When it comes to CMSs (Content Management Systems) WordPress is by far the most popular one out there. A lot of people, working in wildly different positions, use this platform every day.
The reasons for the popularity of WordPress are numerous. They range from ease of use, relative affordability, and flexibility through themes, plugins, and other supporting elements, to a wide community which users can rely on for answers and tips.
Today we are going to provide a few great tips for people who deal with WordPress on a daily basis. These tips are here to help you manage common issues and keep your website running smoothly. Learning anything is a process that you should work to optimize so don’t lose motivation – keep grinding.
- Backups are a lifesaver
First things first, if you tinker with your WordPress site regularly, you need to have backups in place. The more things you change, the bigger the chances that something will go wrong. Since you’ll be deep into your edits when this happens, it might be hard to get everything back to its initial state.
Furthermore, hosting issues, security issues, updating issues – all of these can cause a website to stop working properly. If you can’t revert back to a previous state of the website that worked fine, you are going to be facing an undefined downtime. This is simply unacceptable.
- Keep frequently used code lines at hand
Even though WordPress is more of a drag-and-drop type of platform these days, coding is inevitable. While the back-end of WordPress is a breeze for people who have a programming background it can be quite hectic for those with limited programming knowledge.
This is why it is a good idea to keep a master list of all the code lines you use often. It will allow you to simply copy and modify them without having to look them up or write them manually.
- Utilize child themes
When you install a WordPress theme, you rarely get exactly what you need. Modifying the theme is kind of a given but making these changes can cause the theme to stop working properly. It’s never easy to modify someone else’s work and this is why child themes are used.
Installing a child theme is a bit of process but they allow you to tinker around with it while avoiding destroying the original. If something goes wrong, you can always go back to its default state.
- Don’t neglect updates
Sure, some plugins might stop working after a major update, which is the primary reason why people avoid updates, but the cost of this can be far worse than you think.
Updates are not there so that the devs can feel better about themselves. Updates keep WordPress working smoothly in all browsers, prevent security breaches (which are getting more sophisticated by the day) and resolve glitches and bugs. Putting off updates is a very bad idea and you should drop this bad habit today.
- Get rid of spam comments in bulk
Spam is an unavoidable evil when you work in the online environment. People who deal with comment sections on WordPress websites know this well.
Once you have approved all the regular comments you can get rid of all the spammy ones in bulk by using the following code in the SQL of your WordPress database in phpMyAdmin.
DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ‘0’;
- Avoid automatic log out for longer time spans
One of the more irritating things for regular WordPress users is being logged out periodically, despite having checked the “remember me” option. By default, WordPress will log you out after two weeks. Use this code to prolong this to one year.
add_filter( ‘auth_cookie_expiration’, ‘stay_logged_in_for_1_year’ );
function stay_logged_in_for_1_year( $expire ) {
return 31556926; // 1 year in seconds
}
We hope that these tips help you manage your WordPress website more effectively. The more tricks you have up your sleeve, the easier your tasks will get and you’ll avoid most problems.
WordPress is very simple at first glance but it can be quite robust if you know how to use it. These tips should help you out and if you have some of your own tricks, let us know in the comments.
