WordPress Tips for Beginners

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the easiest and most preferred way of building a website. WordPress drives more than a third of all sites in the world. With WordPress, you get all the tools necessary to build a website and manage its contents. It is the most powerful and straightforward site builder.

Having a General Public License means that WordPress is a web content management system that is available for use by anyone at no cost. Without web programming knowledge, anyone can use WordPress to manage their website and its contents with ease.

How did WordPress Come to Be?

In 2003, WordPress was created by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg to enable anyone who wanted to publish content on the internet to do so free of charge. This platform became popular over the years, attracting prominent users such as the White House, the Disney Company, and Microsoft, among other entities of different natures and status.

Albeit initially created for blogs, it has evolved to accommodate any website. You can use the numerous plugins developed for WordPress, which enable you to mold your website into any type you need it to be. Therefore, you can use the site builder to create blogs, business websites, portfolios, social networks, and any other online platform that comes to mind.

WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com

WordPress.org is the most commonly used. It is a free, open-source program, which you can create by using a hosting provider. It gives you a website, which grants you much freedom of management.

On the other hand, WordPress.com is a profit-oriented platform. It is more restrictive than the self-hosted WordPress.org.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

WordPress is for Everyone

It doesn’t matter what your level of skill is; you can use WordPress. Although you still need to learn about WordPress, it’s straightforward, and tinkering around with it is enough to learn about it. You can also benefit immensely from educative information from the vast WordPress community with forums, blogs, online courses, books, and seminars. When stuck, you can always Google quick solutions.

WordPress is Adaptable to Any Site

As mentioned earlier, WordPress is no longer an exclusive site builder for blogs. As WordPress improved over the years, it evolved to incorporate other niches as well. The blogging background is the reason why WordPress is the best for blogging.

Today, you can create any website and incorporate available plugins such as WooCommerce (for eCommerce websites) to make it as functional as possible.

WordPress is Easy and Free to Install

Even though you may incur some costs, setting up a website using this open-source software is still free. Later, charges may include payments for a server in the self-hosted version, WordPress.org. WordPress.com is always suitable for a beginner. However, if you need to get the best out of it, you need to subscribe to paid plans. If you mean for your website to grow and even earn from it, WordPress.org should be your go-to option.

Upon going to the WordPress.org page, the option to “Get WordPress” will lead you to download WordPress and access the full instructions on its installation. Alternatively, if you go to the page of your host, you can install WordPress with a one-click installation procedure.

WordPress has Incredible Themes and Plugins

Themes and plugins don’t just make installation easy: they also provide the tools for improving your website. Upon installing a theme, you can brand your site by adding logos, editing the colors, formatting text, and posting your stories.

Plugins such as WooComerce, restaurant menu plugins, etc. add to the functionality and ease of use of your site for you and your visitors. WordPress has a catalog of countless themes and plugins available, free to download. They are incredibly helpful in customization, improvement, and management of your site. Nevertheless, premium plugins have extra features, which might make you consider them over free ones.

WordPress Allows Incorporation of Many Types of Media

WordPress will never give you a dialog box to warn you of unsupported formats of files. You can use any media files on your website, including audio, video, documents, text, and image. Nonetheless, you have to make sure that the media you use is yours, free for download and use, or you have a license from the owner to use it.

WordPress has Inbuilt SEO

The moment you create a WordPress post, the software provides tags and meta descriptions, which will give your site an advantage on search engines. WordPress offers other plugins, such as schema, that enhance your SEO.

Quick Tips for Beginners

  1. Choose the right hosting provider like Chemicloud who gives you all the tools you need to handle site traffic with high loading speeds.
  2. Always compress your videos and images so that you don’t compromise your site’s loading speeds.
  3. Too many unnecessary plugins will slow your site down. Stick to the minimum.
  4. Keep updating your site as WordPress releases monthly updates to remain secure from harmful bugs.
  5. Make sure your site ranks high in readability to keep your visitors interested.
  6. Choose an SEO plugin. Even though WordPress offers meta descriptions and title tags, plugins such as schema help to increase the traffic on your site.
  7. Set a profile picture in settings so that your site has a Globally Recognized Avatar (Gravatar).
  8. Before settling on a theme, watch demos of several and even try them out before downloading or purchasing one of them.
  9. Make sure that the theme you use is mobile-friendly, simple, clean and Minimal WordPress Theme  so that your visitors can reach your site from any device.
  10. To keep track of the statistical progress of your site, such as traffic, install Google analytics.
  11. Use a great landing page to grip the attention of your visitors. Most great themes come with proper landing pages.
  12. Always tag your images with a relevant textual description to advance your SEO further.
  13. Utilize the WooCommerce integration of WordPress to create an online shop.
  14. Encrypt the administrator’s directory with a strong password to avoid hackers.
  15. Make sure that the theme and plugins you use are specific to your niche.

Final Thoughts

Statistically, WordPress is the most popular site builder. If you want your site to be a success, join other successful users, and enjoy all its perquisites.

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