Monthly Tips Archives

Easiest WordPress Tip of the Month EVER

Lynda.com offers lots of the beginner WordPress classes that are free of charge. Their learning format breaks training into smaller, digestible chunks to allow you to learn everything at your own pace. (Alternatively, you can also skip what you know and pick up a few classes on subjects you want to learn more about.)

There are many beginner classes that are free, and their monthly charge is pretty affordable if you want it all!

Also of note: Many of their training classes are now Closed Captioned for people who are hearing impaired or are otherwise unable to listen to the video. (Great for jedi-ninja-cubicle learning!)

The linked page should go to a WordPress search page on their site, but don't let that constrain you. If you have learning to do on many software or programming subjects, check out Lynda.com - you won't be disappointed.

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Lynda.com - search results "WordPress"

Is your WordPress database FAT?

Fat Car — (For the curious, click the photo to see more of this artist’s work, unrelated as it is to this article. Photo credit to the linked site.)

Is your WordPress database larger than it needs to be? Perhaps you’re moving to a new server and having trouble uploading the database because it’s too large?

WordPress Table Shortcode Builder

If you’re like me, you’ve probably needed to create nice looking tables for your WordPress hosted site but haven’t found a good shortcode for it. Well, today’s your lucky day (and mine)!

That’s because I found this post by Kevin Chard. However, I encountered results that weren’t quite favorable:

Variables not parsed - table contents

As you can see, it wasn’t parsing the variables at all. So, I made a few minor adjustments to his code.

Is your website sluggish? Here’s how you can help make it faster.

I’ve been contemplating what makes a great monthly tip – and consider some people are using WordPress.com for their website (and are unable to take advantage of any recommended plugins), I thought I’d make this month’s tip a more general tip that anyone with a website can take advantage of! Woo hoo! (Feel free to share this tip if you think others may benefit.)

Fonts. Who needs ’em?

You do!

Come a little closer, I promise not to bite. I’m going to let you in on a really big secret.

If you haven’t noticed – the hot trend for website design has been using unique fonts for a sometimes stunning effect.

Traditional graphic designers have been rejoicing breaking away from the standard boring set of web fonts and SEO experts have simultaneously been rejoicing the breaking away from the use of Flash (swf) or pixelated images to show stylized text.

Your complete site backup

Would you like to have the peace of mind to know your whole website is backed up?

It’s very easy to “set it and forget it”. Take a few moments to ensure your site is backed up and have the security to know you’re covered, should anything happen.*

The “too long; didn’t read” version

Would you like to exclude some pages from your site navigation?

Do you have a page that you don’t want to appear in the main navigation of your site? Often my clients will have email campaigns that they want to direct clients to a specific page of their site without having it appear in the navigation of the site. Or perhaps you have a “Thank you for subscribing to my Newsletter” page – which is also not necessary to show in the navigation.

Discover how easy it is to create your very own globally recognized avatar!

A colleague question has inspired this week’s tip:

How does a client select an avatar on WordPress, and get rid of that Mystery Man default?

Have you noticed some people have images associated with their blog and site comments? Not only are their comments more likely to be considered real and less likely to be spam, they’re more likely to be read and responded to, as well.

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