10 WordPress Tips and Tricks Every Small Business Owner Should Know

WordPress powers 30% of all websites that are online right now. Given that by some estimates, there are as many as 1.9 billion websites out there, WordPress’ reach is pretty impressive.

If you use WordPress, chances are you love it for how easily it works and how it allows your business to have a robust web presence without needing to have an internal IT team.

But are you really getting the most out of WordPress?

To make sure that you’re privy to all of the best WordPress tips and tricks the system offers to small business owners, below, our team breaks down some of the lesser-known, lesser-used functions WordPress has.

Our hope is that we can help you improve the way you use the platform!

1. Limit Login Attempts

Did you know that, according to IBM, the average cost of a data breach for a business is 3.9 billion dollars? That’s enough in losses to make even the most robust of small to medium-sized businesses fold.

If you’d like to keep hackers from getting their hands on your site and data, you need to be proactive with security.

To get started doing that, download the plugin Login LockDown and reduce attempts allowed from unlimited (the default) to something reasonable.

2. Personalize Your Theme with CSS

While we get that not every small business owner knows how to write CSS, many have at least a working knowledge of the coding language.

If you do and you’d like to tweak something with your template like the way pictures are displayed or the size of your header tags, you can do that easily in WordPress!

Just head over to the “Appearance” tab in your admin panel and click on customize.

From there you’ll be able to add your code.

3. Leverage Inspect Element to Make Your Customization Easy

Figuring out how to properly target elements in your theme and troubleshoot customization issues you’re having can be hard. Web browsers like Firefox however make it a lot easier with the “inspect element” feature.

If you’re trying to target a particular header in your CSS for example, open a tab with your web page and right click on the element you’re trying to target. When you right click on it, in Firefox, you’ll see the “inspect element” option.

Click it and you’ll be taken to where that element occurs in your site’s code which will reveal information like its class.

Armed with that, you can better target your elements and any custom code you add to your template.

4. Automate Your SEO With Yoast

SEO is what allows websites to rank well on Google. Given that Google fields over 4 billion searches per day, getting into its good graces is more important than ever.

Fortunately, having excellent SEO baked into your site is made simple in WordPress through a plugin called Yoast.

Download it today and see what it can do for you!

5. Pre-Select Your Facebook Share Meta-Data

When people share your WordPress articles on Facebook, Facebook will automatically pick a picture, headline, and intro text it likes to feature in people’s feeds.

Sometimes what it picks isn’t very good and can negatively effect engagement.

To manually pick how your posts should appear in people’s feeds, use Yoast’s “sharing panel” to specify your Facebook title, description and thumbnail.

6. Add Icons to Menu Items

Does your website’s menu look boring? If it does, you can add a little flair to it by adding icons to your menu!

Just download the plugin Menu Image and go wild!

7. Include Multiple Authors on an Article

By default, WordPress will only allow you to add a single author to an article. For many businesses that’s limiting given that multiple people might work on something that gets published.

That’s why leveraging the plugin Co-Authors Plus is among our favorite WordPress tips and tricks.

With Co-Authors, you can add an unlimited amount of contributors to anything you publish which can help you taper any animosity in your work environment.

8. Remove Your WordPress Version Number From Your Site

WordPress showcases the version number of your WordPress installation at the top of a lot of its default templates. For many people, that represents a huge security risk.

Why?

Because when you showcase your installation version, hackers can easily deduce whether or not you’ve kept your website up to date. If you haven’t, they can use version-specific exploits to break into your site.

One of the best tips for WordPress we can give you is to add the following code to your template’s functions.php file to get rid of your version number:

function wpbeginner_remove_version() {

return ”;}

add_filter(‘the_generator’, ‘wpbeginner_remove_version’);

If you’re curious to learn more about WordPress versions and updates, there are a lot of sites out there that discuss changes to the platform in depth. Check it out!

9. Deactivate Plugins Without Admin Access

When you’re having WordPress issues, one of the first troubleshooting steps you’ll need to take to remedy issues will be to deactivate your plugins. The issue is that, if your problems are keeping you from accessing your WordPress back-end, you won’t be able to deactivate your plugins.

This trick will help you circumvent that problem.

To deactivate your plugins without getting into your WordPress back-end, access your WordPress directory via FTP. Once you’ve accessed it, go to /wp-content/folder.

There you will find the “plugins” folder which you just have to rename “plugins.old” to deactivate everything.

10. Duplicate WordPress Posts

If you publish a lot of content, it can be a hassle to create a new post adding in all of the appropriate metadata and replicating the post’s structure every single time.

That’s why we love the WordPress article manager’s “duplicate” button which you can access by downloading the plugin “Duplicate Post“.

Download it today and enjoy all of the time you save!