is added to every post published on your site …

Clicking on the author link takes you to the Author Archives section, where site readers can learn more about you (or other authors registered as users on your site) and see other posts that you (or other authors) have published …

You can add hyperlinks and simple text formatting like bold and italicized text to enhance your author description and further promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, to your site visitors …

This is done by adding HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section …

Tip #2 (Advanced User): How To Hide User Profile Fields

If you plan to run a corporate website, you can install a simple WordPress plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that will automatically hide the following fields from your site’s user profiles and creation pages when activated:

Colour Profile
Keyboard Shortcuts
Toolbar
AIM
Jabber
Yahoo IM
Web site URL
Biography Description
User Role (every new user is created as Subscriber)

For more information, visit the plugin page here: Hide User Profile Fields WordPress Plugin

A Guide to Basic HTML For WordPress Users

A Guide To Basic HTML For WordPress Users

Having a basic knowledge of HTML can be useful when creating, editing or formatting content on your WordPress site.

In this tutorial you will learn the basics Guide for using the code in WordPress.

Note: You don’t need to know HTML to use WordPress. WordPress has a powerful built-in visual editor that allows you to easily format your content simply by clicking on a few buttons. As you will learn below, however, knowing a little bit will save you time and money.

Watch the short video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about BASIC HTML for WordPress content …

Having a basic knowledge can be useful when running and managing your own web presence.

For example, here are some situations where having a basic understanding of basic HTML can help you save time and money:

You want to add some formatted text and a hyperlinked image into an area of your sidebar or direct visitors to your contact form, newsletter subscription page, etc… into your user profile description. If you know basic HTML, you can do this very quickly without using code editors.
You decide to outsource your content creation to a freelance writer and receive back files containing codes. Knowing basic HTML helps you better proof your content before you accept the work.
Someone else is responsible for creating and publishing content on your site. You see a couple of text formatting errors or hyperlinks that are either missing, or pointing to the wrong destination. Knowing basic HTML can help you fix simple things in your content very quickly without having to ask (or pay) a webmaster, or web designer to do it for you.
Knowing basic HTML can help you communicate more effectively with web developers and web designers when discussing your website requirements, and also you sound more confident and knowledgeable when presenting your website ideas or requesting custom work to be done on your site.

What Is HTML?

HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language.

According to Wikipedia’s definition of HTML …

It’s the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.

It’s written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>, although some tags, known as empty elements, are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In between these tags web designers can add text, tags, comments and other types of text-based content.

The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.

The elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML lets images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts written in languages such as Java Script, which affect the behaviour of HTML web pages.

Source: Wikipedia, HTML

Important: Like everything else on the Internet, HTML is also subject to change and some of these changes will affect WordPress.

Currently, it’s in version 5 (also called HTML5), and this change has introduced a number of new “tags” to keep up with new advances in software and browser technology. As some of the tags used in older and even recent versions of WordPress are being phased out of HTML5, you can expect that WordPress will also keep updating its software to remain compatible with industry-wide coding standards.

Using Basic HTML for WordPress

WordPress provides users with a choice of adding content to posts and pages using either a rich Visual Editor (also called a WYSIWYG editor, which stands for What You See Is What You Get) and a Text Editor that allows you to input and work directly with code like HTML and other script languages (e.g. Javascript) when adding or editing your content. …

We address the WordPress Visual Editor and how to create / add content to Posts and Pages in separate tutorials.

HTML Tags Allowed In WordPress

The WordPress Content Management System (CMS) and publishing platform allows you to insert many commonly-used HTML tags in the Text editor, including the tags below

Here are some examples of simple, practical applications that use some of the HTML tags listed above

As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to know HTML to use WordPress, but it can be useful to know the basics of HTML. In certain situations, this may even save you time and money.

If you are interested in learning more about using HTML, then see the link below for Free HTML tutorials:

http://www.w3schools.com/htmL/html_links.asp

The Basic HTML for WordPress Text Editor Explained

The WordPress Text Editor allows you to see, edit and work directly with code like HTML and other script languages (e.g. Javascript) when inputting content into your posts and pages.

By default, the WordPress Text Editor comes with a number of standard menu buttons already installed

Here is a brief description of the function of each of the Text Editor menu buttons (refer to the screenshot above):

b: <strong></strong> Use this HTML tag for strong emphasis of text (i.e. bold).
i : <em></em> Use this HTML tag for emphasis of text (i.e. italicize).
hyperlink: <a href=”http://example.com”></a> Use this HTML tag to add a hyperlink to your selected text
b-quote – <blockquote></blockquote> Use this HTML tag for quoted or cited text.
~~del~~: <del></del> Use this HTML tag to label text considered deleted from a post. Most browsers typically display this as striked-through text.
ins: <ins></ins> Use this HTML tag to label text considered inserted into a post or page. Most browsers typically display this as underlined text.
img: <img src=”http://www.yourdomain.com/img/image.jpg” alt=”image description” /> Use this HTML tag to insert an image into your post or page.
ul: <ul></ul> Use this HTML tag to insert an unordered list in your post. Unordered lists typically display as a bulleted list of items.
ol: <ol></ol> Use this HTML tag to insert a numbered list. Items in an ordered list are typically numbered (just like the list you are reading now!).
li: <li></li> Use this HTML tag to insert or turn your selected text into a list item. (This tag should be used in conjunction with the ul or ol tag).
code: <code></code> Use this HTML tag for preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier.
more: <!–more–> Use this WordPress tag to break a post into “teaser” and content sections. For example, if you type a few paragraphs, then insert this tag and compose the rest of your post, users will only see the first paragraphs of your post or page with a hyperlink ((more…)), which when clicked on, will display the rest of the post’s content.
lookup – Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
Close Tags – Closes any open HTML tags left open. Please note: proof your content after using this function to ensure that all tags have formatted your text correctly.
Full screen – click this button to work in “full screen” mode (see screenshot example below). You can toggle between the Visual Editor and Text Editor modes, insert media and hyperlinks and update your content while in “full screen” mode. Click Exit Full screen to return to the normal text editor display

Some Useful Tips Related To Using Basic HTML for WordPress

Tip #1: Some sections of your WordPress site like some sidebar “widgets” and user profile areas allow you to use HTML-formatted content, but they don’t provide you with a Visual Content (WYSIWYG) editor like the one that is built-in to the editing screens of your Posts and Pages

If you want to design or edit web pages using HTML, there are several FREE HTML Editor software applications that you can download. A popular FREE editor, for example, is KompoZer.

