Everyone starts out as a newcomer, but with WordPress, it’s certainly easier to get far than with other platforms. All you need is a little bit of patience, commitment and enthusiasm.
When you are just starting out using WordPress for the first time, there are probably some things you should be aware of before you get started. The first thing to keep in mind about the platform is that WordPress is not just some place where you can post some kind of thoughts and share images. This is an amazing content management system that is widely used for creating any type of website of any complexity. With that in mind, let’s go through the main must-know features of WordPress:
1. Get Involved with the Community.
WordPress community is a pretty welcoming place to go. Don’t be afraid and feel confident that you can always ask for help or a piece of advice. WordPress provides special chat rooms and support forums in case you get stuck. Maybe sometime in the nearest future, you’ll become one among those who are offering advice.
2. Make Your WordPress Project SEO-Friendly.
Making your website SEO-friendly is of crucial importance to boost up the traffic. Basically, WordPress is favored by Google mainly because, by default, its sites are built with clean code and basic templates are free of bloat. There are, however, some tweaks that should be made for it to conform to search engine optimization best practices. We highly recommend “All-In-One SEO Pack” plugin that is easy to use right out of the box, so you can start improving your search engine results immediately. Besides, it allows to move SEO data back and forth between several theme platforms and plugins, so it would also allow you to migrate to WordPress SEO from other plugins.
3. Know Your WordPress.
WordPress. com and WordPress. org are completely different things. In case you are looking only for basic blog features and tools, and you are quite sure that there will be no need in adding more customizations – WordPress.com might be the right choice in this case. However, if you plan to have total control over the code of your website and you want it to be self-hosted with huge space an unlimited editing options – choose WordPress.org.
4. Have a Look at Admin Panel.
When finished logging in, you’ll be redirected to the admin panel. Go to the dashboard that is on the right side of the panel. A dashboard is a place where you can see a general overview of your website. It allows you to post and edit your ideas, respond to recent comments and generally helps you in organizing what’s going on with your blog. On the left-hand side, you may find a set of different navigation items:
- posts – this area allows you to add your posts and perform the majority of work on your blog;
- media – this tab provides you with a possibility to view any images, videos and music that you have added to your posts;
- pages – are for timeless content that you want to showcase indefinitely, e.g. About Me page, Contact Us page and so on;
- comments – this tab offers an opportunity to view, edit, and delete visitor comments;
- appearance – allows to refresh the visual look of your website, edit the theme, the header and the footer of a blog post;
- plugins – can be added to make your WordPress blog more functional so that it could meet all your needs and requirements.
5. Get Themes and Plugins from Reputable Sources
If set up properly, WordPress is a secure platform. However, by default, it is installed with a certain theme that you would likely wish to change or refresh later on. In such a case, it is recommended not to grab the first free theme you’ve found on Google, but to search the required theme from the reputable theme developers or in the official repository of free themes.
Conclusion or a Few Final Words of Wisdom:
One in every six websites in the world run over WordPress, an award-winning CMS that provides a full spectrum of solutions to fit any taste. Needless to say that there are a lot more tips and tricks of successful WordPress maintenance than we have the space to mention here. However, if you will follow the above-mentioned simple guidelines, you’ll certainly avoid all the most common pitfalls and will be well on the way to having a fast and secure site that will stand up to anything the web can throw at it.
In case you have already run a website on a certain platform that doesn’t meet your needs and requirements, and now you want to change it to another – there is a way out for you. With aisite service you can easily migrate all your content to WordPress in a completely hands-off and secure way.
