May 08
Recently I've been working on static web pages and a new WordPress site, and it's made me realize the value of some WordPress features…
- Plugins – If WordPress doesn't already do something, you can probably find a plugin that will. And if you can't, you can make one yourself, if you're so inclined. A plugin is programmed in PHP, which means you can make your site do just about anything you can imagine.
- Site Design Template – Templates control the look and feel of your site. The nice part about templates is only having to change one file to update the whole site. No more updating 15 different pages with one little change to the menu. Oh, and if you use WordPress, that's not an issue any more, either!
- Automatic Menu – You can set up a navigation system which automatically makes the menu based on the Pages in the system. You control the content and the order of the menu.
- Permalinks – Search engine-friendly links are created automatically, using the title of your post or any text you specify. For example, if I want a page about wordpress, I make a page, title it "WordPress" and then to access it, the address is websitecleanup.com/blog/wordpress.
- Automatic Site Map – There are several plugins to make your site map maintenance-free… set it up once and it's always current. Both search engines and human visitors seem to appreciate site maps.
- Safe Include – This is a plugin which lets you take a normal HTML web page from your site and make it appear in a particular spot within a page or blog posting. I'm sure there are MANY applications for this plugin. All ideas are welcome!
One piece of advice, though… replace the default editor as quickly as you can! The editor that comes with WordPress is not very good. We like EditorMonkey.
One thing you do have to be in WordPress (or any other blog system for that matter) is careful. Once you save a mistake in WordPress, you can't go back unless you have a backup. WordPress does come with a backup system, which you should use regularly to possibly recover from any editing mistakes you might make. Look under Manage, Backup in your WordPress admin.