KompoZer is Free Open Source software built as a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. It’s designed to be extremely easy to use, especially for non-technical computer users who just want to create attractive, professional-looking web pages without needing to know HTML or web coding.

If, however, you have no need or desire to go into anything of a technical nature, but would still like to be able to easily insert and format content containing basic HTML tags into areas of your site like your sidebar, author profile, etc…, then see the tutorial below for a really simple solution that involves no extra time and requires no additional downloads.

Tutorial: How To Add Formatted Text To The “About Yourself” Section Of Your Profile

By default, whenever a post is published on your WordPress site, a link to the author is displayed at the bottom of the post

You do this by adding HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section

You will notice that, although the Biographical Info text box allows you to paste HTML-formatted content into the text area, it doesn’t actually provide you with a content editor to do so

This means that you either have to type in the content using the code, or paste the content with the HTML already embedded into this text field.

Let’s “paste the content” into this field using the simple method described below.

Create a new post and type in your content into the Visual Editor (if you need help with this step, see this tutorial: How To Create A New WordPress Post).

In this case, we want to create author’s description

You will Format the content using the Visual Editor tab (if you need help with this step, see this tutorial: Using The WordPress Visual Editor). …

Continue working in the Visual Editor tab until you have added all of the formatting you want to display in your author description. Please note that you will only be able to use simple formatting in your author description such as hyperlinks, bold, underline and italicized text

Once you create your content, switch over to the Text Editor and copy all of the content you have just created to your clipboard

Go to your profile by selecting Users > Your Profile from the main navigation menu …

Scroll down to the About Yourself section and paste the content from your clipboard into the Biographical Info text area

Click the Update Profile button to save your changes

Congratulations You have just created an author description for your content and formatted it using basic HTML!

Tip #2 (Advanced WP User): You can enhance the function of your WordPress Text Editor using plugins.

For example, you can add a Free WordPress plugin to your site called Extensible HTML Editor Buttons that allows you to have better control of settings for HTML tags like div and span, for example, as well as add custom buttons and additional function to your text editor …

Another Free WordPress plugin you can use is HTML Editor Reloaded …

This plugin allows you to add your own custom buttons to the WordPress Text Editor toolbar. For example, you can add an H1, H2, H3 button to make adding headers to your content easier …

Tip #3 (Advanced WP User): By default WordPress does not allow some HTML tags to be used for security reasons (e.g. codes such as embed, frame, iframe, form, input, object, text area and others) .

If you experience any problems adding common basic HTML for wordpress tags into your content that are allowed to be used in WordPress, try disabling the visual editor in your user profile …

After disabling the visual editor and saving your new profile settings, go back to your post or page and reinsert the content with the problematic HTML tags, then save or publish your post.

If the above suggestion fixes the issues you were having with adding HTML to your content, go back to the Profile page, reactivate the visual editor, and check to see if the HTML code is still working fine with the visual editor restored.

Note: If the above suggestion does not fix the issue and you continue experiencing problems adding HTML code to your site, you may need to look at other options. This may include:

Asking someone with experience troubleshooting WordPress errors to help you
Searching the WordPress Support Forum for possible causes and recommended solutions
Searching for WordPress troubleshooting tutorials online
Reinstalling your WordPress application
Contacting your web host

To learn more about editing your profile settings, see this tutorial: How To Edit Your WordPress User Profile.

How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Previews

How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews

Depending on the theme you have chosen for your site or blog, WordPress allows you to display excerpts, or a short version of a post, in certain locations on your site, instead of displaying the entire post.

Excerpts are ideal for areas of your site where displaying quick summaries is preferable to displaying full content, such as search results, news feeds, tag, category, monthly and author archives, etc.

You could write these excerpts yourself, but if you choose not to, WordPress will automatically create a basic excerpt for you instead.

Additionally, you can also create Post “previews” that allow your visitors to preview the content of your post and then choose whether to continue reading the rest of the post of not

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to use WordPress excerpts and previews.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use WordPress post excerpts …

WordPress Post Excerpts: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Depending on your theme, post excerpts can display in areas of your site such as:

Your search result pages …

Your RSS feeds page (note: to view your site’s RSS feed page add “/feed” to the end of your site’s URL, e.g. http://yourdomain.com/feed, or http://domain.com/blog/feed) …

How To Use WordPress Post page Excerpts And Post Previews

Your blog posts home page …

(image source: AudioBookOne.net)

Your monthly post archives …

(image source: OverACuppaCoffee.com)

Your “category” pages … Your “Tags” pages …

And other parts of your site where displaying summaries is preferable to displaying full content.

How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews

Manual Excerpt vs Automatic Excerpt

The manual WordPress excerpt is often confused with the automatic excerpt, or with the “teaser” (i.e. the part of a post that appears on the front page when you use the “More” tag – see further below for details).

While both are related to the manual excerpt, they are interpreted differently by WordPress, depending on the code used inside your theme’s templates.

When a post has no manual excerpt:

WordPress will generate an excerpt automatically by selecting the first 55 words of the post if the post template uses the the_excerpt() template tag.
WordPress will look for the “More” tag and create a teaser from the content that precedes this tag, if the post template uses the the_content() template tag.

We will show you how to use both of the automatic excerpt methods described above, as well as the manual method in this tutorial.

Using Post Excerpts

The Excerpt box displays below your post content in the Edit Post screen and lets you add a brief “teaser” or post summary that will display in selected areas of your site, such as those mentioned earlier …

The Excerpt field is hidden by default if it has not been used before. If you can’t see the Excerpt box, click on Screen Options at the top of your Edit Post screen …

Make sure that the checkbox next to the Excerpt option is selected …

You should now see the Excerpt box displayed below your post’s content editor area …

Note: Not all themes display post excerpts by default. If your theme displays excerpts, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post content as the Excerpt, or any content you add before placing the <!–more–> quicktag (see further below to learn how to use the “More” Tag).

