WordPress

In honor of Valentine’s day, it’s time for business owners + bloggers to learn to love WordPress! Which is why our WordPress resource is officially opening up on Friday. Learn to love your WordPress website, instead of cursing at it. You put so much time, money + love into your business, yet dread doing anything with your website because you don’t get how to use it. And spending hours Googling things or watching YouTube videos that move too fast or — even worse — way too slow is a waste…

Do you ever use the “Tools” section in the backend of your WordPress site? Most bloggers + business owners don’t and that has a lot to do with the fact that not much lived there. Until WordPress introduced Site Health. What is Site Health This new feature of WordPress 5.2 + above gives you the ability to check the status of your site’s health based on criteria deemed important by the folks at WordPress. Aka it’s WordPress’s way of letting you know if your site is doing well or at…

The term “widget” isn’t specific to WordPress. In fact, Merriam-Webster has an entry for the noun widget. But today we are defining widget as it applies to WordPress websites + blogs. Not what it means for any piece of software. WordPress widgets According to WordPress.org, “widgets add content and features to your sidebars.” If your theme has a sidebar, odds are you can head to Appearance > Widgets + see a place to add elements to a sidebar. Default WordPress widgets include Categories, Search, Navigation Menus + Text — which…

They can have different names, depending on who you’re talking to. Theme, template, layout, skin + design are all options that I’ve heard used before. Whatever you choose to call them, the quick explanation is that you affect the look of your website with your WordPress theme. I stick with the lingo that WordPress uses too. Which is why I talk about themes + not templates or skins. Notice that when you click on “Appearance” in your left hand menu, the options are Themes and Theme Editor? WordPress vs WordPress…

In December 2018, WordPress released version 5.0 of the open-source blogging tool. With this major update, they introduced the Gutenberg editor + Gutenberg blocks. Instead of treating pages + posts like traditional Word documents, WordPress now lets site owners add components to each page with a more visual approach. First things first. If you don’t see blocks on your new page or post, make sure you aren’t using the Classic Editor plugin. This plugin was created for website owners that didn’t want to use Gutenberg OR had issues with their…

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of automation + time-saving techniques. (This post, this post + this post are evidence.) Which is why I also love using keyboard + WordPress shortcuts as much as humanly possible. Time is money, so saving time makes me a happy camper. Before I get too geeky about the topic, let’s start with a definition of each: Automation: an automatically performed task or function. i.e. something that you configure/program/setup + then don’t have to think about or touch again. Keyboard shortcuts: a keystroke or pattern that invokes a specific function within…

Are you ready to make your site faster + less enticing for hackers? The great news is that it’s pretty easy to secure WordPress after installing it. While these steps are not required to use WordPress, they will help you avoid some shitty situations or needing us to unhack your site. This post is the last part of a series in setting up your own WordPress website, DIY style. If you missed the third post, check it out here. The most simple way to secure WordPress is by clearing out the…

To set up your own WordPress website, you only need 2 things — a domain + a hosting account. Once you have those things, you’ll need to prep your hosting account for a secure version of WordPress. Then it’s time to get your online business up + running. This post is the second part of a series in setting up your own WordPress website, DIY style. If you missed the first post, check it out here. Prep for WordPress Unless you are using a managed WordPress hosting service, you need to prep…