Tag Archives: WordPress

How To Create & Add Favicon To Your WordPress Website?

Favicon shows up on the browser’s tab above the web address bar. These are also shown on bookmarks, mobile apps, and Google displays them on mobile search results.

You can have a custom favicon for your website. In this lesson, you will learn how to make and assign favicon on your WordPress Website.

Before favicons were creased as special tiny file as favicon.ico and were uploaded to the root directory of the website. But now WordPress lets you use any image file as the favicon of your website.

How To Assign Any Image As Favicon In WordPress?

You simply need to navigate to your admin area and follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Appearance -> Customise page
  2. Click on the ‘Site Identity’ tab on the left menu.
  3. Scroll down to ‘Site Icon’ section
  4. Click on ‘Select Site Icon’
  5. Upload the image file
  6. Click ‘Publish’ button

That’s it, WordPress will now convert your image as the favicon of your website.

How To Create Favicon Images?

Although, WordPress lets you use any image as favicon but you may also create a custom favicon image for your website, as that is going to improve your identity on the internet.

There are various business tools that lets you create graphical images, banners, and logos, etc.. Leading business tools for designing images are Canva, MemberSpace, Adobe’s Online Graphic Maker, etc. You will easily find them by searching Google.

For generating a free favicon, you may use favicon.io service, there are many more services that you will easily find by searching on Google.

How To Find Free Favicon Images?

If you simply want to use a favicon image that matches the niche of your website then there are various free services that offers you free images and vector graphics.

If you want to use any image or vector graphic as your favicon then there are services that include pixabay.com, pexels.com, openverse.org, and commons.wikimedia.org, you will find the images by searching keywords and filtering the results.

Why You Really Need To Update Old Blog Posts & Dates?

The post date of every blog is shown in the Google search result page. There are mainly two reasons why you must keep your old blog posts and their dates updated:

  1. Google prefers fresh content
  2. People prefer fresh content

That means even if Google shows one result with a very old date and another one with a new date, people are more likely to ignore the old post and click on the post that has been posted recently.

Google Freshness Algorithm states that people like content that is both relevant and recent but remember that not all website content needs to be updated and date changed, there is content that stays evergreen and we have discussed about it earlier in this lesson.

What Happens When You Don’t Update Your Blog Content?

Sometimes a well written and researched article needs some update to stay relevant for the search engines.

When you don’t update your old content, it starts slipping down on search engine results pages, its ranking start to decline and the traffic it was brining before begins to drop.

This happens mainly because of two reasons:

  1. Some other website has published a better version of your post which is more informative and new, so now Google prefers that.
  2. People are clicking on the new results because the date of your article is quite old.

This problem can be prevented by updating your posts and adding new important information, going in depth, removing or updating the text that has gone irrelevant with time, and then re-publishing the post.

How To Update Old Content & Dates In WordPress?

It is better to start with popular posts that you have posted years ago and then cover your worst performing articles. Managed WordPress users can easily do that from their admin panel or contact support team to get helped.

For editing any old post, you simply need to follow these steps:

  1. Open the post for editing
  2. Check if there is anything that has gone outdated
  3. Update that content
  4. Read your post
  5. Click ‘Save as Draft’ button
  6. Its asks for your conformation
  7. Confirm to un-publish the post and save it as draft
  8. Move to the right sidebar, under ‘Post’ section (left to the block section)
  9. Next to ‘Publish’ option you will see the publishing date
  10. Click that date and then select ‘Immediately’ option
  11. Now click the ‘Publish’ button

This will republish the post without changing its permalink. The permalink of the post is visible on the right sidebar of the post editing page, you can confirm it from there.

When you re-publish the post, it comes back to the latest feed of your website, become more visible to search spiders, and automatically goes to your blog subscribers, as well as social channels (if connected). Thus, it brings new traffic and becomes more visible on the search.

If you own a blog with evergreen content then you may also update post dates in bulk but only if your content is evergreen, otherwise don’t do that.

How To Update Old Links After Changing The Domain Name In WordPress?

