Blog Marketing

Understanding the 3 Basic WordPress Features

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This post aims to help WordPress newbies who may be initially daunted by all the information present on the dashboard. To start off with WordPress, you need to carefully study the dashboard that can be viewed by users, editors and the admin.

A user may not need to bother about internal WordPress issues, but the admin has to understand the power of a WordPress blog. If you are a new admin and have recently started a blog, here are three important features that you ought to understand and research on. These very three basic features will take your blog to a professional level, provided you handle them with the right tabs.

1). Themes

WordPress themes are not merely there for making the blog look appealing, rather, hidden inside the themes are codes that could enhance the very functionality of your blog. The theme you set up will determine customer satisfaction when they visit the site.

Not using a properly coded theme could result in numerous problems of SEO implementation, inability to install required plugins along with some onsite functionality issues. Therefore, every line of Javascript code of a theme is to be well coded.

You could create your own theme if you’re a programming expert; however, WordPress has its own set of themes that can be used. But be aware that WordPress themes are also sometimes copied by developers and there may be unseen bugs that would pop up only when the theme is put in use.

To avoid all such situations, you can purchase a professionally built theme, this blog runs on the Thesis Theme, an SEO friendly theme designed for Wordpress bloggers or you can have the current theme checked for proper coding through the Markup Validation Service tool that is released by the WWW international standards grading system called the W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium. Enter your site URL there and have them detect the coding of your theme. To make this simple get the Thesis Theme, it’s a smart investment.

2). Widgets
Once the theme is set, widgets are optional tools that add some extra functionality to the site. It is a small bit of code that is integrated with the theme. Therefore if you want Google Adsense, you use the Adsense widget along with the set up theme.

Advertising Widgets are very important if you aim to earn money through the blog. Other widgets that could make the blog efficient include an RSS FeedBurner widget, Tag Clouds, Facebook like, Twitter Tweets etc. Though these are small tools, they play an important role in promoting the blog as well as enabling it to earn profit.

3). Plugins
Plugins are handy tools that are used to enhance the functionality of your blog. Without plugins, it would be difficult to control spam, view site statistics, or even get search engines to index the blog. There may be thousands of plugins for installation and if you are an expert, you can even create your own plugins through special plugin creator software.

There are default plugins available in WordPress. All you have to do is put in a particular plugin name and install in instantly. Use important plugins such as Aksimet (spam guard), Google Analytics (site views) and XML sitemap (for search engines to index site) for enhancing blog functionality. Check out some of the top plugins for wordpress blogs.

Once you have a strong command on these three important features, you are all set to earn profits through blogging and efficient SEO practices.

