If you don’t know much about WordPress, you have come to the right place. There is all kinds of information available here. From how to set it up to getting people to return, these tips are for you. Keep reading to get the knowledge you need. You will not regret the time spent learning.

Keep your permalinks clean and understandable. That means you should look at the permalink box every time you put up a new post. Does the title in the URL make sense? Does it help from an SEO standpoint? If not, click on it and alter it until it is perfect.

Take some time to familiarize yourself with all the tools and options available to you when blogging with WordPress. For instance, clicking on the visible Kitchen Sink button can offer more choices for formatting posts to make them more unique. There is also a Screen Options tab located on the admin pages of your site. This can be used to control several formatting elements.

Create a members only section to your website to make it more exclusive to the people who visit your site on a daily basis. This will allow them to actively engage in discussions with other members who have the same level of intensity. This will develop a solid bond between your top visitors.

If you are new to WordPress, make sure to keep your sidebar simple. Make sure that it only has the essentials. Your visitors shouldn’t have to weed through a ton of ads and banners to find the links they want to click on. Try removing the items in Appearance & Widgets that don’t contribute anything to your cause or business.

Remember to make good use of the footer area at the bottom of your WordPress blog pages. In this area you can include additional information about yourself and/or your copyright. You can also add a link to another page if you wish. Different themes give you more use of this area, so choose your themes carefully to maximize the value of your page footers.

You are unable to change the images sizes yourself if your site has its own gallery plugin. The gallery plugin automatically sets the sizes of the images, and you don’t actually have any control over this. If you really need the image sizes changed, ask your developer to help you change the settings.

Know that you can write posts and send them in the future via WordPress. All you need to do is change the post from “Publish Immediately” to a specific date and time in the future. This way you can write posts and have them set up to go out even while you are on vacation!

Avoid common words and phrases for your user name. This can make you more susceptible to bots. It is a risk of your security. Look at your users page and delete any usernames that are “admin” or “administrator”. Choose something that is more difficult.

If you want a post to stay at the top of the page, there is no need to set it’s date way in the future any longer. Instead, go to the post and click on Edit under Visibility. Choose the option which allows you to make the post sticky and enjoy!

Never share your WordPress password. In addition, only download and implement plugins with good reviews from reputable sources. If your site becomes compromised, you will have to begin again; therefore, it is important to do everything you can to keep your site secure.

When you are choosing a WordPress template to use, pick something that gets frequent updates. You do not want to use a template whose creator has abandoned updates because sometimes you have to address security issues. A creator who is proactive in updating his template will give you a better product.

Don’t download an excessive amount of plugins. Of course plugins are cool and fun, but each one that is added increases the time it takes your website to load. They can slow down things considerably, impacting your search engine rank. Slower sites do not appear as high in search rankings as optimized sites.

Use images properly on your WordPress site. They can add everything from beauty to interest to your pages. Use their alternative text tags and title tags properly. Don’t settle for generic descriptions. You need to make them specific so that your visitors know exactly what they are. This also helps them figure out what your site is about.

Remember that social media is integral to the success of both blogs and websites today, so you should install social networking plugins which allow you to share your content through your accounts. Facebook Connect is one example of an excellent tool to use to repost your content to your Facebook account.

If you want to improve traffic to your own domain, you should host your WordPress blog in your web account instead of using WordPress.com as the host. When you install WordPress yourself, you have more control over what features you can install and customize. Any visitor will be counted as traffic in your domain and not in WordPress.com’s domain.

Make sure your WordPress site has a great theme. A theme can actually make or break or your site when it comes to attracting or repelling visitors. There are many great free themes out there. You can also find affordable premium themes. Just make sure your themes don’t have a ton of messy code that makes loading too slow or that isn’t compatible with WordPress’s current versions.

The plugin Broken Link Checker makes finding broken links on your site an easy task. Why don’t you want broken links? They make your content appear dated, and that can lose your reader’s interest. When you update or remove broken links, they’ll never realize how old your posts might be.

Operating WordPress need not be intimidating. These suggestions are a great place to begin. You may want to bookmark this page for future reference. That way, you can keep coming back to make certain you have used all of these fabulous ideas. The visits to your site are certain to increase.