After changing your domain name, installing SSL, or changing any link on your website, the most important thing you need to do is update the links on your website.

When you move your WordPress Website to a new domain name, the most common issue that you notice is all internal links to pages and references to images are not updated, images don’t show up and internal links don’t work as they point to the old address which you have abandoned. This lesson will guide you two easy processes of updating such URLs on your WordPress site.

How To Update All Your WordPress Site URLs In One Click?

Login to your WordPress site and navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to find and install Update URLs plugin on your website. Upon activation, navigate to Tools -> Update URLs page.

Here you simply need to type the old URL and the new URL address, then use the tick box option to select where you want to update URLs such as on posts, pages, attachments, excerpts or all GUIDs and then click ‘Update URLs Now’ button. That’s it, your URLs would get updated.

How To Auto Update Website URLs After Migrating To A New Domain Name?

There’s another plugin that automatically detects the domain name change and the auto-updates all old links and WordPress tables in the database of your website. It is especially coded for the domain name change and you don’t require to selectively mention the changes.

Navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to find and install Automatic Domain Changer plugin on your WordPress site. After activation, navigate to Tools -> Change Domain and first you may backup and save your website database by clicking ‘Backup Database as SQL’.

Next, type the old domain name and new domain name in the fields and click ‘Change Domain’ button. The plugin lets you update HTTPS and the links with or without the ‘www’ prefix.

How To Change Theme Options While Using Multiple Themes Plugin In WordPress?

In the previous lesson you have learned about Multiple Themes plugin that allows you to activate different themes on various posts, pages, post types, search queries, archive pages, etc on your WordPress site.

Plugin works same as advertised but one common problem any user experiences is changing theme options of specific themes activated on various sections of your WordPress site. 

In this lesson, you will learn how to change theme options like theme customization, widgets and menus etc when using Multiple Themes plugin in your WordPress site.

The plugin has no built-in functionality for updating theme options but there are some tricks as suggested by the plugin developer on Appearance -> Manage Themes -> Theme Options (Tab).

There are two methods:

  1. Using live preview method
  2. Using theme test drive method.

Method #1

  1. Visit your admin area dashboard Appearance -> Themes screen.
  2. Live preview the theme you wish to change.
  3. Using left sidebar you can customize theme options.
  4. Navigation appears when a menu is set from Appearance -> Menus page.
  5. Click Save & Activate button.
  6. Visit immediately to Appearance -> Themes and reactivate previously active theme by clicking ‘Activate’ button.

Method #2

  1. First deactivate the Multiple Themes plugin.
  2. Now install and activate the Theme Test Drive plugin.
  3. Visit your admin area dashboard Appearance -> Theme Test Drive.
  4. From usage section, select the theme you want to customize options for.
  5. Use ‘Enable Theme Drive’ button present at the bottom of admin panel.
  6. Make changes to the theme options. You can change Widgets, Sidebars, Menus, Background, Header and other Customizations.
  7. You can do same for changing theme options for other WordPress themes
  8. Deactivate ‘Theme Test Drive’ plugin.
  9. Now activate Multiple Themes plugin.

That’s it. Now both the alternate and active theme should now display all configured theme options.

How To Use Separate Themes On Different Pages In WordPress?

You can assign a separate theme on home, posts, search, archive and other pages of your WordPress site.

In this lesson, you will learn how easily you can get control over the look and feel of your website by assigning different themes to different areas of your website.

Simply navigate to your admin area dashboard to find and install Multiple Themes plugin. After activation visit your admin area Dashboard -> Appearance -> Manage Themes page to assign different themes over different sections of your website.

The plugin will enable you to choose

  1. A Theme for All Posts
  2. A Theme for All Pages
  3. A Theme for Site Home
  4. A Theme for an Individual Post
  5. A Theme for an Individual Page
  6. A Theme for Selective Archive Page
  7. A Theme for Selective Search Pages, Terms, and more

The plugin enables you to choose a different theme for everything and override the active WordPress theme on your website.

