WordPress is the world's most widely used blogging platform. WordPress is currently being used by as much as 16% of the top 1 million websites in the Alexa rankings. Most new websites and blogs generally turn to WordPress for their needs.
First of all, why learn WordPress in the first place? Will you have any use for it at all?
If you're planning on setting up your own website, then you have the option of using WordPress. Although there are a lot of other blogging platforms out there, none of them can keep up with what WordPress can provide.
The first thing that you would notice about WordPress is that their platform is very easy to understand. Adding pages, editing the design and all other things may be done with just a few clicks of the mouse. You don't need to know HTML, PHP, MySQL and all other web programming languages to create a great website.
The second thing that you would notice about WordPress is the additional functions that it can provide. With other blogging platforms, you're going to have to learn some intense coding if you want to create a poll for voting and a form for inquiries. But with WordPress, you just have to click a button and your poll and form is there; you only need to edit the fields.
Other additional functions that WordPress may be found in their long list of plugins. These plugins provide additional functions not found in a default WordPress website. The number of plugins and their functions are so many that it would be hard to talk about all of them in a single article. Just use the plugin search function and you'll most likely find something that you need; an example of a famous plugin would be SEO optimization plugins.
Now that you know why you need to learn WordPress, let's talk about a few tips that you can use to get the full benefit of your WordPress blog.
Tip #1: Setting a static page as your home page.
If you've done your fair share of visiting websites, you'll notice a major difference with personal blogs and business websites. Personal blogs have a home page that displays all the new articles while business websites have a static home page.
If you're planning to make a business website, or let's say a professional looking website, you're going to have to set your home page to a static one. To do this you just go to Settings then Reading at the left menu bar. In the Reading options, set the 'Front page displays' option to 'a static page' and select the home page that you want from your list of pages.
Tip #2: Use the right permalinks.
Once you get started in making pages for your website using WordPress, you'll notice that your pages are generally given links with a date and a post number. You won't mind this at all if you're not worried about SEO, but if you are these links have to change.
You have the option of changing your permalinks to whatever you want. To do this, you just change the text in the permalink box under the title box, when first creating or editing your page. You can change this to anything that you want.
Another way of changing this is by going to the Pages page which lists all the pages that you have. Once there, you just hover your mouse over the page titles and then a few options will appear; click on 'Quick Edit' and edit the 'slug' option.
Tip #3: Order your pages properly.
In WordPress, when you create pages their order number by default is '0' which means that they will be arranged either alphabetically by their page titles or by their date of creation. This creates problems because the order of the pages in the menu bar would be unorganized.
To order your pages you can go to the 'Quick Edit' option, as what we described earlier, and edit the 'Order' option. You can also go to the 'Edit' option and edit the order at the right tool bar under the 'Order' option. Just make sure that all order numbers are different.
Tip #4: Use the right plugin.
For most people, WordPress plugins are what make WordPress the top blogging platform today. It is said that there is a plugin for almost everything that you need to do to your website.
To add a plugin, go to the Plugins option at the right menu bar and click on 'Add New'. Under the search function, enter the plugin that you want (you can enter the function or name of the plugin), and then click on any of the results listed. If you found a plugin that you want, just click 'Install Now' and the plugin will be automatically installed to your blog, without you doing much work.
WordPress is the most used blogging platform and boasts a wide range of functions and features that you will most likely need in creating your blog or website. We just listed a few tips here to help you get started in learning WordPress, but to bring out the full potential of your website, you can easily search for what you need in the WordPress forums.
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