WordPress for Beginners » Beginners Guide

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic)

Editorial Staff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:09:44 +0000

When starting a blog, this question comes to the mind of every blogger. Which blogging platform is the best? Which one should they use? If you are on WPBeginner, you will see us recommending everyone to use Self Hosted WordPress.org platform. But many users think that our views are biased, therefore we asked Darren Rowse from Problogger for his permission to use the data from the poll he ran on his site.

We took the results from Darren’s Poll about What Blog Platform Do You Use? and displayed it in our infographic to present a more convincing argument. As of now, there are a total of 3476 bloggers who participated in this poll, and you can see the results in our Infograph.

WordPress.org got the majority of the votes and WordPress.com was on third place in user choice. If you need help distinguishing between the two platforms see our infograph about Self Hosted WordPress vs. Free WordPress.com.

Our pick in the Best Platform is ofcourse WordPress.org, and we have mentioned a few reasons why you should use WordPress. But if the reasons in the infographic is not enough for you, then you should check out our fully detailed post about Why You Should Use WordPress.

Feel free to post a comment below about which platform do you use, and why you use it.

Once again, all thanks goes to Darren Rowse of Problogger for letting us use his data to create this interactive graphic for our users.

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use? (Infographic) is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners

Editorial Staff — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:27:50 +0000

WP Super Cache is one of the must have plugins for every WordPress site. A lot of our users asked us to do a tutorial that shows how to setup WP Super Cache plugin step by step. Because we have this plugin included in our Recommended WordPress Plugins list, we think that it is necessary for us to show everyone how to take advantage of this extremely useful plugin.

This plugin makes a copy of your web page on the server and by doing so it speeds up page load time and reduces the resource consumption. It is essential that you have this plugin just incase if your site hits the Front Page of a social media network such as digg or stumbleupon, without this plugin, your server will most likely crash.

What we will be doing in this tutorial?

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WP Super Cache Plugin. Then we will walk you through the process of setting it up which will include updating the .htaccess files and selecting the right settings. Many beginners are afraid to install this plugin because it is a some what complicated setup. But we assure you that after reading this guide, you will feel very comfortable installing this plugin on more than one site.

1. Installing WP Super Cache

We will use the built-in plugin installer to install the plugin. So you should login to your WP-Admin Panel. Click on the Plugin Tabs » Add New. Then type the plugin name “WP Super Cache”.

You will see the results. It will most likely be the first plugin on the list. It is created by Donncha O Caoimh. Click on the Install link. You will see a screen like below. Click on Install Plugin and then Activate the Plugin.

2. Setup Permalinks

A custom url or permalink structure is required for this plugin to work correctly. We recommend that you change your permalinks anyways to make it more SEO Friendly. Follow our tutorial – SEO Friendly URL Structure for WordPress.

3. Turn WP Super Cache On

You will need to visit Settings » WP Super Cache page, and turn it on.

4. Update .htaccess

After you turn WP Super Cache on as shown in Step 3, you need to scroll down on the WP Super Cache option page screen until you see the Mod Rewrite Rules Section. It looks like this:

Then scroll down a little bit more and click on Update Now

You will be able to update this only if your web host has correct folder/file permissions setup. If you are using any of our recommended web hosts for WordPress, then you should be able to do this without any problem.

Once you have finished all these 4 steps, WP Super Cache is setup completely for your site.

If you have any other issues or need additional help feel free to post your questions in the comments below. But before you do that make sure that you have read through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about this plugin.

How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. Free WordPress.com [Infograph]

Editorial Staff — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:50:07 +0000

When starting out as a beginner, this question comes in everyone’s mind. Which one is better? Is it better to pick the Self Hosted WordPress.org, or is it better to go with Free WordPress.com? In this article we provide you with an infographic that compares both options side by side with list of pros and cons. We also tell you in the end which one is our pick. Click on the image to see the full version of the Infograph.

We hoped you like the infograph. If you liked it, make sure you share it on Twitter, Facebook, or any other site that you like (ofcourse with a credits link back to WPBeginner – preferably this article).

Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. Free WordPress.com [Infograph] is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Make Sticky Posts in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:05 +0000

We have written about how to display recent sticky posts in WordPress, but we never covered how to make sticky posts which was our shortcoming because one of our users asked us this question. Making Sticky Posts in WordPress is really easy.

First you would need to login to your WP-Admin Panel, and open up the post page. Look towards the right hand sidebar where you will see a Publish box. Look at the (Visibility: Public) field and click edit. Check the box to make the post Sticky and publish it. If you want to make an older post sticky, follow the same steps and just click save.

How to Make Sticky Posts in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Reset a WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin

Editorial Staff — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:58:08 +0000

Knowing how to reset your WordPress password from phpMyAdmin is one of the essential things you should know about because for some reason if your site is hacked, or something else, you are no longer able to login to your admin panel using the login information, and you are not able to reset the password via email, this method can be very useful. We have helped three users with the same issue therefore we have decided to do this writeup.

Every WordPress blog uses a MySQL Database which can be accessed through your phpMyAdmin even if you are not using cPanel hosting. Follow the following steps to reset your WordPress password:

Step 1 – Identify the Name of your Database

It is always good to know the name of your WordPress Database. Sometimes you might be running multiple installations within the same database, then you will need to know exactly where to look for to reset the password. The best place to look is your wp-config.php file which is located in your root WordPress Directory. In there you will find the name of your database.

Step 2 – Locating Database and Editing the Fields

In your cPanel or other admin panel, you will need to access your MySQL database and then browse it via phpMyAdmin.

Once you are in phpMyAdmin, you will need to select the correct database on the left hand side. Look for the name that you found in your wp-config.php and click on that. You will see a list of tables with a prefix wp_ for the most part.

If you changed your prefix during installation, then you would be looking for that specific prefix “for ex: wp673_”.

You will look for the table wp_users, click on it and then click on the Browse Tab.

Click on the Pencil (Edit) Icon to reset your Password.

Now you will see a field that looks like this:

Edit the user_pass field value. You will notice that there are a lot of random characters in the password field. Due to security reasons, WordPress stores the passwords as MD5 Hash rather than Plain text.

This means that you will not be able to enter plain text as the password. You would need to use one of the MD5 generators online to generate your password.

Recommended Tool: JavaScript MD5

Simply type your password in that tool and generate MD5 results. Copy and paste the code you get from the converter into your phpMyAdmin field and click Go to save changes.

You have now successfully changed your WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin.

How to Reset a WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Setting up and Managing Professional Email Addresses with Gmail

Editorial Staff — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:15:33 +0000

As you all know that one of the services we provide is our Free WordPress Blog Setup. In this service, we setup professional emails for our clients. Well in this tutorial we will show you how you can manage your professional emails efficiently using Gmail.

What is a Professional email?

A professional email is the one that has your business name in it. For example support@wpbeginner.com is a professional email rather having xxx@gmail.com. But when you have a professional email, it is with your webhost. It is true that you can use Outlook or other desktop software to manage those emails, but when you are remote those options are not so viable. That is when Gmail comes in handy. You can simply receive and reply to all of your professional emails from your gmail account and work with a interface that is much more friendly than some of the cPanel interfaces like Horde and Squirrel Mail.

Setting up a Professional Email in cPanel

Because all of our partner web hosts use cPanel, we will be showing a way on how to setup a professional email using the cPanel.

First, login to your cPanel and then click on Email Accounts:

Once you click on this screen, you will see a page with a form to create a new email account.

Once you have setup your email account. You can login to it using the following url: http://yoursite.com:2095/ (where username will be your email address and your password will be the one that you selected). So in our case the username will be: yournamehere@wpbeginner.com

Then you will see a screen like the one shown below. Click on Forwarding Options:

You will see a button that says Add Forwarder. Enter the gmail email where it will be forwarded to and click on add forwarder. So in our case, the gmail email would be yournamehere@gmail.com.

Basically this will forward all emails sent to your professional email to your gmail email. But you are still not done. Because in order for you to reply to that email from your professional email, you would have to login to your professional email. Well that is when this feature in Gmail comes in handy.