Updating WordPress Theme Options

Now the question arises how you would be able to change the theme options for any theme you want? Well that is possible, you will find the complete process in this lesson.

The plugin doesn’t changes the active WordPress theme on your website. Instead, it works by dynamically overriding the settings on the pages and sections selected by you.

How To Center Align Twenty Fourteen WordPress Theme With CSS?

Twenty Fourteen is the a beautiful and responsive WordPress theme official released by Automattic. But some bloggers don’t like its left alignment as that makes the website stick to the left leaving some spcae on the right side on big screens, whereas on small screens it is left unnoticed.

Likewise Fourteen Extended plugin (which was designed to tweak Twenty Fourteen theme) is missing from WordPress plugin repository (but is still available here). But the plugin is quite old so in this lesson we are sharing another easy way to center align the whole Twenty Fourteen theme on your website including its header, sidebars, content, footer etc.

How To Center Align Twenty Fourteen Theme?

All you have to do is add the following CSS on your admin area dashboard Appearance -> Additional CSS page.

#page {
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

Alternatively, you may do this with Simple Custom CSS plugin. Simply navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to find and install Simple Custom CSS plugin.

After activation visit your admin area dashboard Appearance -> Custom CSS screen and add the given CSS code. Save your changes and the code will centrally align the Twenty Fourteen theme on your website.

You may also do this by creating a child theme and then adding this CSS in its style.css file

Auto Import External Post Images & Update Their URLs In WordPress Site

You can automatically import external post images and update their URLs in your post content.

Previously we have discussed saving any image from any website to the WordPress media library. By default, WordPress offers you the functionality to insert external images (i.e. images located on other websites) in your post content.

But this lesson is about automatically importing external images to your website and auto-changing their URLs inside your post content to their new URL on your website.

How To Save External Post Images In WordPress?

There is a plugin for that, navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to search and install Auto Upload Images plugin on your website.

Upon activation, visit its settings page to select your options such as if you want to exclude the plugin’s functionality for any post type or you want to block certain websites for uploading images, etc.

The plugin automatically works when you save your post, it searches for the image URLs present inside your post content and when it finds any external image URL, it imports it to your website and replaces its URL inside your post content.

How To Save Contact Form Messages In WordPress?

Whenever someone sends you a message using the contact form on your website, it is directly sent to your email address and not stored online on your website. In this process sometimes WordPress Website owners miss the email and so messages too. In this lesson, you will learn how you can store and access messages also from your admin area dashboard.

The most popular plugin for creating contact forms is Contact Form 7. There’s one more plugin called Flamingo, developed as an addon plugin for Contact Form 7, which doesn’t store submitted messages. But when you use the Flamingo plugin you would be able to store messages on your website too.

Storing Contact Messages In WordPress

To use the plugin, make sure that Contact Form 7 plugin is active on your website. Next, navigate to Plugins -> Add New page on your admin area dashboard to find and install the Flamingo plugin.

After activation, you will see the Flamingo in your admin area menu. There you will see that all new contact messages are listed in a searchable format. By using this plugin you no longer be losing contact messages due to server issues, missed emails, misconfigurations in your mail setup, etc.

Jetpack Plugin Also Has The Feature

Apart from this, you should also know that the Jetpack plugin also provides you with contact form functionality, and its messages are automatically stored on your admin area dashboard, you can access such messages from the admin section’s ‘Feedback’ menu.

How To Create Chat Rooms On WordPress Website?

Without connecting to any third-party service you can start fully hosted chatrooms on your WordPress Website for enabling chat for the users and guests.

This lesson will show you a really simple process of doing that in minutes. Simply log in to your WordPress site and navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to search and install Simple Ajax Chat – Add a Fast, Secure Chat Box plugin on your website.

Creating A Chat Room

Upon activation, navigate to your admin area dashboard Settings -> Simple Ajax Chat page and change the default name of the chat to anything you want.

Then choose your options such as whether you require login or want to enable chat for the guests too, enter banned phrases, etc. Now save your changes and scroll down to copy the shortcode.