If you add content into the “Excerpt” field when editing your posts, WordPress will use this information instead of its automatic excerpt method.

Let’s take a look at how this works …

Here is an example of a couple of posts that were published without manually adding an excerpt to the posts. WordPress simply takes the first 55 words of the post’s content and publishes it as the post summaries …

The same thing happens wherever summaries are displayed. For example, here is how WordPress would display the automatic excerpt in your site’s RSS feed page if no excerpt was manually added to the posts …

Now, let’s add some content into the Excerpt box for each of the example posts shown above.

Here’s the excerpt we’ll add for example post #1 …

Here’s the excerpt we’ll add for example post #2. Note that the excerpt we’ve typed into the Excerpt box is longer than 55 words …

When we update the posts and go back to the blog post summaries, you can see that WordPress is now using the post excerpts that we have added manually to the posts …

The same thing happens wherever post summaries are displayed. For example, here is the site’s RSS feed page for the posts with manually added post excerpts …

Note: WordPress will ignore the 55-word limit and publish whatever content you enter into the Excerpt box.

How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews

Additional Information Related To Excerpts

Post excerpts replace the full content of your posts in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in your WordPress Reading Settings …

WordPress Post Previews

In addition to being able to customize your post excerpts and increase the length of your post summaries by entering your own content into the Excerpt box, you can also control how your posts display to visitors on your site using the built-in “More” tag and various post preview plugins.

WordPress “More” Tag

The “More” tag (Alt Shift T) let’s you specify a post “preview” for your content, followed by a link that allows your site visitors to continue reading the rest of your post.

To insert a “more” tag, decide where your post preview should end and click on the spot with your mouse to add a cursor …

Next, click the “Insert More Tag” menu button in the visual editor as shown below, or hold down the Alt Shift T keys …

The tag will be inserted into your post …

You can also add the “More” tag below directly into your content using the Text editor …

Here’s how the “more” tag will look when inserted correctly into your content …

After your post has been published or updated, only the content that appears before the “more” tag will show in your preview, with a link to continue reading the post …

When your visitors click on this link, the full post will display …

Note: If you don’t see the post preview when you visit the page, go back to the editor screen and make sure that you have inserted the “more” tag (i.e. <!–more–>) into your content via the Text editor, and not via the Visual editor.

The visual editor will convert the characters “<” and “>” into their HTML entities (i.e. “<” and “>” and published the tag incorrectly, as shown below …

WordPress Plugins – Post Excerpts

In addition to using the “more” tag, there are also plugins available that can give you more control over your post excerpts. Let’s have a look at some of these plugins … Advanced Excerpt

This plugin adds several improvements to the default method used by WordPress to create excerpts:

Excerpts created with this plugin installed retain their HTML markup
You can trim the excerpt to a specific length using either character or word count.
The plugin counts only “real” text (HTML is ignored but kept)
The excerpt length and the ellipsis character are customized
Completes the last word or sentence in an excerpt
Adds a read-more link to the post summary
Ignores custom excerpts and uses the generated one instead

Simply install the plugin, then navigate to Settings > Excerpts, and configure the plugin options. Save your settings by clicking on the “Save Changes” button and you’re done …

Summy

If you don’t want to use the automatic excerpt feature of WordPress, and you are not keen to write your own post summaries, you can try letting a program write your excerpts instead.

Summy is an excerpt extraction plugin. It generates excerpts for your posts by applying various algorithms for automatic summarization extraction. It then scores your text’s sentences, based on extended configuration options, and returns the highest ranked …

Summy will analyze your post’s sentences and use the highest ranked sentences using its built-in algorythm and your setting options to decide what best describes your post. The plugin developer warns that “Summy’s summaries are not perfect and you might also need to do some editing before publishing your content but they are a lot better than random 55 words”.

How To Use WordPress Posts page Excerpts And Post Previews

WordPress Plugins – Page Excerpts

Some plugin developers have also created plugins for users who may have a need to display page excerpts. Here are some you can check out

Page Excerpt

This plugin adds the same functionality to pages as the excerpt feature in posts. This is useful for certain themes and plugins that make use of custom page excerpts.

Page Excerpt Widget

This plugin comes in the form of a widget that lets you display an excerpt of a page in a sidebar area of your choice. You can configure options in the widget settings …

And the page expert will be displayed on your sidebar as shown in the example below …

You can also have multiple page excerpt widgets active at the same time, so you can use different excerpts to point to different pages.

WordPress Plugins – Post Previews

Evermore

The Evermore plugin automatically displays short previews of your posts on your home page. Each preview includes a link to the full post, which can be added either at the end of the paragraph, or on a separate, new line.

Evermore is very simple to use – just install it and it will start working straight away. You can customize the length and appearance of the previews globally, by specifying the minimum number of paragraphs or characters to display for a post …

Sometimes, the first paragraph of a post can be very short (just a short sentence, or a picture). The settings allow you to add extra paragraphs and make your previews a more reasonable length.

Using the settings shown in the screenshot above would result in post preview like the one shown below …

Useful Tip: To stop Evermore creating a preview for a particular post, include the tag below somewhere in the post …

The above tag won’t appear when people view your post, but Evermore will see it and display the full post to visitors instead of just a preview.

Seemore

If you plan to use the Evermore plugin, a good companion plugin to add as well is Seemore.

After clicking a (more…) link in a post preview, readers often find themselves scrolling up the page to make sure that they haven’t missed anything.

Seemore changes the (more…) link so that visitors see the entire post, and not just the content after the (more…) link.

Congratulations! Now you know how to use WordPress excerpts and how to create post previews.

Small Business Blogs Topic to Engage Customers

Small Business Blogs Topic – Using A Blog To Engage Your Customers

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for small business owners. A good blog engages its visitors and encourages them to get actively involved.

Unlike regular traditional static websites, a business blog allows you to communicate with your customers in the form of a dialogue. By fully engaging your prospects and customers, your blog can help to boost trust and loyalty and keep them coming back for more.