If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Image Credit: Titanas

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30 comments

Brian January 26, 2011 - 1:10 pm
I'm still confused by the difference between widgets and plugins. Would you explain that a little more? Thanks.
Arkadij January 27, 2011 - 8:14 am
Hi, Brian to put it simple, plugins are what you install for your WP optimization - backing up plugins, SEO plugins, anti-spam (e.g. captcha) plugins, etc. Widgets are usually also installed as plugins but they serve different purposes - they let you make your blog more informative and good-looking and let you promote your social media accounts (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).
iphone 5 February 9, 2011 - 4:53 am
plugins make things better and easy for you... while widgets do the same for your readers and hence you
Garen @ Get Backlinks January 26, 2011 - 1:42 pm
Remember when you switch themes to make sure their are no 404 errors or anything. Also, bear in mind how long it takes to load your Wordpress blog.
Car Rental January 26, 2011 - 2:07 pm
I think the more scripts we keep adding on wordpress the more time it takes to load. e.g. The other day one of my friend added thumnails handler script to show thumbnails for each posts. I think his site is bit slow now.
Alex@Jocuri January 26, 2011 - 3:24 pm
Themes are a great part of your blog and should definitely be a feature you know about. Usually the first things visitors see will be your them and if it's not appealing or you broke it just because you didn't know how to use this feature of wordpress they might bounce as fast as they arrived. Not to mention that having the default theme will definitely scream abandoned blog or not updated blog. Plugins are a must on every wp, mastering the combination of right plugins can help loads and may even make some tasks that took a long time in a snap.
FirstHosting January 26, 2011 - 3:58 pm
plugins and themes are really important, as you just stated that theme every line need to be coded carefully, I really agree on this point because it can simply ruin your site ranking if its not coded well, and plugins problems may also be there.
Fourpxdirectory January 27, 2011 - 6:51 am
WordPress has been moving more and more away from being a basic blogging platform and into being a full-fledged CMS.
Arkadij January 27, 2011 - 8:21 am
A very nice article it is! The phrase I loved best is: "the admin has to understand the power of a WordPress blog". WP is a really powerful tool, so you should act accordingly while administering it - you should remember that it's resource intensive, but easy-to-optimize though; you should use its customizability to make your blog unique and finally you should be open for suggestions of more experienced WP users or your server admins. This will help you create a powerful good-looking blog.
Nitin @ virtual assistant February 1, 2011 - 5:21 am
@Arkadij..thanks.. most people still take WP to be a simple blogging platform that it once was. I find it an amazingly powerful CMS that can be utilized in anyway.
Arkadij February 1, 2011 - 10:26 am
It really is! Last summer I made a review of websites of different types (not only blogs) created under WP. You may find it here: http://svhostingblog.com/varieties-of-wordpress-software-use
d3so January 28, 2011 - 1:05 am
Those are definitely core aspects of wordpress. How you use those effectively will also dictate how successful and attractive your blog will be.
Software Development Company January 28, 2011 - 4:26 am
Wordpress is really best platform for blogging, there are many helpful wordpress plugins and widgets available online.
semmy @ Make Money Online February 7, 2011 - 11:51 am
yes I agree with you, it's easy to used and there is lot of plugins that help us to optimize our blog.
Sarah Harris January 28, 2011 - 10:56 am
I first started on the .wordpress site. The feature that made me want to move to my own domain with Wordpress was the plugins. There are so many great plugins that really help enhance the site and its accessibility for visitors. That's a reason alone to use Wordpress. It makes things so simple for people who don't know anything about web design or code.
Seo company Kanpur January 28, 2011 - 11:11 am
That's really a list of some of the features that come standard with WordPress her.it is really a good advice. Thanks Raj..........!
Kirsty January 29, 2011 - 8:21 pm
I like the wordpress tshirt and how I wish I can have those too. Kidding aside, I really to know more about plugins. In this way I can enhance the functionality of your blog and control the spam comments.
Graphic Design Budapest January 30, 2011 - 11:00 am
Yes it all makes sense when someone spells it out so simply!. And yes, sign me up for a T-shirt too ... nice crisp design.
Jasmine January 31, 2011 - 12:48 pm
Good explanation on WordPress. Simple, but easy to understand.
Nitin @ virtual assistant February 1, 2011 - 5:10 am
Thanks guys, I am really happy to know you liked the article. I was a bit worried that this article might be a bit too basic. I am glad it helped.
eCommerce Features February 1, 2011 - 5:15 am
I know all these three features, I have also used some plugins like facebook share and twitter share to my blog.
Property Marbella February 3, 2011 - 2:47 am
Hi Nitin, Good article, you did get more or less everything important in it. The only thing you forget was the plugins; All in One SEO Pack or Platinum SEO, you must have one of them for a really successful blog.
used tires February 3, 2011 - 4:42 pm
Noticed an error, when I click on the image, it leads to a "Page not found". -Jean
windows 8 February 7, 2011 - 3:27 pm
Rightly said : Theme, Plugins , Widgets.. Like 3 basic amenities of life. :D These are for wordpress blog...
dedicated cpanel February 8, 2011 - 8:02 pm
These are all important things to make sure you are doing correctly, another thing that can help with slow loading sites is using a cache plugin.
Arkadij February 9, 2011 - 9:09 am
WP is very customizable and you can optimize its modules and plug-ins really tight to increase loading speed, but sometimes it just needs a more powerful hosting solution. A VPS, for instance.
p90x February 12, 2011 - 3:07 pm
I do not use widgets so much but the theme really is the face of your business so it is very important. And of course there are many plugins that can make or break your site. - Robert
Fazal Mayar @ Make Money Online February 13, 2011 - 5:59 pm
great stuff Nitin. I think you should use a premium Wordpress theme to make your blog professional, it's also pretty easy to customize it.
hcg drops reviews August 23, 2011 - 11:17 am
Thanks for the very good information. So far I’ve had mixed results with networks. Have one site it is working great on and another site where it takes all the information and says it created the site, sends out the email messages but no site gets created. checked permissions on the blogs.dir and all looks good.
Tina Pierce January 3, 2012 - 8:51 am
Awesome post Nitin! Thanks for sharing this information. Wordpress is a great platform for your website and its easy to configure. Many have been using this platform due to the fact that it is easy to customize and use by non technical people. Cheers! and Happy New Year everyone! Tina Virtual Assistant
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