WordPress, powering over 24% of the entire web, is definitely the world’s most easy to use CMS. With a plenty of functions and features added to every new version, it’s getting even much easier, better and powerful with time. From blogging to eCommerce, WordPress has undoubtedly made everything a breeze.
When it comes to get familiar with newly added features and functionalities, almost every one of us avoids reading all those boring release notes. Consequently, we could not use WordPress to its full potential. In this blog post, I’ve put together 15 such handy WordPress’ features that you either often forget to use or don’t know exist.
Let’s go through them one by one!
Distraction Free Writing Mode:
To produce stellar content, sometimes you need to focus solely on writing. That’s the reason, WordPress offers “distraction-free writing mode” which helps you get rid of all kind of distractions while writing. To get into the distraction-free writing environment, just start typing or click on the “full-screen icon” appearing in the top-right corner of the Editor. The next moment, you’ll find yourself with zero distractions.
Screen Options:
Almost all WordPress users know how to change the look and feel of a website, but most of them have no idea of how to customize the Dashboard to suite their individual working styles. That’s the purpose for which Screen Options exist. This great WordPress’ feature gives you the power to control what should and shouldn’t appear on a particular page in your WordPress dashboard. You can easily access Screen Options in the top-right corner of your WordPress dashboard.
Log Out Everywhere:
For a regular WordPress user, it’s quite common to access Dashboard from multiple devices and browsers but what if he ever forgets to logout of an active session. For that case, WordPress allows users to remotely logout everywhere, except their current browser, with a single click of mouse. To access this feature, just navigate to Users à Your Profile your Dashboard and scroll down to “About Yourself” section.
Embedding Content with Just A URL:
Traditionally, if you want to insert any kind of media from an external source into your page or post content, then you need to generate “embed code” for that media which can be a real hassle. Luckily, there is another much easier way to do that. Copy the media URL and paste it into the visual editor without making it clickable. In other words, the media URL must not be hyperlinked.
Creating Audio/Video Playlists:
Undoubtedly, you would be familiar with making image galleries in WordPress but do you know you can also create playlists with media clips. Since version 3.9, WordPress allows users to create audio/video playlists and insert them into a post or page. Creating a media playlist in WordPress is quite similar to how you create an image gallery; with the only difference that the option to create an audio/video playlist appears only if you have audio/video files available in your Media Library.
Marking Content for Review:
When you create a new post in WordPress, it by default gets saved as a Draft. Once you hit the Publish button, the post status is changed to Published from Draft. But if you’re running a multi-author blog, then how would you differentiate an “in-progress” draft post from a “ready for review” one? Thanks to the “Pending Review” feature available in the “Publish” module of the post editor, using which you can easily create a professional editorial workflow.
Deleting Default Category:
With every fresh WordPress install, you’re gifted with a default post category “Uncategorized”. Unlike other categories, it’s not so easy to delete this default category. Removing the Uncategorized category is only possible if you have already created another category. All you need to first set another category as default under “Settings à Writing”, as shown below in the screenshot:
And then delete the “Uncategorized” category from the “Posts à Categories” page in your Dashboard.
Drag and Drop Files to Upload:
Uploading media files to the Post Editor is something that you do very often. Isn’t it? The most common way to upload a file in WordPress is by clicking the “Add Media” button, which can easily be bypassed. Since version 3.3, WordPress allows you to drag and drop files onto a post or page, which is a huge time saver feature.
Press This Feature:
Press This bookmarklet is probably one of the least known features of WordPress. It provides you a lightning-fast way to grab content that you find interesting from an external web page and then share it on your own blog. To use this amazing feature, you’re required to drag and drop Press This bookmarklet onto your browser’s bookmark bar. You can easily find Press This bookmarklet under the Tools à Available Tools in your Dashboard.
Linking to Existing Content:
Building internal links plays a vital role in engaging readers on your blog or website, which leads to reduce website’s bounce rate. So how do you create internal links on your site, manually? Well, a far better way – “Or link to existing content” – exists right inside the pop-up window that opens up as you click the insert/edit link button in your post editor.
Even, a Search Box is also available to help you easily find the exact page that you want a link to.
Allow/Disallow Comments:
When you create a new WordPress post or page, comments are enables on it by default. It sometimes proves to be quite annoying, especially when your site has a lot of pages and posts, and you want to disable comments on certain pages/posts. In that case, the quickest way to enable/disable comments is by using the “Allow Comments” option that you can find under Posts à All Posts. Keep in mind, the same thing applies to allow/disallow comments for Pages.
Uploading Images at Perfect Size:
After you upload an image file to your site, WordPress automatically creates 3 different versions – thumbnail, medium and large – of that file according to your blog settings. In case, these default media sizes don’t match with your blog’s requirements, just go to Settings à Media and feel free to adjust them.
Post Scheduling:
Despite of being quite useful, Post Scheduling is one of the most ignored WordPress’ features. It allows you to schedule your posts or pages for publishing in the future. Even, you can backdate your content to keep everything in the right order. To use this great feature, click on the “Edit” link that appears next to “Publish immediately” option in the Publish module.
Adjust the variables and hit OK. Now, you’ll see the schedule button in place of publish. Click it and you’re good to go.
Sticky Posts:
Sticky Posts feature, which is available in WordPress since version 2.7, lets you place a standard post at the top of your blog’s front page. This proves extremely useful when you want to announce something or have an awesome post that you’d like to promote. To make a post sticky, go to the Publish module and click the “Edit” link appearing next to the “Visibility: Public” option.
You’ll see a checkbox “Stick this post to the front page” under the “Public” radio button. Check it, click the “OK” button and update or publish the post.
Controlling the Trash:
When you delete an item (a post, page or comment) in WordPress, it remains in the trash folder for 30 days. After 30 days, the item gets deleted permanently. But do you actually know, WordPress allows you to change the number of days after which you want an item to be permanently deleted? Yes, you can easily do that by setting EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS constant to as many days as you want. For example:
define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 7);
If you add the above line of code to the wp-config.php file, trash will automatically get clear every 7 days.
So fellow WordPress developers or bloggers, which feature/option do you use most and if you have any other features you find it useful & want to highlight? then feel free to list them in comments.