If you are a small business owner, you need a blog, and you need to use your blog to engage your customers. Below are some simple ideas to get this interaction going:

Small Business Blogs Topic

Contests and Giveaways

Contests are an effective way to build social influence and generate email leads where visitors provide you with their real name and email address. Because the incentive of winning is very strong, running contests can also get visitors engaging with you who haven’t done so before, and sharing your contest with their social network.

Why not hold a contest through your blog where the winner (or winners) get a prize? This could be a prize like an Amazon gift voucher, or something directly related to using your products or services, like a free service, product sample, or download access to information that others would normally have to purchase in order to get access, or even a blend of tangible goods coupled with something that is specific to your business or industry.

You don’t need to have a big budget to run your first contest. For example, you can offer a $25 Amazon gift card and a 30-minute free consultation call with you for help, if you provide any kind of coaching or consulting services, or a free session, e-book or product sample.

You can also make the contest involve getting other people to sign up to your newsletter or opt-in list, or promoting your video or blog on their social networks, etc.

With a WordPress-powered blog, for example, you can integrate a contest management plugin like Contest Domination to help you build a list of subscribers by running contests and giveaways …

Contest Domination is a simple and easy to set up a plugin that lets you quickly set up, manage and track unlimited contests on your blog. You can sign up for a free version, or upgrade to the paid versions, which gives you access to features like integration with your autoresponder, custom fields, detailed analytics, domain mapping, and more.

Visit the plugin website for more details here: Contest Domination

In addition to the plugin above, you can also check out the social contest and sweepstake plugins and applications made by Wishpond.

Note: If you plan to run brand promotions, competitions, Facebook promotions, or any other type of sweepstake or contest that includes an element of chance (or even skill, e.g. “Tell us in 25 words or less …”), make sure that you are not breaking any laws. Some countries require you to have a permit to run competitions, and your competition must comply with certain conditions to be legally acceptable.

If everything is okay and you’re good to go with your marketing strategy, then post the rules online and make sure that people clearly understand what they are required to do to participate and qualify for the prize(s) you’re offering.

Also, make sure to promote your contest or giveaway on all of your marketing channels including social media, your website and your offline materials. Remember that the objective of this exercise is to drive as much traffic to your blog as possible.

Small Business Blog Topics

Case Studies

Using case studies on your blog not only helps to engage your customers, they also help you accomplish many great things at once.

Case studies attract new readers, showcase your clients, educate customers and highlight many of the benefits of using your business. A case study gives customers practical information they can use and provides them with concrete proof that your business gets results.

If you don’t know where to begin when it comes to creating case studies, search online for “how to create a case study”, or see this great article: 8 Tips For Creating A Great Case Study.

Useful Tips: Adding a written or video testimonial to a case study helps to increase engagement with your blog readers and gives your case study greater authority and authenticity!

You can also offer to send readers a free case study in exchange for signing up to your newsletter or opt-in form, as the example screenshot below shows …

Customer Success Stories

Customer success stories are similar to case studies in that they can serve as testimonials and “social proof” for your business.

Whenever a customer thanks you or lets you know how your business has helped them, contact them immediately and ask them if they would mind being featured on your blog. You can offer to keep their testimonial anonymous if they prefer, or promote them on your blog with a live link pointing back to their website.

Useful Tip: If you receive great feedback via email or via the telephone that you would like to use as a testimonial, you can make it easier for your customers to provide you with a testimonial by creating the testimonial yourself using the words of their email or quoting the feedback they’ve given you, and then simply emailing them the finished testimonial and asking them to give you permission to use it, or to add any modifications they would like to see made before it gets published when they reply with their permission. This also lets you control the way the testimonial will appear when published.

If your business blog is built using the WordPress platform, you can easily add testimonial add-ons (called plugins) to your site that lets you display customer testimonials on your site. Here are a few testimonial plugins you can check out for your WordPress site:

WP Customer Reviews – This free plugin allows you to setup a specific page on your blog to receive customer testimonials for your business/service or to write reviews about multiple products (using multiple pages).
WP Elegant Testimonial – This is an easy to use free WordPress Testimonial Plugin that lets you insert professional-looking testimonials into any post or page. There is no limit to the number of testimonials you can use on a specific page. You can insert as many testimonials as you want using shortcodes.
Testimonials Widget – This plugin allows you to display random or selected portfolio, quotes, reviews, showcases, or text with images on your WordPress blog. You can insert Testimonials Widget content via shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and having multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.

Testimonials are a great way to engage with your readers and show them proof and examples of what your business can do to help them.

Small Business Blogs Topic

Lists And Checklists

Blog readers love lists and checklists. Lists are not only easy to read and to digest, but useful checklists can be shared socially around the web, driving more visitors to your blog.

Useful Tips: Some of the most popular articles to write lists for are “Top Ten” lists and “Biggest Mistakes To Avoid” lists. Start a “Topic Diary” and write your ideas for list topics down, then continue adding to this list whenever you come across a new topic idea. If you need some inspiration, check out Listverse – a website dedicated to “Top 10 Lists”.

You can engage your blog visitors and attract a lot of reader comments simply by asking them at the end of your list post what some of their ideas are, which item on the list was their favourite, was there anything they felt was left off the list, any new lists about your industry that they would like to see, etc…

Creative Ideas For Your Products

A great strategy for engaging readers on your small business blog is to write blog posts that show people how to use your products in creative ways. This not only informs and educates your potential customers about new ideas and practical ways to use your products or services, it also shows off the benefits and versatility of what you offer and gives them new options for engaging with your business.

Think about all the different types of customers your business can cater to, all of the problems and challenges it can help them solve and begin to write about all of the different ways your products and services can be put to use.

Create a customer survey and ask your existing customers what kind of problems your products helped to solve, or if they have used your products in any unusual or unconventional way and what results did they get.

At the end of your blog posts where you share creative product ideas, uses and applications ask your readers if they can see any additional uses for what your business has to offer.

Videos

You don’t have to only write blog posts. You can also create videos and add these to your blog.

Videos are a great way to engage readers on your blog, because they show you rather than just tell you what to do.

