The great thing about WordPress is that it is so easy to use. If you have read our previous article, Start Your Work-From-Home Website With WordPress, you’ll already know how to install WordPress, find a great theme, and create a range of pages and posts.
But WordPress’s simplicity hides an advanced system that, with a little extra knowledge, can be made to do incredible things.
Just looking at a few websites powered by WordPress as a content management system (CMS) says it all – WordPress makes building a site easier but never limits what you can do. Read on to learn about some advanced WordPress features and how you can use these tools to take your work-from-home website to the next level.
Build A Work-From-Home Website With A Blog
Since WordPress was initially launched as a blogging tool, even the latest versions assume that your blog is the heart of your website. Although a blog is important, most professional business websites take a different approach, with pages as main content and blog posts as an additional feature. If you want a static page to appear as your homepage, you can change a single setting within your WordPress control panel. First, make sure you have created the page you plan to use as your homepage and a different page where your blog posts will be located. You can leave your blog page blank, as WordPress automatically pulls in every post you add.
Then, from the Settings menu, select Reading. The first setting defines what your front page, our homepage, will display. Select the static page you want visitors to see when they land on your website, and choose your preferred posts page for blog updates or news items. This relatively insignificant change can make a world of difference to how professional your website seems. Even better, you can integrate your regularly updated posts into your homepage using widgets – WordPress includes a Recent Posts widget as standard.
WordPress Plugins – Making Your Website Do More
Although WordPress has the most commonly used tools and widgets you will need, you can easily add new features using plugins. Plugins are installed through the WordPress interface using the Plugins menu in your control panel. Plugins are available for just about any task, most of which are free. At the time of writing, the WordPress Plugins database features 21,500 plugins, all of which are searchable by category, rating, and name.
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Here are just three must-have plugins for any work-from-home website.
Use Akismet To Stop Spam
WordPress supports user comments right out of the box, and your visitors can post their thoughts on the content you publish. For your blog posts, in particular, this is a great way to build a community around your business, improve your visibility on the web, and improve your search engine rank. Unfortunately, as you begin to attract attention from visitors and potential customers, you will also attract attention from spammers who will fill your comments section with rubbish. Spam comments are easy to spot but time-consuming to remove one by one.
Akismet is the most popular and effective anti-spam plugin for WordPress. It automatically detects the signs of spam comments, including links to other websites and content that does not make sense. When Akismet finds a spam comment, it quarantines it and prevents it from cluttering up your website. Akismet is free for personal blogs or low-cost for business use.
Automate Search Engine Optimization with WordPress
Once your website is up and running, the hard work begins. Now it is time to get some visitors! Search engines are a great traffic source, but only if you achieve a good search engine rank. Simply put, the nearer the top of the results you are, the more likely somebody will click through to your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing your website to be easily understood and preferentially indexed by search engines. A good WordPress SEO plugin can provide everything you need to optimize your site.
