Wordpress For Dummies - Some Tips And Tricks

Have you been thinking of starting a blog but feel you are too technologically challenged to do so? Well, have no fear because you have come to the right place. The following article will point out the most important things you should know when working with the most popular content management system - Wordpress.

Try to use a landing page when you are using wordpress on your site. This is a great alternative to displaying your current posts as it gives your site flavor and pizzazz. You can even use Premise for Wordpress, which is a premium solution that can get you started with the process.

Be sure to stay on top of updates! Many updates to add-ons or Wordpress itself are security-based, meaning your site could be compromised if you don't update the software. If it's telling you a new update is available, install it as soon as possible to protect your site from harm.

Create smart URLs! Don't use a lot of keywords in the URL, and keep the whole thing simple and straightforward. Avoid excessive verbiage. You want to create smart permalinks that are easy to look at and easy to understand. This helps make your blog more user friendly and comprehensible.

Make sure that all of the information on your site is current. This is very important as viewers will tend to veer away from your site if it is outdated or pointing out very old information. Spend time each week getting rid of the antiquated material on your website to improve how it looks.

If your post title is really long, cut down the length of the web page permalink. Excessively long titles make for cumbersome, clumsy URLs. Rather, seek out keywords in the long URL and create a shorter permalink for it.

Any comment that isn't on topic or doesn't make sense should be deleted. This makes your website more user-friendly. Akismet is a great plugin that you can include that will help you to filter out the daily spam on your site.

Better your search engine rankings by taking a couple minutes with pictures before uploading them. Use a title and also text tags. If someone "pins" one of your images on Pinterest, your title will be what shows up on their blog.

If you upload changes to your Wordpress site, but they don't appear to have taken effect, try to refresh from a clear cache. Hold shift as you click the reload icon in your browser, or hold shift-ctrl-r at the same time. This will give you a clean version of your site which should be updated.

Your WordPress is nothing without plugins, and lucky for you, there are plenty to choose from. However, it is very important that you use caution when installing plugins and keep in mind that they aren't disposable. You can uninstall them, but most of the time they will still affect your content and leave shortcodes behind.

So, what is the difference between tags and categories and why should I care? Categories are broad and house many posts which fall into the same genre, such as "cleaning tips". Tags are more targeted, detailed words which describe what is in the content of a post, such as "removing blood stains" or "getting out grass stains".

The article you have just read covered a lot of very valuable information about using Wordpress when creating a blog. Hopefully you learned enough from it that you now feel empowered enough to get out of your comfort zone and tackle Wordpress. Take the knowledge you now have and let your creativity flow.