7 Essential Tips for WordPress Beginners

[snakeair]

This is basic stuff but if you are just starting out with WordPress then this is a great blog post to read.

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar …

You meet someone and they say all the right things. They’re full of compliments and accolades.

Except, something bugs you about them. Their words don’t quite match their actions. They can be forgetful, and even mean. Eventually, the glow wears off, and you see them for who they really are.

It’s not what people say, it’s what they do that makes a relationship work.

And that’s how it is with your WordPress website, especially if you’re just getting started.

That’s because you can’t just talk about how great WordPress is and expect it to work for you. You can’t just read about it, either.

To see the results you want, you have to put some action behind those words. You need to use the WordPress best practices outlined below.

Continued at: http://www.copyblogger.com/new-to-wordpress/

Any comments on these tips?

Have a few more that are good for new blog owners?

[ceekeigh]

1. Your sidebar isn’t your hall closet

You know that hall closet you’re afraid to open because all the stuff shoved on the top shelf might come tumbling out and hit you on your head?
That’s what a lot of WordPress sidebars look like.
They’re stuffed with your ads, your social media icons, links to your most recent tweets, photos of your Facebook fans, and on and on. Buried among all that information might be a link you’d really like your site visitor to click on, but if they can’t find it, you might as well not have it there.
The solution? Pare down your sidebar to the absolute essentials.
Go into Appearance & Widgets and remove everything except the widgets that actually do something for your business or your cause.
If a widget doesn’t add people to your list, put money in your bank account, or get someone to take an action you’d like them to take, remove it.

I definitely agree with this one. As this would be my downfall as well when creating Wordpress blogs. I am still learning tweaking Wordpress blogs so this is a very helpful article for me. Thanks.

[stone]

There are a lot of blogs that are cluttered. Luckily, my blog gets tidied often enough to avoid the cluttered look. If I could do the same with my house and yard... and pickup truck!

I didn't care for the example landing page they linked to, and that software they linked to seemed a bit steeply priced.

I did feel like the suggestions about using the footer for something besides a copyright notice might be a directive that I should think about...

[indybail]

Sound advice and especially well written. It should be bookmarked by everybody thinking about doing blogging. I did.

I try not to do gratuitous "Great post" comments, but this one is that good.

[Kutcher]

its really a helpful articles..but only for those who has account in wordpress however i found it helpful. for beginner they must have to take guidence from the person who is currently using wordpress......

[seolyka2]

Great ideas especially for those bloggers that are just starting out a blog from the scratch. In blogging, it's really important to make your blog look presentable to your readers by not cluttering it with too much ads. Keep in mind that your blog's layout or design is important to encourage your readers to stay on your blog. If they see your blog with too much ads and their placements are not organized well, there's a change that they would not read your blog's content.

[jackflaming]

I am using wordpress for posting contents and it is really good an useful. As per I remember I never feel any problem while creating blog and posting on the wordpress. It is such a useful blog platform.

[Kyle_1973]

I am a beginner so that article was very helpful. I am picking up insights and pointers as I go. These forums really open you up to a world of very useful information. Thank you!

[designprint]

Copy Blogger is consistently putting out great material. I'm not a wordpress user, but I've used it in the past. One thing that frustrates me is the variety of environments that you can encounter. If you're running off of the Wordpress servers, you have one situations, if you download the software and serve your own site, you have a different situation and if you run on a third-party server (my experience) its still different. I love the power of Wordpress, but the inconsistency drove me away.

[shaymm]

Wasn't aware of this site til now, but I will definitely refer to it. Also, I had no one idea permalinks mattered, well, for anything. Thanks for the tip

Btw, I am experiencing information overload right now. So, much information on the forum and the provided links. Awesome

[snakeair]

Don't fry your brain with information.

[~kev~]

5. Put your images to work for you - is one place wordpress drops the ball in a major way.

The built in wordpress gallery feature stinks, big time. When I add code to the image description, wordpress removes the code when the article is saved. There is no built in slideshow feature, no built in lightbox feature,,,, wordpress needs to make some major improvements in how it handles images.

The rest of the article is good. I like the suggestion on keeping your links updated and to keep your sidebar simple.

[Greg79]

The one advice I can give is: be VERY careful when you install new extensions! The last one I installed (forgot which one it was, unfortunately) totally erased my wordpress blog, and my ISP just told me they can't do anything about it...

[snakeair]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

5. Put your images to work for you - is one place wordpress drops the ball in a major way.

The built in wordpress gallery feature stinks, big time. When I add code to the image description, wordpress removes the code when the article is saved. There is no built in slideshow feature, no built in lightbox feature,,,, wordpress needs to make some major improvements in how it handles images.

The rest of the article is good. I like the suggestion on keeping your links updated and to keep your sidebar simple.

I hope WordPress ads this as a built in feature in there next version. I know they on beta 2 now of the next version but they not mentioning all the updates it's getting. The more built in options the less plugins we have to use. Everyone posts pictures on there blogs and it needs to be more easily to setup a slideshow without installing a plugin that could slow down your blog.

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by snakeair

I hope WordPress ads this as a built in feature in there next version. I know they on beta 2 now of the next version but they not mentioning all the updates it's getting. The more built in options the less plugins we have to use. Everyone posts pictures on there blogs and it needs to be more easily to setup a slideshow without installing a plugin that could slow down your blog.

If wordpress had a better built in gallery feature, I would use a lot more images.

As it sits right now, I have to upload the images to the control panel in a certain order, then create the gallery.

Here is an example of the wordpress code I use

[gallery include="11716,11717,11718,11719" link="file" columns="4"]

The numbers are the picture ids. This is the only way that I know to create anything that looks like a gallery. And then I have a lightbox modification installed. when someone clicks an image, they can use the lightbox to view the images.

But its sad that adding a simple slideshow or gallery takes so mush time.

[wade32]

Can the plugin Google images remedy this? I know there is a lot of trouble with wp images, & I have heard this plugin was good, but thinking about using it myself due to the same problem

[holidaygermany]

Nice information for beginners, all the suggestions are really useful.

[GeniusStartup]

Glad to see someone else begging people to drop the clutter from the sidebar - I wrote something similar recently in a post about site optimization for SEO. It's more important than ever to take site loading speed into consideration now it's an established part of Google's ranking algorithm.

[Chr]

I liked number 1 a lot

1. Your sidebar isn’t your hall closet

My tip would be to focus on quality content over other factors (monetization, SEO, design, etc.)

[stephengfm]

Great article. It was just what I was seeking today. V7N Does It Again!