You can purchase screen capture and video editing software like Camtasia or that lets you create narrated “how to” videos as you navigate your computer and browsers, or just record videos on a smartphone, then upload these to YouTube and embed them on your blog.

If you organize events or social functions, or do any kind of external work for clients (e.g. home building, interior decorating, landscaping, flower arranging, etc…), you can create a ‘before and after” video with a commentary of the processes involved.

Make “how to” videos that teach your customers about you and your business expertise. Even better, make it fun and you’ll increase the chances of your video being shared with others and going viral online.

Infographics

Infographics are visual representations of information. They give your readers a visually exciting way to access and digest the information you are offering.

Basically, you take the information you want to convey and then make something visually creative with it, using graphs, images, statistical reports, etc …

Here’s an example of what an infographic looks like…

Click Image to Enlarge

(Source: How To Calculate Lifetime Value)

You can make your own infographic using free online programs – just search for “how to create infographics free” online.

Useful Tip: After creating and posting an infographic on your blog, make sure to share it on Pinterest. Pinterest is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard, and this can help drive new visitors and prospects to your blog …

Hopefully the above has given you a number of great ideas on ways to use a blog to better engage customers with your business.

A final tip is to make sure that you continually mix things up on your blog. Plan to add content with embedded infographics, videos, etc … Talk about your new products in one post and offer a list of simple tips, or customer experiences in another post. Test different blog post formats and ideas as much as possible and study your traffic analytics regularly.

Use statistical reports, survey results, polls etc. to not only engage your visitors, but also to learn what is and isn’t working in your online marketing approach. Keep trying out new ideas and see what sticks with your blog readers (make sure that you can measure the results of your tests and the implementation of new ideas, however, otherwise you won’t know what is working and what needs to be improved!)

One last piece of advice when it comes to using your blog to engage readers is to remember that if you’re only adding “filler” content to your blog for the sake of adding content, then people are quickly going to become disinterest with your blog and disengaged with your brand. Some may even see your blog as spammy. So … keep your content real, informative, educational and useful and you will be well on your way to attracting more visitors to your blog and keeping them engaged and eager to return.

If you need help getting a blog set up for your small business we can help.

WordPress Glossary – Understanding Blogging Terminology

WordPress Glossary – Blogging Terminology

The blogging revolution has introduced a whole new set of blog terms, blog abbreviations and blogging acronyms to online users.

Even though WordPress has moved well beyond just being a “blogging” platform and is now the fastest growing Content Management System (CMS) platform for personal and business users worldwide, in many ways WordPress is still synonymous with blogging,

If you’re considering starting a blog, or you are a beginner WordPress user, therefore, it helps to understand some of the basic blogging definitions.

Here, then, are some of the more common and useful blogging definitions to help you understand the blogging terminology:

A blog is short for weblog, which, according to most definitions, is a simple online diary that allows you to publish, date and list your periodic thoughts, opinions and musings on a particular topic or idea, generally in reverse chronological order (i.e. Whatever you publish last appears first). When you focus a blog towards business purposes (e.g. Promoting your business, products or services), then you have a business blog, instead of a personal blog.

Blogging is the act of posting content on blogs. A blogger is someone who blogs and the Blogosphere represents the entire universe of blogs and the internet blogging community.

Most blogging activities are made possible via the use of a blogging platform, which is the software application used for blogging. Most blogging platforms are sophisticated Content Management Systems (CMS) that allow you to create and publish content without requiring you to have “web site skills” like knowing how to write or edit HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language – the language used to create web pages.).

Blogging platforms also generally give you the choice of setting up a blog on the software creator’s domain (e.g. my business.wordpress.com), or hosting the blog on your own domain (this is the recommended option for businesses). Common blog publishing platforms include WordPress, Type Pad, Movable Type, Blogger and many others.

For business blogging purposes, it is important to understand some of the main components of a blog, both internal and external.

WordPress Glossary

Blogging Terminology

Main Blog Components

Blog Index Page – The front page of your blog. With a blogging platform like WordPress and many others, you can either make your index page show the latest post, or you can specify a specific post or entry page as a “fixed page”, so that the same content appears every time someone visits your site.

Blog Header – The area at the very top of your blog that displays on every page. Here you can add your blog title, a short description of what your blog is about, a background header image, etc …

Blog Footer – The area at the very bottom of your blog, which is usually used to list site navigation links and a copyright statement.

Blog Sidebar – Depending on the theme of your blog, this refers to one or more vertical sections or columns that run along one or both sides of your blogs and contain information that appears on all pages.

Blog Post, Blog Entry – Each of the individual articles or pieces of content that make up your blog. A post or entry can be edited or deleted from your blog without affecting other posts or entries.

Blog Categories – Blogs allow you to organize your posts not just by date but also to group them by related topic or theme. This way your blog visitors can find all of your topic specific posts on themes like “Travel Accommodation” or “Product Reviews.”

Permalink – A link to a specific article in your blog. Permalinks can be modified to display the URL in different formats. This is useful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as permalinks can include keyword-rich category titles.

Blog Comments – Feedback or remarks left on a post from a reader or visitor to your blog. Comments often include a link back to the reader’s blog or Web site. You can block or moderate comments before allowing them to be published on your blog.

Captchas – An acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Captchas are often distorted word and letter verification images that a visitor is required to type in to show they are human and not an automated bot. Captchas are useful for blocking automated spam comments.

Blog Dashboard – This is generally the first screen you see when you login to your blogging account. The Dashboard gives you access to all the settings, controls, tools and functions you need and also provides you with “at a glance” information about your blog (e.g. the number of posts in your blog, comments awaiting moderation, etc …).

Blogroll – A list of links to other recommended or useful blogs or sites. A Blogroll is generally found on a blog sidebar and is similar to the links page on a Web site. The word “Blogroll” is often changed by bloggers to better descriptive titles like “Useful Links” or “Recommended Resources”.

Blog Archives – A collection of all your posts on one page. Archives allow users to quickly locate old blog entries and can be categorized by month, etc.

