Once a business has chosen a domain name, set up their blog, and started creating content, they are going to face challenges and content issues. Here are a few content hacks you may not know about.
Protect your content from hackers
Unfortunately, since WordPress is a commonly used platform, hackers will often try to gain access to it so they can manipulate sites, steal personal information, and so on. Some security plugins, as such as WordFence are doing a great job in keeping hackers out, but there’s one other thing you can do to protect your content and keep the rest of your data safe as well.
To do this, password protect your admin directory. Go to your cPanel, and under security, you will find the password protect directories button. Click on it, select the directories you want to protect, and enter a unique password. This will require an authentication whenever you try to access that directory.
Show images in rows and columns
By default, when you add multiple images to your WordPress theme, they usually show up side by side or even on top of each other. This does not look good, and it also means users, especially those on mobile devices, will have to scroll a lot to see all of them.
You can do this without plugins by uploading photos you want to display in a grid, selecting create gallery under the Add media tab, and then choosing how you want the gallery to appear. Then simply hit insert gallery.
If you run a photography blog, this option may lack some key features, and you will be better off using a gallery plugin. There are several options available, including Envira Gallery.
Allow Users to Subscribe to Comments
Normally, for a user to see additional comments on your post once they have left one of their own, they would have to revisit or reload the same blog post page. However, you can offer the option to subscribe to comments so when someone leaves another comment, they will be notified by email.
This is easy to do either in your theme settings if this option is offered, or by using a plugin like Subscribe to Comments Reloaded that will add this feature to any theme on your website. This will enhance the user experience and bring you more organic traffic, as well as repeat page visits.
Display excerpt on home and archive pages
Many free and premium themes have this feature as a part of the package, but you have to enable it under the appearance settings of your website. This means that on the homepage, an excerpt is displayed instead of the whole article.
This lets users scroll through articles and choose which one they want to read a little more easily, making your content more viewable. While this is common on much larger websites, many smaller blogs do not know about or use it.
If your theme doesn’t have this feature, there are plug-ins that will enable it, and allow you to customize the excerpt along with the Read More tag at the end.
Show excerpts in RSS feed
By default, your RSS feed shows entire articles to subscribers. This does two things: First, it prevents the subscriber from visiting your website, lowering your actual traffic numbers. It also allows content scrapers to gather your entire article and copy it without actually visiting your site.
To fix this simply go to your settings for reading, and scroll down to For each article in feed, show: Select summary instead of full text and hit the save changes button. Your content and traffic are now better protected.
Add Multiple Authors to Posts
Do you have posts on your site that were created by more than one author and you want to credit them? While that option is not available in standard settings, there is a way to do so that is quick and easy.
The simplest way is to download and activate the Co-Authors Plus plug-in. An “author” box will be automatically added to posts in your WP dashboard. You can add more authors there.
Include category in post URLs
Not only is this good from a user experience perspective because it gives more data about the post in the URL, it is also good for SEO purposes. Adding the category to the post URL is a pretty simple process.
First, go to the settings and permalinks page. Then navigate down and select custom structure. Then add /%category%/%postname%/ in the field next to it. It’s that simple.
There are tons of hacks, plugins, and tips for customizing your WordPress content. Use those to make your content look amazing, and stand out from other sites around you.
This is a guest post by Sarah Saker.