Ultimate Hacks to Improve Your WordPress Website Skills!

Have you ever noticed how every time a complex informational website demand comes from the client, almost every IT business representative suggests “WordPress Development Services”?

WordPress is a framework that is a favorite for all IT businesses and developers – because of the ease of website development through WordPress. WordPress has 60,000 free plugins and 12,000 themes. People create Over 500 WordPress websites daily. 

With its user-friendly interface and extensive customization options, WordPress has its fan base in every sense. But what is popular also has its drawbacks. This blog shares 9 WordPress development hacks useful for various disparate drawbacks.

Best WordPress Development Hacks for Developers

1. Create a Custom Page in WordPress

Whenever you start creating a website, the WordPress theme decides how the page looks in the template. Though most themes are in sync with the industry they are made for, we may not want to use the same theme pages every time!

We do know that creating a WordPress custom page is beneficial, but altering a standard page structure can take a lot of time.

By default, WordPress displays your latest content on the hero page of your website, but you can choose any page of your site and name it your website’s homepage.

First, you need to develop a new page in WP, and name it ‘Home’. After that, you can create another page to display your blog posts.

Then follow these steps:

1. Go to settings >> Reading page in your WP admin.
2. Select “A Static Page”

After this, you can choose your desired page as the home page of your website!

2. Installing Google Analytics in a WordPress Site

Only a person who understands the impact of a well-developed WordPress website would know the bad impact of not having Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a must – as it shows you where your users come from, and where they stop on your website. They have not yet rolled out the ‘user identity’ feature – where we know the identity of the users too. But let’s hope they do one day!

Google Analytics will only track your website visitors after you install it, and it’s a must-have before launching your website on the market.

If you want to see beautiful reports of your website, the plugin partnered with Google Analytics is Monsterinsights.

3. Restrict Login Attempts

According to Hostinger, hacking, and backdoor access are the most used methods to break into WordPress. Brute force attempts are common, where hackers can try to guess your credentials.

By default, WordPress has not limited the password attempts. Hackers can use this drawback by utilizing disparate scripts with different combinations until they get one right!

Some users even find themselves thrown out and locked out of their login.

Using this login named – “Limit Login Attempts Reloaded” – you can set a certain number of failed attempts to log into a WordPress website.

4. Showcase an excerpt of all posts on the home and archive page

You would know how all famous blogs showcase article summaries instead of full articles on their pages. These pages would load faster, be more user-friendly, and have no duplicate content chances.

Adding an excerpt can increase your site speed and Google uses loading speed as a loading factor! By providing excerpts, you significantly improve the loading time.

When you show excerpts on the archive pages, you can also prevent them from being banned for duplicate content in the search engine processes.

Reducing the bounce rates and increasing page views is every website owner’s dream, and this is exactly what excerpts do. Users will see all the different posts on the page, rather than just a blog or article.

5. Add a custom Gravatar Image without fail!

When you hire a WordPress Developer, and if he does not know what Gravatar is – you know about his knowledge level straight away!

For those who don’t know Gravatar, it is an identity that builds your persona on the web and builds an authoritative image as well. Especially if you are an individual or a blogger who wants to build a brand – your gravatar is important.

It is even more important that your gravatar does not slow down your website.

Change this gravatar to make yourself look more credible.

There are 3 ways to do this:

1. Choose a default WordPress Gravatar (Fast and smooth)
2. Use the Thrive method for loading up a customized gravatar (Plugin way)
3. Insert a code for using a custom gravatar

6. Adding custom CSS to a theme

Normally, CSS can be applied to your settings. But the major fault is that your Custom CSS will disappear when the theme is changed.

But that CSS can also be used on another theme or site. How?

You can do this by adding the WPcode Plugin.

Plus, this plugin also allows you to save your code pieces by naming them and saving them to the cloud. There is also a WPcode-free version, but obviously with fewer features.

7. Adding a click-to-call button

The majority of the users online are mobile users today. Adding a call button is a much quicker way for them to contact you!

While you always have a contact form, your website should have an instant call which is better and faster for users.

You can do this by adding the WP call button. This free plugin is the most reliable for adding your business phone number and a call button on the website.

Button position, color & button location on the website – all can be customized.

Also, if you want to add a strategic CTA button near your content, that is possible by using your shortcode.

8. Adding multiple authors to your WordPress Post

An article can have multiple authors, but what if you need to add multiple authors for your website?

By default, WordPress posts can only be assigned to a single author. But to fix this –

Follow the below steps!

1. Install the Co-authors plugin & activate it.
2. Visit the Users >> All Users page.
3. Click on “Create an author profile” below the user who is to be deemed as the co-author.
4. Setup the user’s profile as an author

This plugin can even enable a custom author page.

And you are done! You can now edit posts, or a page and add multiple authors.

Wrapping up,

That’s all for this blog!

We will come up with some more interesting plugins and information for you in our next blog. WordPress is the most popular Web building framework – and no matter how many blogs we write – it will never be enough!