WordPress: Handy Quick Tips

WordPress is an excellent CMS and if you followed this link here you probably agree with me. I’ve been using it for a little over 18 months now and have picked up on numerous tips and tricks throughout that time. The following tips aren’t going to teach you how to add an options panel in the backend or create an author info box for displaying at the end of posts. These tips are much more generalized and cover a few small topics that may make your time with WordPress that much better.

Post Box Size

Do you find yourself dragging out the post box to a larger size when writing new posts? The default size for the post box is a mere 10 lines tall. Save yourself some time in the future and go ahead and change the post box to a larger size. You’ll love yourself for doing this in the long run.

To change the post box settings go to Settings > Writing and at the top of the list you’ll see the option to change the size. I’ve got mine set at 25 lines which works great with the resolution/monitor size ratio that I’m working with.

Shortened URL

As we will touch on in the following tip, changing to a more attractive permalink structure is advised. However, the default structure can still come in handy. For example, a recent post I wrote titled “A Handful of CSS Trends And How To Use Them” carries the lengthy permalink - http://bluefaqs.com/2010/04/a-handful-of-css-trends-and-how-to-use-them/ but can also be accessed by its shortened link - http://bluefaqs.com/?p=10464, a whole 44 characters shorter.

While editing a post click the “Get Shortlink” option next to the permalink, just under the title. A popup window will display the shortened link to that specific post. This works great for services like Twitter which restrict character count.

Permalinks

Straight out-of-the-box, the permalink (URL) default setup for your posts, pages, etc in WordPress are hardly attractive. In all honesty, they’re quite ugly. For example: http://bluefaqs.com/?p=8 vs. a more structured http://bluefaqs.com/im-much-prettier/. Changing to “pretty permalinks” is quite easy and should be one of the first steps when creating a WordPress site.

Go to Settings > Permalinks to change the structure. Choose one of the options or go custom by entering in, for example, /%postname%/ in the space provided. Do yourself and other readers a favor by sticking with the style you choose. People use these links to link to your site and changing them later on could affect incoming links.

Changing Titles is Fine

Once you’ve published a post, the permalink (URL) to that post is set in place. What if later on you decide that that title has got to go? If you suddenly decide that you don’t like the title of any post or page, you can change it at anytime without consequence.

To change the title of your post, go to Posts > Edit Post and type in the new name for your article. Hit update and you’re good to go. Just remember to leave the URL alone.

User Roles

WordPress is a great platform for multiple users. A user, someone who has a registered user account with a password to your site, can be given specific roles as to allow or disallow access to certain areas and privileges.

To divvy out privileges or roles among users, click on Users and place a checkmark next to the user you wish to change the role to. Click the drop down “Change role to…” option, choose the role and click change. Here are some examples of some of the privileges that each role carries.

• Administrators - Carry full access and privileges to everything.
• Authors - Can publish and edit their specific posts, but not other authors.
• Editors - Can publish, edit and manage their posts and the posts of others.
• Contributors - May write and manage their posts, but cannot publish them.
• Subscribers - Just like a normal visitor, yet are registered. Can be given special privileges.

It’s Your Dashboard

The WordPress dashboard is completely in your control. If you feel a little cluttered with all the little windows that are displayed by default, feel free to move them around or remove them for good. I mean, do you really need to know “The Latest news from BlogPlay.com”?

To change up your WordPress dashboard, click on Screen Options and uncheck the windows you do not wish to display. You can choose the number of columns while you’re in there as well. Drag each window where you want it, sit back and enjoy your new dashboard.

One Category Per Post

This one really drives home as I recently reorganized my categories here on the site. When assigning a post to a category, it’s considered good practice to only let it fall under one single category. Having it under several categories can cause a couple of problems. It may show up as duplicate content, something that search engines don’t particularly like and it could also confuse readers if the same post falls under two categories.

On that note, make it a priority to have only a few generalized categories for your site. If you’re offering up 37 different categories with just a couple of posts under each, you won’t get any gold stars for user-experience.

Side Note: You can use multiple tags for each post, they play the game differently than categories.

Unused Images

Over time you may, and will likely, end up with a number of images on your site that are no longer being used. Could be an old post that you deleted, a logo change or even something as small as a pair of subscribe buttons that you updated. It’s in your best interest to go ahead and remove these unattached images.

Go to Media > Library and then click on Unattached at the top. Surprising isn’t it? you probably forgot all about those images. You have two options now, go through the pages and take a trip down memory lane or select all and delete permanently (Bulk Actions).

Short Slugs

Slugs are basically the associated URL for each individual post. You’ll notice that you can alter it before publishing an article or let it auto-generate by grabbing the title and formatting it into lowercase letters separated by dashes. If you’re sporting a lengthy title for your current post, it’s a good idea to shorten it up a bit. Why? It’s better for SEO reasons and it looks a heck of a lot better sitting in a search engine.

