WordPress is a free and widely used open-source Content Management System. It is the top website used for blogging and ranks 41st on the Alexa Top 100 websites. WordPress is used for business and personal purposes alike. Beginners on WordPress have a lot of questions on the know-hows of WordPress. Here, we bring you the 10 most commonly asked questions asked by WordPress Beginners.
Why should I choose WordPress?
WordPress is the easiest to use Content Management System. You and your team need little to none knowledge of HTML/CSS to manage your website. It’s the go-to choice for organizations that need to update their info continually but don’t want to hire a developer. It is super easy to customize as there are thousands of themes to choose from. It is search engine friendly and you can use it from small scale purposes to business applications.
What are the major features of WordPress?
WordPress offers numerous features in functionality, these being the most important ones:
- simple interface and template driven design
- custom themes (free and paid)
- posts’ previews and scheduling
- multipage posts
- multi user and multi blogging
- spell check
- auto save
- various sidebar widgets
- password protection
- integrated stats tracker
- extensive APIs
- enhanced plugins with advance options
- spam protection
- automatic ping
- multi-site technology
- dynamic page generation, etc.
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
Being a WordPress user, the biggest difference ought to be the differences in ease of access. WordPress.com makes it very easy for a novice user to manage their website as it handles all the technical stuff and all the user needs to take care of is their website content.
WordPress.org, contrarily, is more preferred by professionals and experts. It is the official community and main website that offers downloads, support forums and documentation. It provides platform to get involved in developing WordPress.
Is WordPress secure enough?
WordPress Core is a very secure system. If any problems are found, they are quickly dealt with. It’s the Plugins and themes that aren’t always secure. It’s important to keep these up-to-date or remove them if necessary.
It is up to you to make your website strong and secure it from hacking and other threats. You might as well consider regular backups, so you don’t lose all your hard work.
Is WordPress search-engine friendly?
Some work is required, but Yes. You can optimize your site to be search engines friendly. Here are some of the most effective methods you can try:
- Optimize the permalinks
- Select suitable keywords
- Optimize the post title
- Complete the post description
- Submit the website to search engines
- Build valuable links
How to Backup WordPress Sites?
You can choose to back up a whole website, or you can just back up the database. You can do this fairly easily from the Tools options at the backend menu and clicking on Export. Similarly, you can also make things easier and use a plugin.
Can I promote my WordPress site through Social Network?
Yes. Since these days social media is very popular and still rising, you can use them to promote your WordPress website. Create a brand page on Facebook or Google+, add a floating social share bar on your site, create a custom Twitter widget; or even you can do social media optimization with WordPress SEO. The themes available also have social icons preinstalled. So you can also make use of them.
Is it possible to turn my WordPress website into an online store?
Of course you can. Use the ecommerce Plugin to your WordPress functionality, make the necessary changes you deem necessary, and Voila! Your online store is ready. Alternatively, download a theme that is ecommerce ready. Simplifies thing by just a bit.
My site is slow. How can I speed it up?
Speed of a WordPress site has a big effect on the user experience. To speed up your WordPress site, you can do several things:
- Add a caching plug-in. The most popular caching plugin is W3 Total Cache, the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin.
- Use a Content Delivery Network provider. CDN is a network of servers that deliver cached static content from websites to users.
- Choose a better hosting service. Hosting performance impacts website speed greatly. To keep your WordPress site fast, pick a high performance WordPress hosting provider.
How many plugins I can install on my WordPress website?
You are free to install as many Plugins as you want. Too many plugins or even a few poorly coded plugins can greatly slow your site down, though. So it is important that you install plugins correctly and remember to disable or uninstall the plugins that you don’t use.
We tried addressing some of the most frequently asked questions by WordPress beginners in this article. Hope this helps you understand WordPress better and guides you through those initial days of being a newbie at WordPress-ing. Your comments or suggestions are much welcomed.