Top Tips For WordPress Beginners

Top Tips For WordPress Beginners
I wish I knew these simple tricks before I actually started blogging and over the years WordPress became my best friend. I do not have a degree in computer science neither I anything about coding, but just by using wordpress for more than 10 websites, I learned few things. Let me start simply discussing few thing.

WordPress is not a TRUE CMS. It is the BEST blogging software. Can you use it as CMS? Sure you can if you have smaller needs. I am sure WORDPRESS will evolve into a proper CMS soon with steady and rapid development of the software. Each new version of WordPress has always made me astonished.

Pages:
Before you start your blog, think about the number of “PAGES” that you want in your site. Most of the WordPress themes displays all of your “WordPress Pages” in the header section by default. You can only remove the display if you edit the “header.php” file manually. If you have too many pages, you may end up having multiple “rows” for pages at the top. If you absolutely need too many pages, use Subpages properly and also choose a theme that supports “Drop Down Menu”. If you do this good practice, you do not have to spend too much time organizing your site 3 years from now.

Categories:
Categories are also a pain if you have too many. Try to use the minimum possible categories. I prefer using “:Tags” more than “Categories” these days. If you must have to use too many categories, use “sub categories”. Again, this will improve the look of your blog and save you a lot of time in future. Never create a category that you may have to use for one or two posts only.

Go to your admin CP and do this simple steps:

1. Settings/General: Blog Title (You can configure this from SETTINGS/GENERAL page). Keep your blog title “small and sweet”, use the “TAGLINE” to describe your blog in more words.
2. Settings/Writing: I do not usually do anything here. Move on.
3. Settings/Reading: This is one of the greatest feature often ignored by the bloggers. By Default, the homepage of your sites lists your post entries, the latest one being at the top. You can actually set up a nice STATIC HOME page from here. Just choose “A Static Page” option, select a page and edit the page for your HOME PAGE CONTENT. Now create another page like BLOG or LATEST, and choose that one for “post page” option. Now you have a static home page, and the blog nature is moved to “Blog/Latest” page. (You do not need to write anything on this page, just create it and select it)
4. There are some more options that I am going to ignore. I don’t really do anything with the options for Discussion, Media, Privacy, etc.
5. Settings/Permalinks: This is another very important feature that is very often overlooked by many bloggers. If you have too many posts already at your blog, do not change the permalinks. If you are starting a new blog, do this. By default your post permalinks are like : http://calcuttaseo.com/2009/02/19/sample-post/ (it has date on it), click on "Custom Structure" and insert the code here: /%postname%/; now your permalink would look like http://calcuttaseo.com/sample-post/ - a much cleaner and shorter permalink now.

General WordPress Configuration

Reading WordPress

Permalink Configuration in WordPress

Plugins
Now when you have the initial stage ready, you need few more great plugins for your blog. Start with the “most popular plugins“. It will give you an idea about what are the most important and most used plugins in the wordpress community. I will write a post about the the plugins I use in my blog soon.

Themes
Look for some great themes. WordPress now has a Theme Directory where you can look for various superb themes.

Well, you are ready to go, start posting now, make good posts and interact with your readers as best as you can.