Tags – A labeling system that allows you to further categorize and group similar post topics on your blog by related keywords or keyword phrases. For example, this page may contain the following the tags (separated by commas): blogging terms, blog abbreviations, blogging acronyms, blogging glossary, blog terminology, business blog, blogging descriptions, blogging dictionary, blog terms, and so on … You can generally assign multiple tags to your blog posts (we recommend using between 5 and 20 tags to avoid “keyword stuffing”)

Tag Cloud – A block of text that displays a list of tags or keywords in a blog. Clicking on a tag cloud keyword usually brings up a page listing all blog entries related to that keyword or keyword phrase.

Blog Template – The collection of files containing code instructions for a blog’s design, layout, appearance and functionality. A collection of blog templates creates a blog theme.

Plugins – Small files or scripts that greatly add improved or enhanced functionality and new features to your blog. There are thousands of WordPress plugins, for example, that can be freely downloaded and added to your blog to greatly improve your blog’s functionality, usage and interactivity.

Widget – Widgets are an easy way for bloggers to arrange and rearrange your blog sidebar items without touching a line of code. The WordPress blogging platform uses widgets.

WordPress Glossary

Other Useful Blogging Terminology

Expandable post summaries – A feature that allows you to display an excerpt of a blog post (i.e. a teaser) on the index page of your blog that links visitors to another page containing the full post.

Incoming Links – Incoming links or backlinks are links from other blogs (or web sites) pointing back to your blog (or web site).

Ping – An acronym for Packet Internet Grouper. Pinging helps to notify other blog tracking tools about updates, changes and trackbacks on your blog. One of the major differences between blogs and web sites, is that a blog allows you to “ping” (i.e. Automatically notify) search engines whenever you update your blog (called “Blog and Ping” or “Blogging and Pinging”), where most normal websites lack this function and require you to manually notify search engines that you have added new content to your site.

Trackback – Similar to a comment, a trackback (or pingback) is a snippet of referring feedback sent from one blog to another blog to notify that your article has been mentioned on another blog, or vice-versa (i.e. that you are referring to someone else’s post on your blog). In short, a trackback is a notification system in which a ping is sent to another blog to notify it that one of its articles appears on someone else’s blog. It is usually attached to the bottom of a post on another blog and also includes a link to the new post.

Comment or Trackback Spam – These are comments or trackbacks that are left on your blog for the purpose of creating inappropriate links to the commenter’s Web site or blog and increasing their number of backlinks.

BlogThis – This is a useful function that allows a blogger to automatically add or import an entry they are reading on another site or blog to their own blog.

Ajax – An acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Used by software developers to create interactive and dynamic web applications for blogs (like “dragging and dropping” items in your blog widgets.

FTP – An acronym for File Transfer Protocol. An FTP tool (also known as FTP client) allows you to transfer files to and fro from your computer and web host server where your blog is located.

RSS – An acronym for Real Simple Syndication. Blogs automatically create RSS feeds for posts and comments that your blog visitors and readers can subscribe to. RSS feeds can be read through a newsreader.

Newsreader – A piece of software or web application that allows you to receive and read news feeds. Web-based services like Bloglines, Rojo, Newsgator, Kinja, etc. … are News Aggregators (also called RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators or news readers) that display content from syndicated web content and web feeds. These can be configured online or downloaded on your desktop.

Farticles – A “Farticles” is a slang term for a fake news article. These are online articles that describe the benefits and features of a product using the format of an unbiased news story or article, but in essence, they are an “advertorial”, which is really just sales copy.

The above are just some of the main blogging terms you will need to become familiar with as a blog owner. If you are interested in expanding your blogging vocabulary beyond the above definitions, then search for terms like “blog glossary”, “blog definitions” or “blogging terminology”.

WordPress Glossary

Alternatively, for a useful blogging resource containing definitions of terms related to “Blogging Forms” (e.g. Photoblogging, Podcasting, Autocasting, Blogcasting, Vlogging, Audioblogging, Moblogging, etc. …), “Blogging Habits” (like metablogging, linkbaiting, blogstorming, blogvertising, blegging, blurking, blogroaching, multiblogging, etc. …), “Blogger Types” (e.g. problogger, blognoscenti, blogerati, etc. …), unusual blogging terms (e.g. blaudience, blogiverse, blogonomics, spomments, blammer and blogiday), and a range of links to other blogging tools, feed sources and services, go here: Blogging Terms Glossary

Hopefully, now that you understand the language of the blogiverse a little better, you will be able to truly wow your blaudience (and maybe even become a blogebrity in your own right!)

How To Use WordPress Revisions for backup

How To Use WordPress Revisions

Have you ever been in this situation? After spending a great deal of time and effort composing an article, something unexpected happens to your computer or your software program, and suddenly, you find that you have lost all of your hard work because you forgot to save your work as you went along.

If this happens, don’t dismay! WordPress has an Autosave and Revision Management feature that help you to prevent losing your work if you forget to save, that can get your post or page content back if something happens to your browser or computer while you’re working, or if you just change your mind about a given direction you were taking with your article and want to be able to refer back to older drafts.

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the WordPress Revision Management system to recover and restore your posts and pages while working on your content.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use the WordPress autosave and management features …

How To Use WordPress Revisions: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Typically, whenever you save (update) a post or page, you will see a confirmation message like the example shown below …

Sometimes, however, when you try to save your work, you might see a message like this displayed on your screen instead …

When you get a message that says “Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again” and click on Please try again, you will normally be taken back to a Post or Page Edit screen displaying a previous version of your post, minus any changes you have recently made.

This is where the autosave feature comes in handy.

WordPress Autosave

Autosaves are automatically enabled for all WordPress posts and pages but do not overwrite your published content. Autosaves are stored as a special type of revision so they won’t overwrite the actual post you’re working on.

By default, WordPress saves the current version of your post in your WordPress database every 60 seconds. This time interval can be changed by adding code to one of your WordPress software files (the wp-config.php file).

If you have been working on your post for a while and something happens (e.g. your browser crashes), you may see a message like the one shown below when you get back to your post or page …

Click on View the autosave …

You will be taken to a revision page where a previously saved version of your post can be restored.