Enabling the Gmail Feature

The Gmail feature will allow you to reply to your professional emails from your professional email address while still using Gmail. First login to your gmail account. Then in the top right hand corner, click Settings. You should now see a page like this:

Make sure you click on the tab called Accounts and Imports. There you will see an option that says “Send mail as”. You want to make sure you select the right option for this choice, “When receiving a message”.

You want to make sure that it is selected to “Reply from the same address the message was sent to”. Also make sure that you have that address added. To do so click on the button that says Send mail from another address. Once you click on that, it will pop-up a new screen where you will enter your details. Gmail will send you a verification and then you are all setup.

This feature is excellent for personal blogs. Users who do not want to share their personal email, but still want to manage the emails easily using Gmail.

Setting up and Managing Professional Email Addresses with Gmail is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Hidden Secret Options Panel within your WordPress Admin Panel

Editorial Staff — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:54:30 +0000

This is one of the cool little secrets that you should know about. WordPress has a Master Options Panel in the admin panel which is hidden. This page has a combination of all of your settings for your blog, and it is something that you should not mess with. Nevertheless you should still know about it because it is cool.

In your blog URL add the following:

http://yourblog.com/wp-admin/options.php

Now you should be able to see a master panel with all settings. There is not a whole lot use for this panel, but the fact that it is there and you know about it is what matters. It might come handy some days who knows.

Hidden Secret Options Panel within your WordPress Admin Panel is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Ultimate Guide to Upgrade WordPress for Beginners [Infograph]

Editorial Staff — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:48:47 +0000

Having the most up to date version of WordPress is crucial for your blog’s security. WordPress blog went to extreme measures on emphasizing the point that users must upgrade their blog for security reasons. For this article we have created an infograph featuring a research that Syed has conducted over the past two years with hacked WordPress blogs. This infograph also shows a step by step guide to upgrade WordPress.

Many people feel hesitant to upgrade because the plugins will break and the site might not function well. But is it better to fix the small problem, or is it better to get your site hacked, then restore everything, and upgrade and fix everything later. It is best if you take the first route as it will be easier and time saving.

Click on the Image to see the full chart.

This should be your reference guide at all times when making an upgrade to your WordPress blog. We must emphasize that it is extremely crucial that you stay up to date with the latest version.

While this is not the only step to increase security, this is certainly one of the most important ones. If you want to see how else you can protect your WordPress blog, check out our WordPress security post.

A lot of people do not pay attention to plugin upgrades, but Plugins can play a huge factor in your blog’s security. Each time a developer releases an update, they also post a bug fix report. A lot of times, they mention some of the security loopholes they fixed. Now when the hacker sees that you are using an older version of a plugin, they already know how to break your site. Don’t make their job easy. Upgrade now.

If you need any assistance in upgrading your WordPress blog, WPBeginner is glad to help out for a small fee. If you are having any other issue, do not post in the comment. It is best to email us using the contact form.

If you have any suggestions for new users who are upgrading their WordPress blog, please post it in the comment area.

Credit:

While we had plans to release this in advance, the steps in the flow chart were inspired from Kuzzuk Sabba and used with his permission.

Ultimate Guide to Upgrade WordPress for Beginners [Infograph] is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

12 Vital Tips and Tools to Combat Comment Spam in WordPress

Editorial Staff — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:12:44 +0000

Comment Spam is a big issue that you will face as your blog begins to gain popularity in the industry. You will see comments full of pornography, viagra, or other spammy links in massive counts. Also, you will see fake spammy sites making you think they are linking to your article by sending a trackback. In this article we share some of the most valuable tips, tools, tricks, and other WordPress plugins available for you to combat Comment Spam. If you don’t utilize the options we suggest, you will spend hours moderating the comments on your site.

1. Activate Akismet

Akismet is one of the most valuable plugins for WordPress. You do not need to download it as it comes pre-installed with all WordPress installation. But you do need to activate it and get an API key. You can find out more about Akismet in our Akismet 101 Guide for WordPress Beginners. Without this, you have no chance against SPAM. Akismet does a great job in catching SPAM comments. Although sometimes good comments get filtered as SPAM, but you can always recover them by going through your SPAM comments regularly.