Displaying A Chat Room

For displaying the chat room navigate to Pages -> Add New page and paste the shortcode you have just copied. Publish the page and your chat room is live. You may also add the chatroom page link to your website’s navigation menu from the admin area dashboard Appearance -> Menus page.

Alternatively, another awesome plugin called Chat Room is also there, but it has not been tested with the recent WordPress versions, although it still works. If you want, you may try that one also.

Automatically Calculate Taxes & Print Shipping Labels In WordPress Ecommerce

WordPress Ecommerce is your all-in-one solution to start an eCommerce shop within minutes simply by registering your domain name and subscribing to WordPress Ecommerce. It is loaded with WooCommerce, hosting, backup, security, and everything you need to set up your store and manage it without any technical skills.

This lesson guides you on how quickly you can manage sales by automatically calculating taxes and printing shipping labels. You will just need to create products and your store will automatically take care of tax calculation, payment processing setup, and printing the shipping label, etc.

How To Implement Auto Tax Calculation & Shipping Label Print?

Simply log in to your WordPress Ecommerce website and navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to find and install WooCommerce Shipping & Tax plugin on your website.

The plugin needs to have the Jetpack plugin installed and activated on your website. If it is not installed, a prompt will appear to install and connect Jetpack. As you do that, a setup complete banner will display.

Once done, you would be able to set up shipping from your admin area dashboard WooCommerce -> Settings -> Shipping -> WooCommerce Shipping & Tax -> Shipping Labels page.

And taxes can be managed from your admin area dashboard WooCommerce -> Settings -> Tax page by selecting the “Enable automated taxes” option. The plugin provides you with all important options to manage shipping and taxes on your website.

How To Display The ‘Read More’ Button On All WordPress Posts?

In the previous lesson, you learned about displaying the ‘Read more’ button on any blog post on your WordPress Website. Now if you have so many posts and you want to automatically show excerpts i.e. ‘Read More’ option then that also can be done.

Navigate to Plugins -> Add New page on your admin area and search for the Easy Custom Auto Excerpt‘ plugin and install and activate it.

Upon activation visit your admin area Dashboard -> Excerpts page and select your options such as after how many words or paragraphs you would like to display a ‘Read More’ button, the color of the button, whether you like to display it only on the home page or other tags and category pages too, etc.

After selecting your options, save the settings and your website would start showing excerpts with a ‘Read More’ link instead of whole posts.

How To Insert Read More Button In WordPress?

The ‘Read More’ button is used to display only a part or paragraph of your blog post on the home page of your website. It works on all tags, categories, subscribers’ emails, blog feeds, and multiple post pages of any WordPress site.

You can insert a read more button on posts you make on your WordPress website. There’s no need to install any plugins. All you have to do is while writing any blog post, follow these steps:

  1. Finalize where you want to insert the ‘Read More’ button such as after the first paragraph or second.
  2. Press ‘Enter’ to come to a fresh line
  3. Click the ‘+’ button visible on the right side of the block inserter
  4. In the search box type ‘More’
  5. The ‘More’ block will come visible
  6. Click to insert it

You will see that the ‘Read More’ block has been inserted and now your post is showing only excerpt with a ‘Read More’ button, instead of the whole post on the home and multi-post pages of your website.

Another problem arises when you suddenly come to know about this option and other posts on your website show up full so what to do now? Should you edit all posts and insert the ‘More’ block or is there any other option? Well, there is an option, and we will discuss about it in the next lesson.

How To Click & Save Any Online Image To WordPress Media Library?

Any online image can be saved to the media library of your WordPress Website either with a click on the image’s page or by pasting the image URL in the admin panel of your website.

To add these features to your WordPress site, simply navigate to Plugins -> Add New section and search for LH Add Media From Url plugin.

Saving Image By Pasting The URL

After activation, you can save any media file from your admin area dashboard Media -> Add from URL page.

Simply paste the URL of the media file and proceed by clicking the ‘Submit’ button. In a few seconds, the image would get saved in your media library and you would be able to give it a title, alt text, and other optional information.