For example, this:

http://bluefaqs.com/how-to-become-hands-down-the-best-designer-in-the-whole-world/

looks a lot better like this:

http://bluefaqs.com/become-a-great-designer/

How do you change it? When editing a post, look just beneath the title where it says “Permalink”. Click the edit button and enter in the new slug. Remember to keep it relevant to the title and a good representation of the overall post. Keep the letters lowercase and only use numbers, dashes and underscores along with them.

HTML Editor Please

If you aren’t already, I’d like to invite you to use the HTML editor when writing articles. Why? It’s allows you to easily recognize badly formatted items within your post. Suppose you have a string of 25 images in a row that you accidentally opened with an h3 tag. You’ll likely not know if you’re sitting in the visual editor and that’s not going to win you any points in the SEO game. Also, switching between the HTML and visual editor can sometimes cause a hiccup in some formatting cases or even worse cause some things to disappear.

If you are already using the HTML editor consistently, then hats off to you, especially if you are an aspiring web designer/developer. There is a way to turn off the visual editor in the backend of WordPress if you want. Simply go to Users > Edit your account and the first option asks if you would like to disable the visual editor. Notice it doesn’t as if you want to disable the HTML editor ;)

Stay Updated

A no-brainer right? Every new release of WordPress and the plugins that it plays with is more stable and more secure than before. When you see the option to update to a new version, don’t hesitate.

If you don’t log in regularly and aren’t aware of the release of the newest update, there is a way to be notified through your email. The Update Notifier plugin from Jon Cave will alert you via email whenever you or your clients are due for a WordPress update.

Pulling Yourself Out of the 90′s :)

This is more of a personal choice, but I’m trying to recruit more members to jump on board. Graphic smileys are dead. They remind me of Yahoo Messenger, which is also dead. Do everyone a favor and turn these little guys off for your WordPress site.

How? Go to Settings > Writing and uncheck the box next to where it says “Convert emoticons to graphics on display”. Now pat yourself on the back, you just did everyone who visits your site a huge favor. Sorry if i offended any one there :P

Unused Plugins

Over time, you may accumulate a few plugins that you either aren’t using or no longer need. Plugins eat up resources and therefore should be removed when no longer providing a necessary service.

Go through your plugins occasionally and ask yourself if you are using the plugin and if you should be using the plugin. It’s easy to forget to disable plugins that should have long been retired.

Blacklist the Spam

Spam runs rampant throughout the internet. If you own a website, it’s inevitable that you will receive spam, mostly in the form of comments. While Akismet works great for eliminating a huge chunk of the problem, WordPress users can also take precautionary measures.

Under Settings, go to Discussion and scroll down to where it reads “Comment Blacklist”. In the text box next to it, type in a few words that you know a real-life commenter will never use, especially terms associated with the pharmaceutical industry. You can also type in IP addresses of known spammers. Here is a list of a great 2010 IP Blacklist recently put together by Perishable Press.

Partial vs. Full Feeds

Almost every website/blog serves up an RSS feed for their readers. It’s the easy distribution of content that makes the whole thing so attractive. There is a debate however centered around the question of displaying partial or full feeds to subscribers. There are strong reasons for supporting either side of the debate.

Some say partial feeds help entice readers to click through to the actual site as well as keeping scrapers from stealing content. Others say that full feeds attract more subscribers, helping to build a larger audience. My opinion swings towards full feeds. Time after time I hear people complaining about partial feeds and how they have unsubscribed because of them.

Whatever your choice, you can make the change by going to Settings > Reading and choosing how many posts to display as well as your choice for Full text of Summary. I’d like to hear others opinions on this one.

Backup or Lose it All

Do you like your website? What would you do if everything was gone tomorrow? I’m talking all of your content, images and sweat that you put into it. Scary thought isn’t it? You must backup your site and do so regularly.

A handy plugin that I have been using for sometime now for backing up my database is the WordPress Database Backup plugin. Every week or however often you’d like, you can get a nice reassuring email with a copy of your database attached to it. Please stop what you’re doing right now (while leaving this tab open) and download and install this baby right now!

Smush Your Images

If you’re cranking out list posts that sing to the tune of “40+ Must Have Design (fill in blank)”, then no doubt you know that waiting for that list to load can take quite a bit of time. Luckily, there are ways to optimize your images to help reduce their file size.

Of course, throwing them in Photoshop for optimization should be your first step but there are other ways. Take a look at Smush.it as one option. It’s completely free and is a completely “lossless” tool, meaning that the images will not lose their visual quality. I know that this tip isn’t completely WordPress related, unless that is, there is a plugin that will do it for you :)

In Closing…

Hopefully you pulled at least a trick or two out of the roundup here. The goal was to offer up some quick tips and not go too in depth, at least in this article. If you have some tips that you would like to add to the list or share with others, please let us hear about them in the comments below. Thanks!