2. Nofollow Comment Links

One of the main reasons that motivates Spammers to make comments on your site is if you have Do-Follow links. They want to gain link juice from your website, but you can prevent that by simply nofollowing all comment links. By default WordPress adds an external nofollow attribute to all blog links, but sometimes users might take the route of making every link Dofollow in a quest to get more comments. Remember it is about quality not quantity. We recommend if you are using Dofollow get rid of that. If you do not have a plugin of that sort, then this step is not for you.

3. Blacklist Spammers

WordPress allows you to blacklist spammers by using their email addresses, URL, name, or even IP. All you need to do is type one of the information in the blacklist box under Settings ~ Discussion tab, and you will never see the comment again in moderation.

Sometimes you are not sure whether a person is a spammer, so you approve their comment. But you are not satisfied. There is a box which you can see right above the blacklist box called comment moderation. Just put the words, email, URL, name, or IP and this specific user’s comment will always be moderated by the administrator. Also as you see in the image above, there is a box that has the number 2. It is for the number of URLs in the comment allowed. If the number exceeds the value in that input box, then the comment will automatically be held for moderation. 2 is the default number, but you can change it to make it 1 or higher than 2 to fit your need.

Note: Choose your Blacklist wisely because every IP, word, or other value that you put in will be deleted instantly.

4. Add Captcha Verfication

You can use a plugin called SI CAPTCHA for WordPress to display randomly generated images before the submit button on comments. Your users must enter the correct value on the image, to submit the comment which will eliminate SPAM significantly. But it will annoy your regular commentators as well because this is something that they have to enter each and everytime they comment. This method will significantly reduce your SPAM comments.

5. Defenio

Defensio is like an automated bow and arrow that is bound to hit the bull’s eye everytime in your fight against spam. Defensio have your comment traffic route through it’s system where it analyzes each comment for the level of spam, and assigns a grade. If the grade is of an adequate value then the comment is published, if the comment seems suspicious it will be held for your review. Defensio provides you with good stats and gives you RSS Feed for both good and spam comments.

6. Simple Trackback Validation

Simple Trackback Validation Plugin for WordPress 2.x performs simple but very effective tests on all incoming trackbacks in order to stop trackback spam. When a trackback is received, this plugin checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to. This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers. It also retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.

7. Completely Disable Trackbacks

A big portion of comment SPAM is trackbacks. For some blogs it is not even necessary to have trackbacks. You can choose to disable trackbacks on your entire blog, or in an individual post. This can prevent comment SPAM and it is very easy to do so.

You can find the above option by visiting Settings ~ Discussion. This will turn off trackbacks for your entire site. But if you want to turn off trackbacks on specific posts, you will need to specify it either when writing a post, or edit a post and change this option.

You will see the above option your posts page.

8. Less Annoying Version of Captcha?

Yes as you can see we mentioned a Captcha option above, but here is another way of user validation. This method is less annoying for users and it is a good way to prevent SPAM. This is done by a plugin called Math Comment SPAM Protection. This plugin do require you to edit comments.php in order to install it. Read full installation details on official site.

9. Bad Behavior

Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers. Bad Behavior also transcends other link spam solutions by working in a completely different, unique way. Instead of merely looking at the content of potential spam, Bad Behavior analyzes the delivery method as well as the software the spammer is using. In this way, Bad Behavior can stop spam attacks even when nobody has ever seen the particular spam before. Bad Behavior is designed to work alongside existing spam prevention services to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. Whenever possible, you should run it in combination with a more traditional spam prevention service. This plugin is recommended to be installed alongside with Akismet to produce the best result.

10. Close Comments on Older Posts

Sometimes it is wise to close comments on older posts. WordPress has this as a built-in feature where you can specify a number of days and WordPress will automatically close the comments on articles older than this many days. All you have to do is go to Settings ~ Discussion and check this box

Just change the number of days to fit your needs and save changes.

11. CLOSE Comments or User Registration

Worst come worst, you can close comments for a short period of time. That will drive the spammers away from your website. If you are building a custom site using WordPress, you should have disabled comments long ago. All you have to do is go to Settings ~ Discussion

You can do this for a short period of time, a week or two, and then reopen it if it gets really bad, but it should not get that bad if you use the techniques mentioned above.

You can also make comments for registered users only by checking the box in your Settings ~ Discussion page.