Additionally, if your login session expires, WordPress remembers where you were, so when you login again, you can pick up working exactly from where you left off …

How To Use WordPress RevisionsWordPress Revision Control

WordPress 3.6

WordPress introduced a significant enhancement to its Revision Management system interface in WordPress 3.6.

When you compare revisions, a Revision Slider displays at the top of the screen, allowing you to move through your saved post revisions.The more revisions you have saved, the more revision markers you will see displayed in the slider …

Revisions created by making changes to your content and updating your post or page display in the Revision Slider in black, along with the save interval, time and date of the revision …

Revisions saved automatically by WordPress display in the Revision Slider in red, along with the save interval, time and date of the revision …

You can navigate between revisions by moving the slider to the left or right …

There are also buttons available to help you navigate through the revisions. Click Previous to navigate through past revisions …

Click Next to advance through your newer revisions …

You can also compare revisions by checking the Compare any two revisions option. This lets you adjust two slider buttons to compare any two saved revisions …

When you find the saved version you would like to restore, click the Restore This Revision button to restore your selected revision …

To return to the current saved version of your post or page, click on the title link …

WordPress revisions also warns you if the backup of the post you are trying to restore is different from the version you have displayed and gives you the opportunity to restore your saved backup version …

The new WordPress revision system introduced in version 3.6 has also added a new option to the Publish box called Revisions. This lets you see at a glance how many revisions you have and allows you to bring up the Revisions screen by clicking on the Browse link …

WordPress Version 3.5 Revisions

If your site uses an earlier version than WordPress 3.6 (e.g. version 3.5.X) then you will see a screen that looks like the example screenshot below …

At the bottom of the screen, you will see the Revisions section, which gives you the option of comparing revisions, or restoring one of your previous revisions …

To compare revisions, select which revisions you want to compare from the Revisions table, then click on the Compare Revisions button …

Typically, you will be offered the option of comparing your current post revision and the autosave version, but you can select and compare any two revisions you want by clicking on the radio buttons in the Old and New columns …

Your revisions will be shown side by side, with any differences highlighted in the text …

If the revisions being compared are the same, the message “These revisions are identical” will be displayed …

To restore the revision you prefer, click on the Restore link next to the item in the “Actions” column …

Your post or page revision will be restored …

WordPress Revisions Feature – Additional Information

As soon as you update (i.e. save) a post or page, WordPress begins to store revisions of your content in its database. You can see these displayed in a Revisions box below your post or page …

If you can’t see the Revisions box, click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your screen and tick the checkbox next to Revisions in the Show on Screen section …

You will now see the Revisions box displayed under your content editor section …

Click on any of the revision links to view and restore a previous version of your content …

How To Use WordPress Revisions

Managing Revisions

For most WordPress users, having features like Autosave and Revisions is a good thing. If, for some reason, however, you really don’t want these features to be present, then you can disable them, but this requires modifying some code in your WordPress files.

One thing that can happen if you write and edit a lot, is that after a while the revisions start to build up. This can significantly increase the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important to manage your revisions.

Fortunately, there are a number of WordPress plugins that can help you control and manage your revisions and reduce the size of your database. This topic is covered in a separate tutorial here: WordPress Plugins – How To Manage WordPress Post Revisions

Congratulations! Now you know how to use the WordPress Revisions feature to recover or restore earlier saved versions of your WordPress posts or pages.

How To Find Your WordPress Post ID

Your WordPress Page ID is a unique number assigned by to every post or page you create on your site.

Knowing your post or page ID is useful if, for example, you want to exclude pages from showing in your WordPress sitemap, or select only certain pages to display in the Pages Widget on the sidebar, etc.

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to easily locate your Page ID.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to locate your page ID …

How To Find Your Post Or Page ID: Step-By-Step Tutorial

To locate your page or post ID, log into your administration area and go to the Pages section of your site …

Locate the page or post whose ID you want to know and hover your mouse over its title …

The “Post ID” value is displayed in the status bar of your browser window. (In this example, the post ID is “1825”) …

Note down the ID of the post or page.

WordPress Post ID / Page ID – Examples Of Applications

Here are a couple of examples of using Post or Page IDs:

1) In the example below, we want to prevent a page whose page ID is “26” from displaying to visitors on a Site Map …

2) The next example shows a whole range of page Ids being added to the WordPress Pages Widget to prevent them from displaying in your sidebar.

To do this, simply enter all of the Page Ids for the pages you want to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget, then click the Save button …

How To Find Your WordPress Post ID

Plugins

If you need to know your post or page IDs on a regular basis, then here are a few FREE plugins you may find useful:

Reveal IDs

This plugin reveals ids for posts, pages, categories, links, media, users, comments, link categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and tags. It also adds a sortable column header …

How To Find Your WordPress Post ID

You can access the plugin settings area by going to Settings > Reveal IDs …

Download the plugin here: Reveal IDs

WP Show IDs

WP Show IDs is another plugin that displays your Posts, Pages, Media, Links, Categories, Tags, and Users in the admin tables for easy access. It’s a very lightweight plugin that also supports Custom Post Types / Taxonomies.

Download the plugin here: WP Show IDs

Congratulations! Now you know how to find your page or post IDs.

Some Useful Facts About WordPress Web Development

WordPress is a well known Blogging platform that creates beautiful blogs or websites for free.

This sounds great, but what exactly can this blogging platform do for you?

If you run any type of business, then your website is probably an important part of your business and your business strategy. WordPress allows you to easily create, update and manage your own web presence all by yourself using just an internet browser.

Now … you probably have some questions about what this blogging platform has to offer you as a content management system. Before we address these, let’s look at some impressive statistics about WordPress:

There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing everyday
Over one-sixth of all websites worldwide are powered by WordPress.
More than 50% of all sites that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms
It’s a completely free to use application built using an open source content management system.
It’s built by volunteers. Hundreds of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
It’s regularly and continually updated to improve both its functionality and security.
It can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 73 languages.
There is virtually no limit to what you can build using WordPress. The repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes and widgets to users.

That’s all pretty impressive, right? Let’s take a closer look at what 60+ million people see in WordPress. What does it offer you that will make it the right online vehicle for setting up your web presence?

