10 Useful WordPress Tips You Might Not Be Aware Of
By Jett Hagletorn
Guest contributor
Are you looking for new ways to optimize your WordPress experience to make things speedier and more efficient for you and your visitors?
In this article, you’ll get 10 top WordPress tips for making the most of the service.
Note: This article includes several links you’ll want to reference. We created a nicely-formatted printable PDF of the entire article that you can refer to anytime. Yes, it’s free! Click this link or the button to request yours.
1. Install Google Analytics
Most WordPress site owners swear by Google Analytics. Analytics gives you access to all sorts of helpful information including data about user behavior and what activities they partake in when on your site.
The information you source via Google Analytics can help you:
- identify new methods for increasing the amount of time people spend on your site
- lower bounce rates
- produce more valuable content
- find out more about your visitors and readers
2. Password-protect your WP admin directory
It’s a very good idea to password-protect your WP admin directory. This directory is where all admin tasks are performed and gives you an extra layer of protection to make it even more difficult for hackers to access your site.
You can enable this in the cPanel dashboard of your hosting account.
Click on the ‘Password Protect Directories’ button in your security section and select the directories you wish to protect.
3. Enable users to subscribe to comments
If visitors are prompted to look at replies to their comments, you can increase visitor rates and improve the user experience.
You can send e-mails to those who have posted comments on your site so they are alerted to replies and therefore head back to your site.
To make this happen, install the Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin. You can configure the settings once it has been activated.
4. Show excerpts on Home and Archive Pages
More and more WP sites are showing article summaries rather than full articles on these pages. Excerpts make pages load faster, boost page views, and stop duplicate content appearing on your site.
Some WP themes show excerpts automatically. However, there are guides available online that will show you how to show excerpts manually if this isn’t already happening.
5. Choose Facebook Thumbnail images
When you or your users share articles on Facebook, you may find they are accompanied by irrelevant or unsuitable images. You can prevent this occurring with the Yoast SEO plug in, which allows you to select the right image to go with your content rather than something unrelated to the topic you’re posting about.
Head to the Yoast SEO metabox found on the post edit screen to choose an image manually.
Do you need to select a thumbnail image for your home page? If so, go to SEO » Social page.
6. Delay RSS feed posts
Many WP users accidentally send out content before it is ready to go live. You can prevent your content from being sent to RSS feed readers and e-mail subscribers before it is ready by delaying your content from featuring in your RSS feed.
Add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or site-specific plugin to delay RSS feed posts.
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function publish_later_on_feed($where) {
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global $wpdb;
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if ( is_feed() ) {
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// timestamp in WP-format
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$now = gmdate(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’);
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// value for wait; + device
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$wait = ’10’; // integer
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// http://ift.tt/TG3p6s
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$device = ‘MINUTE’; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR
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// add SQL-sytax to default $where
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$where. = ” AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, ‘$now’) > $wait “;
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}
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return $where;
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}
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add_filter(‘posts_where’, ‘publish_later_on_feed’);
This will stop your published posts from appearing in an RSS feed for ten minutes. You can change the number from ‘10’ for a longer delay if needed.
7. Show total number of comments
Displaying the number of comments a post has generated can show others that site is an active online space with a busy community and convince others to get involved in the conversation.
One way to do this is to install the Simple Blog Stats plugin. Once you have done this, just add the [sbs_apoproved] shortcode to any post or page so you can show how many comments have been posted.
8. Display the number of registered users
Showing the total number of registered users can also help you show how active your community is and encourage others to sign up.
The Simple Blog Stats plugin can also help you with this. Just use the [sbs_users] shortcodeand add it to any page or post to show off your total.
9. Add category icons
Many WP fans use category icons to make archive pages more interesting and heighten the user experience. You can either add icons or images to category names.
The Taxonomy Images plugin can help. Once you have installed and activated it, go to Posts » Categories and click the ‘add’ button next to the blank thumbnail for each category.
10. Show random posts in WordPress
Displaying random archive posts on your sidebar can help users discover older yet informative and engaging articles that they may have missed out on first time round and ensure great vintage content isn’t lost to history.
To make this happen, use the Advanced Random Posts Widget plugin. After it is installed, go to the Appearance » Widgets page so you can add the Random Posts widget to a sidebar.
Grab your free PDF of this article
In case you don’t have time to reference all these links now, we created a printable PDF of the entire article. Click here to request it.
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About our guest contributor
Jett Hagletorn is passionate content writer at Top 10 Website Hosting. She also has an unhealthy obsession with Word Press and is currently learning to code.
Contributer : Blogging Bistro
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