Other Tips

One of the other ways that is not SPAM but it is frustrating is duplicate comments. Sometimes users post double comments, if you do not let them know that their comments are in the moderation que. Most themes already have this option by default, but if your theme does not, find the following line in your comments.php

" />

and replace it with:

Comment moderation is in use. Please do not submit your comment twice — it will appear shortly.

" />

Feel free to edit the styling and the text.

Frequently Asked Questions by Users

Why are they spamming me?

They want to get a better pagerank. They think that by spamming they can get more links and it will some how positively affect their pagerank. It is nothing personal against you for the most part, and many blogs face this issue, you are not the only one.

What happens to comments that are marked as “Spam”?

The comments that you mark as spam, are not displayed and are listed on a separate page when you have Akismet installed. You can delete Spammed comments in batch and/or recover good comments from the SPAM list.

Why is every comment going into the moderation queue?

Go to the Settings ~ Discussion panel and make sure that “An administrator must approve the comment” is unchecked. With that option selected, all comments are sent to the moderation queue to await approval. Make sure that Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than x links is not blank and contains a number higher than zero.

We hope that these tools helped. What are some techniques that you use to fight spam on your blogs. If you have something that might help others, feel free to help fellow bloggers.

12 Vital Tips and Tools to Combat Comment Spam in WordPress is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

How to Add a New Post in WordPress and Utilize all the Features

Editorial Staff — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:25:56 +0000

This is another addition to our Beginners guide. Even though adding a new post is very easy and self-explanatory in WordPress, we want to highlight every feature there is, so you are not lost or nervous when you are writing your first post. We have worked with numerous clients in the past and often they might have a nervous feeling that they might mess things up because they did not know what they are doing. This article will help you through out writing your first post. We will mention features that often go unnoticed on add a new post page. This should be your reference guide for adding a new post and utilizing all the features.

This is what our writing panel look like. Now some of yours might not look like this because you have rich text editor enabled, which we suggest you get rid of because it can cause future errors such as alignment, messing up the formatting of your post and more. We have already written an article about how to remove visual editor mode from WordPress. Do not freak out thinking without the visual editor, you would have to do everything in HTML. WordPress automatically understands line break, you have image tag, quote tags, and more feature on this normal toolbar as well. You will probably never use half of the features on the visual editor anyways.

Now you have the title field which is pretty obvious at the top. Right below the title field, you see a Permalink structure that will let you modify the URLs and change things around. Considering you are using the SEO Friendly URLs for WordPress. You can switch keywords to make it fit your needs. There is also a word count feature that you can see. But the most robust feature is that Upload/Insert area right below the Permalink structure. All you see in the above screenshot is a few buttons, when you click on them something like this will appear.

Now as you can see, we have combined two tabs together in the image, but they do not appear right below each other. You would have to click on From URL tab to see the bottom version. But it is just that easy to insert an image with WordPress. You can either upload it from your computer, or you can simply use the one that you have already uploaded on the web. Always remember if you are using an image from flickr that was not uploaded by you, please give credit to the individual. We only displayed how to add an image, but adding video, and music follows the same procedure therefore we will not be posting screenshots of those.

You can definitely view the post before you publish it, and we recommend that you do so to make sure that everything looks ok. There different post status that you can select but before publishing there are only two options available. One is called Draft, and the other is called Pending Review. Pending Review option is for your blog users with a contributor role. They can contribute to your blog, but all their articles must be approved by an administrator before they can be published.

Another option is you will see is called Visibility. By default this option is set to public, but you have other options to make the post private. You can make certain posts password-protected, so only users with the password can see the post. When you click on the Password protected radio button, another field will pop up where you can insert the password. When a user sees the post, it will say the post is password protected, and it will ask them to enter the password.

Another option is called Private which will keep your posts private from all public users, and only admins and registered users can view those posts. Now you must remember, that password-protected and private posts can be seen by other registered users on your site, therefore it is not really private for them.

If your theme supports the sticky post option, you can check the “stick this post on the front page” box and it will make that post appear at the top of all other posts for as long as you want. This really helps when you are running a contest on your website or something of that sort.