The saved images can be used on any post or page of your website simply by using the ‘Add Media’ button and then selecting the image from the media library.

Saving Image In One Click

The plugin also offers you a bookmarklet that can be dragged to your browser’s bookmarks bar from Media -> Add from the URL page.

Now, whenever you want to upload an online file to your website, you can upload it by clicking the bookmarklet. It skips the process of copying and pasting of URL for saving the image and the image automatically gets saved to your WordPress site’s media library.

How To Export And Import WordPress Menus?

The WordPress navigation menus can also be exported and imported just like posts and pages.

WordPress export page on the admin area ‘Tools’ menu doesn’t allow you to export navigation menus although menus are exported when you download the complete XML file by selecting the ‘All Content’ option.

In case you only want to export navigation menus then this lesson guides you on how to do that easily on any WordPress Website.

How To Export WordPress Menus?

Simply navigate to Plugins -> Add New page on your admin area dashboard to find and install a WordPress plugin called ‘WPS Menu Exporter‘.

Upon activation, visit the Tools -> Export page and you will notice that a new radio button option ‘Navigation Menus’ has been added to the export items list. Tick that option and click the ‘Download Export File’ button and you would be able to export navigation menus just as you export Pages, Posts, and Media from your WordPress site in the form of an XML file.

How To Import WordPress Menus?

For importing navigation menus to other WordPress websites, visit the Tools -> Import page on the website you want to import menus.

The page might ask you to install WordPress importer. For that, you just need to click the ‘Run Importer’ button below WordPress and it will be installed. Now you can select and upload the XML file to import menus o your website.

How To Merge Similar Tags & Categories In WordPress Website?

Merging similar tags, categories, and other taxonomies is possible. You may either merge or convert one taxonomy into another from the admin panel of your website.

To do so, simply visit Plugins -> Add New page to find and install a plugin called ‘TaxoPress‘. It offers you options for adding, removing, merging, bulk editing, and deleting unused tags, categories, and custom taxonomies on any WordPress site.

Once activated the plugin enables you to merge and manage all taxonomy terms on your website from your Dashboard -> TaxoPress -> Manage Terms page as shown in the given screenshot.

The key features of the plugin include:

  • Organize: In TaxoPress, you can manage taxonomies, and also terms. There are tools for you to add, rename, remove, delete, and even merge terms. You can add any term or taxonomy to any post type.
  • Optimize: TaxoPress can improve your SEO with automatic term management. TaxoPress can automatically suggest relevant terms for your content and link those terms to the correct archive pages.
  • Showcase: TaxoPress allows you to use your terms for advanced features such as Related Posts and Tag Clouds.

The plugin is fully functional with Managed WordPress, WordPress Ecommerce, as well as popular WordPress plugin features such as WooCommerce Product Categories, and bbPress.

How To Make A Private WordPress Website Or Hide It On The Internet?

Managed WordPress allows anyone to make a website and enables its access to limited members. If you simply want to make certain posts or pages private then that option is already there on WordPress and if you want to hide it completely, that can also be done.

Making Certains Posts & Pages Private

WordPress already allows you to keep certain posts, pages, or post types private or password protected, the option is present in the ‘Summary’ section on the right below the ‘Publish’ button on post editing screens.

Making Your Complete WordPress Website Password Protected

To hide your website on the internet and allow only selective users to access the website you may use the ‘Hide My Site‘ plugin. Install it from Plugins -> Add New page. Once activated, navigate to Settings > Hide My Site > Set Your Password. If you want to disable password protection uncheck the box at Settings > Hide My Site > Enable Password Protection. The plugin allows you to set a single password to view the website.

Discouraging Search Engines To Archive Content

You may also discourage search engines from taking content from your website to show it on search engine results pages by navigating to Settings -> Reading and ticking the option to discourage search engines from archiving the website.

Why Everybody Should Use Managed WordPress For Making Websites?

WordPress is the internet’s most popular and versatile website-making system and that’s because of many good reasons.

