101 WordPress Tips{Must Read} Part4.

76) Add basic website pages

It might seem weird on a blogging system, but you need to add the famous website-specific pages. You’re not the only content provider on the internet – far from it. So you need to entice people – make an FAQ page, an About page, a Contact page and a Help page.

77) Text? That’s so last century

Even with today’s technologies and customization abilities, and the ability to embed almost anything, you’re still blocked by one big hindrance – text. You need to make your website available as an audio as well – there are plenty of plugins that do that, or you can narrate your articles yourself.

78) Assist people with bad eyesight

You don’t want to alienate a certain portion of your readership or potential readership. There are a lot of people with eyesight problems – all over the world. You can help them by installing a plugin that reads to them what they wrote as they write it. E.g. FlameReader.

79) Keep your site up-to-date – even the comments

You want to attract people to your newer timely blog posts – you want to center the attention and the discussion to that place. One way of doing that is by disabling the ability to comment on old posts. Sometimes a post achieved all it could achieve comment-wise, and it’s time to let go.

80) Don’t overdue it

You want targeted traffic – not all of the traffic. Targeted traffic will stay longer and will be more beneficial in the long run. If you post on various subjects, separate them into several blogs based on categories. Also never mix two languages unless you’re teaching them using your blog.

81) Focus everything in your admin area

You can use several plugins which allow you to administrate your blog from the admin area. Keeping it centralized helps clear the clutter and keeps things organized. You will be able to respond to all the comments from the admin area, instead of visiting each and every post and commenting there.

82) Use shortcuts and macros to automate things

You can use macros – prerecorded actions, and keyboard shortcuts in order to shorten the time it takes you to perform a certain action. Some things require attention, but not YOUR attention. Why spend time on the mundane day to day actions such as advertising posts and adding permalinks when you can do it automatically?

83) Mass edit

Instead of editing posts individually you can mass edit your articles – from within WordPress. You can also use macros for that. Do you want to change publication dates? Tags? Well, now you can. It will help you make the site dynamic and timely, and increase the potential of each and every post.

84) Use desktop blogging clients

Desktop blogging clients come in various shapes and forms. Some are online, some for the desktop and some for a mobile phone. They offer you various interfaces and the ability to blog quickly without having to load up the blog. It will save you time and help you be the first to blog about breaking news.

85) Have a terms of service page. Set the tone

You want to attract a certain type of person to your blog, and you want the others to stay away. If you’ll start censoring people based on what they feel is a whim, you will get a bad reputation. You need to have clear do-s and don’t-s.

86) Add content. Don’t just cover content.

Websites that repost things or that just cover certain content are a dime a dozen. You don’t want to just be another one in a pack – invisible. You want people to be drawn to your website, even when you don’t update. You need to create exclusive content – like games, quizzes, etc.

87) Have a weekly or monthly summary

Some people don’t find the time to read blogs until the weekend. You need to cater to those people – you also need to cater to the people

who aren’t interested in reading a long post. Summarize your blog posts or the events you talked about at the end of the week or month.

88) Shorten your actual URLs

Sometimes WordPress – in order to be descriptive – gives blog posts long URLs that resemble a file’s location – in a directory that is in a directory, and so on. You can use plugins that will shorten your URLs and make them more memorable – making them easier to share or to go back to.

89) Don’t rely on WordPress – edit your meta-data tags

Your meta-data tags are a descriptive way in which you can attract certain users and readers. But meta-data is generated automatically or not at all. Search engine bots will see that information – you need to optimize it in order to achieve targeted traffic. You can do that by editing code or by using a plugin.

90) Organize your blog, so that a web crawler will scan it more easily

You want to get as much traffic as possible – preferably targeted traffic. To do that you need to take care of the clutter in your website, you need to organize posts by categories, you need to link posts that talk about similar subject together. “Pave” the way for the web crawler.

91) Give as little information about your system as possible

By leaving standard information in your blog and in the WordPress code, you are leaving an easy opening for an attack. People search for certain strings and once they find them, they search for certain holes and exploits. They are relentless in their attempts to harm blogs and websites. Don’t give them that pleasure.

92) Protect your website

You want to keep some data secure – you want to be the only one that can see it, or you want only you and a certain select few to be able to view it. To avoid content leaks or exploitation you need to lock down certain folders – change their properties.

93) Keep your privileged members area confidential

You need to keep the content you keep in your privileged-members-only area confidential. You don’t want regular users finding it just because you forgot to add a small text file to your blog – the robots.txt file. There you need to specify to every web crawler what NOT to read/search.

94) Use thumbnails instead of full pictures

Do you take pictures and when you post them in your blog you resize them? Why? Do you know that the entire high-resolution picture is loaded? If you’re going to resize your photos, why not do it before uploading them to your blog? The readers will have less to download, making your website download faster.

95) Avoid HTML, BBCode and other scripting languages in your comments

If you’re trying to have a certain look or design in your blog, or even if you want to avoid security holes, you need to disable scripting languages in the comments – as much as possible. It will also prevent people from abusing your blog for self promotion and attention.

96) Create a mobile version for your blog

Nowadays when people are always on the go they want to have the ability to read your blog in small chunks, whenever and wherever. You need to accommodate that need – think about using a software to automatically create a WAP website for mobile phones. Maybe just a bare bones one.

97) If you’re using adverts, don’t place them between the comments

For advertising people that placement might seem ideal – it sometimes looks like a real comment, it can’t be avoided, it is in a location that people often read, etc. But those traits are the same ones that will drive people far away from your blog. Avoid obtrusive advertising.

98) Customize your error pages

When users encounter an error you don’t want to present them with a generic text – especially if it’s very long and filled with tech-speak. Customize your error pages with friendly “Don’t Panic” style messages, with links that point to additional help – either FAQs or e-mail addresses.

99) Protect your data against direct linking

By directly linking to photos and other content that you created, people can use them without having to host or create them. That way you are left with the burden of traffic from people that never reach your website. People basically hijack your attractive features and steal the attention you deserve.

100) Use your RSS feed

Don’t just let your software automatically generate your RSS feed. Use it to give people updates and recommendations regarding other blog posts you have – things you won’t be able to post in your regular blog, because they would clog it up. Use your space wisely.