Wordpress is a brilliant blogging platform, hosting an online space for you to post your thoughts, products, art and more. It's so good and flexible as a CMS that more and more businesses are choosing to host their website with WordPress to - making costs like web designers a thing of the past. If you find yourself as one of the more technologically challenged, not to worry as Wordpress is simple, easy to use and navigate around once you brush up on a few tricks and tips. Here are a few tips for those new to Wordpress.
1. WordPress needs to be hosted on an external server to really get the most out of it - and to really get the most out all it's features (such as affiliate links, which you may want to look into later on, to make money online). I didn't know this when I first used WordPress so found myself a little restricted with what I could do. It's pretty easy to get hold of the info you need to set this up though, and there are plenty of review websites out there which can help you choose the right one.
2. Many users experience difficulty posting videos and music on their Wordpress blog, however, unknown to many users is that you can in fact embed videos from YouTube, Flickr and Vimeo quite easily if you know how. You do this by positioning your cursor to exactly where you want to place the media, find the source of the media and highlight and copy the URL of the site which you'll find in the search bar at the top. Once you've done this, go back to the WordPress site and paste the URL in the content space of the page. The video won't show up immediately on Wordpress Editor, however once you click to preview the page you'll find it uploaded.
3. Keep organized and make sure your sidebar isn't full of clutter that you don't need. By not clearing out unnecessary add-ons or social media icons for example you're making your job a great deal harder when looking for something in particular that you actually need, and it'll be the exact same for your readers and visitors. You need to strict with what you actually need- ask yourself whether any of the remaining widgets you have will actually generate more views. If the answer is no, do not hesitate to remove them. The last thing you want is a cluttered layout - as it usually means your blog will load slower too.
4. Altering the design is important in projecting your own sense of personality and style through you blog. Get familiar with the tools to change your theme, background and layout straight away. With a vast range of free as well as priced WordPress themes available, there's a design to suit everyone. You can download WordPress themes from WordPress itself, simply go the WordPress themes directory. A quick search on Google will also throw up lots of options too. If I'm being honest - I always go for the paid premium options, as they add a little more flexibility in terms of design, which makes the website look more professional and personalised.
5. You might want to alter the page and URL names. 8/10 times Wordpress will provide you with good names, however one the off chance that your URL includes symbols or special characters, such as @ or & for example. You need to change this straight away as it will make it difficult for search engines as well as browsers to load up your page - something that could potentially cut down users accessibility to your blog.
6. Interested in using the Wordpress editor? There are a few tricks and shortcuts to cut down on time. Spell check your content before publishing by clicking on the "ABC" button- eliminating any spelling errors that could put people off your blog. Make use of keyboard short cuts such as Control + B to create a bold font, as well as underline and italics following the same pattern by removing the B for a "I" or a "U".
7. Once you've mastered the basic skills and tips, you need to be focussing on diverting more traffic towards your site and increasing your visibility by way of search engine results. Think perma-links, in terms of SEO copywriting. Not even as slightly as complicated as it sounds, you do this by keeping your perma-links clean by using the perma links feature at the top of WordPress editor, to review your links before publishing them. Keep your links concise and easy to read, make use of the odd keyword but don't pack it with keywords that result in a long-winded perma-link. Keep it short and easy to read in a glance in order to find yourself ranking higher on search engine results.
About Author: This is a guest article written by Elle.