WordPress Tips & Tricks

WORDPRESS TIPS & TRICKS
Be more efficient, have more fun and make
your life easier
Green Bee Web Consulting | www.greenbee-web.com | WordPress Tips & Tricks

INTRODUCTIONS

Real Quick: Who I Am (and why you should
bother listening to anything I have to say)
1. My name is Rachel
2. Been building websites for over 15 years
3. Worked at a Boston nonprofit (and startups,
and corporations)
4. Left last fall to work for myself (yay!)
5. Work with my awesome partner Clare in
Chicago to build WordPress websites for B
Corps, nonprofits and those with a social or
environmental mission
6. I’m a co-organizer for the Boston Girl Geek
Dinners
Skills (alphabet soup) open source CMS, UX, SEO/SEM, HTML/CSS, OMG!
Find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmurray

ADMIN FEATURES
Stuff you might not know about already

Easily ignored features
• At a Glance, Activity, Quick
Draft
• Screen Options are amazing!
• Editing pages/posts/media
• Viewing lists of pages/posts/media
• Help can actually help
• Revisions

Settings
• GENERAL
• Changing the name,
admin email and URL of
your site in one fell
swoop
• Time zone change
• READING
• Change your homepage
• Change default post #s
per page
• Search Engine Hiding
(useful for dev sites)

Settings
• DISCUSSION
• Change default
comment settings
• Change default
pingbacks/trackbacks
• PERMALINKS
• Critical for when you
launch your site

MAKING PLUGINS LESS SCARY

How to find good plugins
• Wordpress.org (popular
http://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/popular/)
• Codecanyon
• Google

WordPress.org
Look at
• Last updated
• Downloads
• Ratings
• Compatibility

When to use paid, When to use free
Use Free Use Paid
Most of the time Rarely
Basic features Unique features
When you don’t need much support If you want to talk to a developer

Some of my favorite plugins
Name What it Does
WordPress SEO by
Yoast
Easy SEO configurations
WordPress Backup to
Dropbox
Backup your site to Dropbox for free!
WP Stripe Want to have a donation form on your site? Stripe
makes it easy, no need for all the crazy payment
gateways!
WordPress HTTPS If you’re donating you need SSL. But not on every
page. Limit it to just the money pages!
Relevannsi Make your site search more effective
Gravity Forms For fancy form creation
All in One WP Security Emphasizes best practices for basic WP security
Search & Replace Standard Search Replace tool
WP Smush It Make your images small!

Plugin Love
You are playing around with
plugins. Awesome.
But when you decide you don’t want
them anymore, kill ‘em!
Update them pretty please! Your website will thank you by
not being hacked

THEMES

When to use paid, When to use free
Use Free Use Paid
Rarely Most of the time
If you don’t need much When you want to do anything cool
When you’re okay looking like a basic
WP site
When you want to look like a website
that ‘isn’t just a blog’
When you don’t need much support If you want to talk to a developer

How to find good themes
• Basic free themes – WordPress.org
• Premium themes – Themeforest.com
• Look at reviews & stars
• Look at feedback &
support
• Play with the demo
• Most are around $50
• Don’t limit yourself
to just nonprofit
themes!

SECURITY
It’s important and not too scary

Easy things to do
• No admin username
• Limit login plugin
• Keep your plugins,
themes and core
updated
• Back up your site

AWESOME RESOURCES
Some amazing tools that will make your life easier

Image Resources – Free and good!
• You can get beautiful professional images for free. But
they’re limited in scope. That said, if you’re an
environmental np, you are SET.
• www.pickupimage.com
• www.littlevisuals.co
• www.unsplash.com
• www.superfamous.com
• Can you shell out a little bit? Go to stocksy.com!

Hosting Love
• Site5
• SiteGround
• Media Temple

Link Love – Some favorite resources
(in no particular order)
URL What it is
http://wordpress.org/news/ The official WordPress blog
http://wptavern.com/ All things WP
http://managewp.com/blog All things WP (best free plugins of the month!)
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ Tech & WP
http://www.wpmayor.com/ All things WP
http://wordpress.tv/ Watch WP talks
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/ SEO blog
http://moz.com/blog SEO blog
http://thenextweb.com/ Round up of tech news
http://www.nten.org Nonprofit Technology Network

Other tools to make your life easier
What it’s called What it is
Rapportive See your network in your Gmail
BrowserStack Test in multiple browsers online
Awesome Screenshot Free chrome extension to take awesome screengrabs
and modify them
ImgFlip Need to make a point? Do it with image meme
templates!
Asana Best project management tool evar… and it’s free!
CodeSchool Learn code!
IFTTT Make your stuff do other stuff automated (pro-tip…
search for wordpress!)
Unroll.me Unsubscribe and roll up your email!

QUESTIONS?
Let’s do this!

WordPress Tips & Tricks

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