About WordPress Web Development – Capabilities and Benefits

It allows you to easily create a pre-built website. This enables you to focus on more important things like adding new content, increasing your sales or running your business.

Here are just some of the major benefits About WordPress Development

1. It’s Free! – WordPress can be downloaded at WordPress.org at absolutely no cost! You do need a hosting company, but that’s very reasonable as well. Even a very good hosting company like Hostgator is less than $10 a month, and you will be able to host any number of websites for that single $10.

If you really want to keep your costs way down (I’m talking about so low that it’s free!), you can get free hosting at WordPress.com. Keep in mind, however, that this option lacks the flexibility of your own hosting and will limit some of the things you can or want to do with your web presence.

We highly recommend that you host your site using your own domain. We can help you get a professional WordPress site built and set up quickly and professionally and we even provide you with a complete WordPress A – Z training system with detailed, step-by-step tutorials that will help you gain complete control of your own web presence.

2. Lots Of Great Training Available – When it comes to building websites, there is often a learning curve for anyone who is not a “techie” or a “geek”.

It offers many quality tutorials online. The only challenge with this is that you can spend hours on end scouring the net for information. And then of course, there are still all the things that “you don’t know that you don’t know”.

This is why we have developed a complete and methodical step-by-step WordPress training system. After you learn how to install, configure and start using WordPress, adding new content and managing your site will be a snap.

You don’t need to learn how to write code or develop technical expertise to add, edit and manage content or maintain your website. It’s a true blessing for all non-techies!

3. Super Easy Installation – Two things you need for a website are a domain name and webhosting. Good hosting companies will also offer applications in your control panel that allow you to install WordPress on your domain with just a few clicks. Gone is the complicated, technical coding of the past.

4. Website Themes – A theme is basically a web design template which controls the look and feel of your site. WordPress offers you thousands of free themes to choose from. You can also purchase themes which can be installed on your site with just a few mouse clicks. You can also have custom themes designed if you choose. The themes will provide for you a clean and professional looking site even without custom design work. And the great thing is, if you want to change your theme, you can replace your theme with another one, and it won’t affect your blog posts or pages. No need for expensive graphics and spending thousands of dollars on web design costs – With WordPress themes it’s all done for you.

Note: Paid themes also usually offer some form of support so consider that when choosing a theme.

Our WordPress Web Development training tutorials will teach you everything you need to know about using WordPress themes, including where to find thousands of high quality free and paid themes.

5. Functionality – Users benefit from the availability of thousands of WordPress plugins that offer you just about every functionality imaginable. There are thousands more plugins created by WordPress plugin developers that can be easily installed with just a few clicks. Plugins allow you to do anything you desire with ease, whether it’s communicating content or selling products. For example, you can track site visits, fight spam, create contact forms, improve your site security, and many more things. Best of all, most plugins are absolutely free.

Once again, we provide great training and tutorials on installing and using the plugins.

6. Open source – WordPress is built with PHP and its source code is available to anyone who wants to look at it. In addition, it has included both extensive documentation and a range of functions. Because of this, you can easily program themes and plugins with just a minimal knowledge of PHP (if you ever want to develop plugins and themes).

If programming code or designing websites is not your thing, you can still get plugins and themes developed or customized to suit your specific needs, because it makes its source code freely available.

7. Self updating – WordPress includes a feature that notifies you if upgrades are available for either the software or your plug-ins. Many times all you need to do is click for the upgrades to be installed automatically. Again, this means ease of use.

And, in the rare instances where you can’t use the built-in updating features of WordPress, our tutorials will show you step-by-step how to perform all of the required updates manually … you’ll be covered no matter what!

8. Search engine power – It boosts your search engine optimization abilities. In fact, the top search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) love WordPress. There are many SEO related plugins available that will increase the power of WordPress even more, and we provide tutorials on the best SEO plugins to use. If you’re a business, using a properly configured and SEO optimized-site can really help make you more competitive in the online space.

9. Technical support – although WordPress itself does not offer dedicated technical support to users (remember, it’s “free”), there are plenty of options available for getting all the help and support you need. WordPress.org has a very active forum with users who are willing to help people having problems with the software. Also, there are loads of other websites, message boards, and blogs where people are happy to share useful information with you. Because millions of people use WordPress and it is not complicated to begin with, the expertise you need to build, run and manage a WordPress site successfully is quite readily available.

WordPress Web Development 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.

How To Use The WordPress for Android App

How To Use The WordPress for Android App – Comments

In this tutorial you will learn how to moderate and manage comments on your site using the App for mobile devices.

For this tutorial we’ll use the WordPress For Android version of the of the Android app. The process explained below is similar for iOS devices (e.g. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad).

Go here for more information about WordPress For iOS.

Complete the step-by-step tutorial below to learn how to manage comments on your site or blog using your mobile device.

The WordPress for Android App – Comments

You should have already set up your App. If not, see this tutorial.

Tap the Android app icon to log into your account …

To moderate and manage your comments, tap on the Comments menu …

The Comments screen displays on your browser …

To view the comment management options, either tick the checkbox to select the comment …

Or tap on the comment itself …

The Comment management screen lets you perform the following functions:

Delete The Comment
Edit The Comment
Reply To The Comment
Mark the Comment as Spam
Approve / Unapprove The Comment

WordPress for Android App

Delete Comment

To delete a comment click on the Trash Can icon …

The comment will be immediately deleted.

Edit Comment

Selecting the Edit Comment option brings up the Edit Comments screen. Here you can edit the comment fields, moderate the comment and change the comment status to Approved, Pending Review, or Spam. Tap on the Update Comment button when done …

Reply To Comment

To post a reply to an existing comment, select the Reply button. This brings up the Reply to Comment screen. Type your reply, then tap Send Reply to post your reply on your site …

WordPress for Android App – Mark Comment As Spam

Select Spam to flag comments as spam. Comments marked as spam display in your Comments screen (see below).

Approve / Unapprove Comment

To approve or unapprove comments, select the comment and tap the Approve / Unapprove toggle button to change the comment status. Approved and Unapproved comments display in your Comments section …

Congratulations! You now know how to use the Mobile App for moderating and managing comments on your site via a mobile device.

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