Last, but certainly not the least on the publish bar is the option to schedule your post. Sometimes new user might wake up as early as 5:30 a.m in the morning to publish a post because that is when they want it go live to their audience. You do not have to get up at 5:30 a.m, all you have to do is schedule a post. You do not even have to be online if you are on a vacation. You can schedule posts for as many days as you want as long as you have the articles pre-written.

Now some users might have complained in the past that schedule a post does not work because it did not post the article on the right time for them. That was because they did not set the right time zone. You can live in Eastern Standard Timezone, and your blog can be in Pacific Standard Time Zone. There is no possible way for the blog to know which timezone you are in, unless you modify the settings. It is really easy to set the correct timezone on your blog. All you need to do is visit your Settings Tab and click General. Scroll down to where you see Timezones and change the settings.

Remember it shows what time it is in each timezone if you select it. This system does not adjust to Daylight Savings, so you must adjust the WordPress clock as well. You should probably do this if you want the accurate date and time to be post stamped for your post as well if you are displaying those details with your posts as some themes do.

Because there is no AM and PM option, you must enter the time in Military Format. As soon as you change the date and time, the publish button will change into being a Schedule button. Once done writing the post, simply click schedule and the post will be scheduled to be published on a specific date and time.

Excerpts is another feature that is great to utilize when writing a post in WordPress. As you see when you view our categories such as Showcase, you will notice that you are not seeing full articles, instead you are seeing custom written descriptions/summary of each article. That is what is called excerpts. Utilizing excerpts is an smart technique that many uses to increase pageviews on their site. Your visitor lands on the category page, and then click on additional page to read the post. It also avoids duplicate content to be created. This feature will only work if your theme is compatible with it. If you want to make your theme compatible by showing excerpts in your category page, simply open your index.php and replace

with

When writing a post in WordPress, you might end up using sites as a resource, or you might link to external articles as a reference. WordPress has a way of keeping track of that and it is called trackbacks. Most of the time if not all of the time, the system automatically detects each external link, and notify the other site that it is being cited. Therefore if the other site chooses, they can list your link as a trackback below their comments. But you may also enter URLs if you want to confirm that you send trackback to these specific links in the field shown in the image above.

Having an organized WordPress blog is essential to your blog’s success and growth. It is wise to assign your post a specific category, and add related tags to help your users navigate through sites. You can associate tags with a specific post which can help your user navigate your site with tags, or tag cloud if you have them. Blog Engines like technorati also looks at these tags when listing your post. To learn more about Categories check out our Beginners Guide on Categories and Subcategories.

Custom Fields by no mean is a beginner option, but we are adding it here because it is on your Add a New post page. It is better to inform the users rather than keeping them uninformed. You should not use it if you have no clue what you are doing. Custom fields are used to add extra objects to your post like Thumbnails, or an automatic digg button without editing codes in each post.

If you do not want to receive comments and trackback on an specific post, this option lets you turn it off. This is a very resourceful option when writing an announcement article because there is no reason for users to comment. But again, it is helpful if you allow users to comment because they do provide awesome feedback.

Now if you followed everything we have listed in this website, then you must have had the All in One SEO plugin that we recommended in our recommended WordPress plugin list. This is an excellent plugin to have because it lets you add a custom meta title, description, and keywords to your all your WordPress page. This is one of the most important thing you can do for your WordPress SEO. You will only see this option in your post page, if you have the plugin installed and activated.

There will be more options added to your page as you add more plugins. You can move each option around and change placement to fit your needs. All you have to do is simply drag and move each box with your mouse. So you can have Categories above tags, or whatever you really like.

If you do not use an option, you can simply mimize them by click on the grey bar which has their heading. Like we display in the image above, but there is also a way that you can completely hide it. You need to look in the top right hand corner, right below where it says Logout, you should see “Screen Options” Tab.

Select or unselect any option that you want to display. You can also select whether you want to display a one column, or two column layout. Try out settings and get a feel for it and then make your final decision.

We hope that this guide helped you in better understanding when writing a new post. If we missed out anything, please let us know in the comments if not feel free to pass this article to your new friends or colleagues who are learning WordPress.

How to Add a New Post in WordPress and Utilize all the Features is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.