Need some WordPress tips for beginners?
According to a report by W3Tech, WordPress is being used by more than 30% of today’s websites, and there are lots of websites. Latest researches say there are more than 1.7 billion websites out there. So, that’s 510 million WordPress based websites. That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?
If you are having your first contacts with the WordPress content management system and you are having a rough time, think of this: you are not the first one having a hard time with WordPress. There have been many people in your situation before and they’ve successfully passed it. You will be able to do it, as well.
Now, let’s go through five helpful steps which will ease your WordPress development career.
1. Pick an Adaptive Theme
The WordPress theme is the backbone of your website. That’s why is very important you use a very reliable and adaptive theme.
Even though many themes are for free, apart from their price, you need to consider their versatility and their responsiveness to various screen sizes.
Some free themes look perfect on desktop, but they crash on mobile or tablet.
Lauren Gray, Lead Developer at an important essay service concludes “Considering the fact that most of the website traffic nowadays is from mobile devices, such a theme wouldn’t be a very good fit for you.”
2. Make your Website Interactive
A website’s most relevant differentiators are its design and usability. A very good design makes a website very attractive and that’s what users are in for.
If you are looking to evaluate your website’s usability from multiple points of view, you can do it using tools, such as Website Grader.
But, if you want to evaluate its design, you’ll need a professional to do this job. For that, I’d suggest you ask for the services of a professional designer.
3. Always Backup Your Website
This mistake is seen quite often at beginner developers. You never know when you write a line of code and everything goes haywire or when there’s a virus in your website and you are not able to make it run properly.
A backup will do the trick. You will just get back to the starting point and any errors or viruses you had before will vanish. Here’s a list of 8 backup plugins designed for WordPress. Here, they are compared from various points of view. Choose the one you consider the most appropriate for your website.
4. Befriend the Search Engines
Befriending search engines means being SEO friendly. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process through which you give Google relevant information about your website. Whether it’s about its text, its videos, and images, Google ranks you higher as he knows more about your website. The same way you trust a person the more you know about him or her.
A very cool plugin I would recommend for search engine optimization is the Yoast plugin. It is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress.
Basically, it will make sure you respect the following requirements:
- At least one internal link on every page of your website;
- Outbound links;
- Your page’s keyword should be in its description;
- Keyword’s density should be between 1 and 3 percent;
- Meta descriptions should contain your page’s keyword.
5. Add Analytics Tools
When you are developing your website, if you are looking to turn it into a source of passive income or, even more, a true business, it’s important to know where your users come from.
These analytics tools will let you analyze your traffic sources, the pages your clients like most, and the pages they don’t. The most important analytics tool out there is Google Analytics.
You need to install their Google Tag in order to see what your website’s users are doing and where they are coming from.
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems out there. Even if you are looking to become a full-time WordPress developer or you are just an entrepreneur looking to create a website for his business, you need to be able to create your own website, start to finish.
This content management system is so popular because is very easy and there are lots of themes you can use to make your own website.
Next time you get on with developing a website, keep these five tips in mind and implement them. Your site’s overall rating will increase.