Generally, to make a website you need a domain, hosting, and WordPress, to secure it you need SSL, malware scanner, firewall, and backup service, and still after having all these things you need to configure them and make them work together, and for that, you need an expert.

That’s not with Managed WordPress. With Managed WordPress you need nothing else other than a domain name. It is your complete website solution. This lesson guides you on why you might want to use Managed WordPress over anything else.

Managed WordPress Is User-friendly

Anyone in the world can make his website simply by registering his domain name and subscribing to a Managed WordPress plan.

Managed WordPress is very easy to use, even if you have no technical skills. Its interface is intuitive and user-friendly, and you can easily create and manage your website or blog on your own.

Highly Customizable, Anyone Can Customize It

Managed WordPress offers a vast array of themes and plugins that allow you to customize your website or blog to your heart’s content. You can choose from thousands of themes to give your site a unique look and feel, and you can add plugins for extra functionality, such as contact forms, social media sharing, SEO optimization, and more.

Search Engine Friendly

Managed WordPress is packed to be SEO-friendly, which means that it’s optimized for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It offers a range of built-in SEO features, such as meta descriptions, permalinks, and sitemaps, and there are also plugins available to help you improve your site’s SEO even further.

Highly Scalable

Managed WordPress is highly scalable, which means it can grow with your business. Whether you’re starting small or have big plans for the future, WordPress can handle it all.

WordPress is an open-source platform, which means that it’s free to use and anyone can modify its source code. This has led to a thriving community of developers and users who contribute to its development and offer support that has not yet been gathered on any other website-making platform.

Mobile Friendly

With more and more people accessing the internet on their mobile devices, having a mobile-responsive website is essential. WordPress is designed to be mobile-responsive, which means that your site will look great on any device, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Real Timesaver

It will hardly take fifteen to twenty minutes in launching your website over Managed WordPress. Yes, exploring thousands of themes and plugins available and deciding what will look better can take time but bringing your website online is something that can be done in minutes.

Saves Money

Managed WordPress saves your money as you don’t need a separate service for backups, security, malware scan, SEO, and most importantly you don’t need a developer or coder to build or put up your website online. You can do everything yourself, the interface is user-friendly, the online support is accessible round the clock, and tutorial demos are always available.

Makes Most Types Of Websites & eCommerce

Overall, WordPress is a powerful and flexible platform that can be used for a wide range of websites and applications. Whether you’re a blogger, a small business owner, or a developer, WordPress has something to offer.

It is a powerful platform that can be extended to any kind of website. With a simple install of a plugin, anyone can start using it as an eCommerce store or discussion forum, a business website that takes orders and feedback, an appointment booking site for a professional, and so on. Even there are plugins that enable you to use your WordPress installation as a smartphone app for Android etc.

Finally, it is not at all inviting to try coding a website from scratch. Managed WordPress is both a pocket-friendly and user-friendly solution for anybody wanting to bring his business online.

Displaying PDFs As 3D Flipbooks On Your WordPress Website

Embedding PDFs as 3D flipbooks keep your content monetized where as flat PDF links open in the web browsers and you get no chance of earning through ads on your website.

Apart from this, embeds of PDFs as flipbooks look far more impressive than flat PDF links and the best thing is the visitor remains on your website while he reads the PDF.

This lesson guides you on how to embed PDFs as 3D flipbooks easily on your WordPress website. But first of all, you should know that now anyone can quickly start his own WordPress site simply by registering his domain name and then subscribing to a Managed WordPress plan.

To embed any PDF as a flipbook, visit Plugins -> Add New page and search for the ‘PDF Flipbook, 3D Flipbook WordPress – DearFlip‘ plugin.

Find it, install it, and activate it, upon activation visit Flipbooks -> Add New Flipbook page on your admin area dashboard. Enter a title, upload your PDF, publish it, and then copy the shortcode that appears on the top right section of the page.

Next, create a new post or page or open any old content for editing, (wherever you like to embed your flipbook) and simply paste the copied shortcode and the PDF flipbook will appear.