Nowadays, WordPress is the go-to solution for anyone intending to create an online presence without having to hire a developer. It has become successful because it’s easy to use and you can, in fact, build a site from scratch and get it running in hours. But its simplicity doesn’t imply a lack of exciting features. In fact, there are plenty of WordPress hidden features that most people are not aware of.
We are going to show you that WordPress offers more than just storing your files. It’s a powerful tool whose potential should be fully leveraged especially by beginners. In this article, we’ll discuss some very useful functionalities you may not be aware of.
Knowing how to use WordPress’ hidden features including the best plugins will give you a good handle on how everything works and make you more productive.
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Distraction-Free Writing
You’ll notice that the WordPress editor is pretty action-packed. Some writers are always looking for a Zen effect to get their creative juices flowing. There’s a hidden WordPress feature for this. On the top right of the editor, there’s a button that enables distraction-free writing mode.
When activated it hides the sidebar and all other content around the text editor, leaving you with a clear blank screen.
The multiple options that clog the text editor will no longer distract you. Once you’re done, you can switch back to the default view.
While we are at it, you should also know about other useful tricks to keep you productive while writing. WordPress also enables you to schedule posts for a future date. Instead of publishing directly, you can set a date in the future when you want to publish your content.
Using sticky posts, you can also pin up posts on your homepage for visitors to see first, for any period as long as you set the expiry date.
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Changing Media Upload Limit
You may have attempted to upload media files that exceeded the limit and perhaps didn’t know how to solve this. Though uploading content beyond the recommended limit may affect your server performance, it’s quite easy to fix this.
If you are tech savvy, this guide by Jenni McKinnon is a good place to start. It’ll guide you on how to update your php.ini file. We recommend this one if you run a robust site that uploads content regularly.
You could also use the Increase Max Upload Size free plugin, which is easier to set up.
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Splitting Posts into Multiple Pages
We all know that long posts can be quite boring or tedious to read. Most readers may not even finish some of your posts. There’s a WordPress hidden feature to make it easier for readers to go through long posts.
I bet you didn’t know that you can break up your content into multiple pages. It’s quite simple.
You just switch to “Text” mode in the post editor and add the tag below in the location where you want to split your post.
<!–nextpage–>
You can use this tag as much as you want. The more you use it, the more pages you’ll have. This way, your readers can easily navigate through your content. It’ll improve your site’s look and feel and creates more space for your ads. If users can navigate through your content easily, they’ll stay longer and hence increase the number of page views on your site.
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Setting Default Image Sizes
It’s possible to specify image dimensions using the default WordPress image sizes. They come in medium, thumbnail, large and full size as well.
You can, however, change these settings via the admin dashboard. Here’s how you do it:
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- On your WordPress dashboard, go to settings.
- Then select media settings
- Enter your desired values
You can also enter your desired values directly without using the default image size.
You can also enable image compression using the WP Smush plugin. This helps reduce the page loading time, while still not affecting the image quality.
WordPress also features an image editor that lets you resize images, crop them or change thumbnail settings. You can also embed videos by just pasting their links into the visual editor.
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Dashboard Widgets
Every user likes some bit of customization for the software they are using. That’s why you even customize your phone’s home screen. The dashboard is the page you see first when you log in. It can also be customized to display the content you want, including some of your site’s statistics.
There are many widgets to choose from such as quick posts, the latest WordPress news and extra widgets that come when you install plugins.
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Adding Anything to Menus
Menus are some of the easiest and most useful navigation options. To customize your menu features, you’ll find the necessary settings in the menu options. You can configure menus by categories, pages and external links as well.
You add custom links to your menu when you want to include pages that were not listed in the selection column.
However, there are more options such as menus based on custom post types. Different plugins also offer more flexibility.
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Favoriting Plugins
If you come across a WordPress plugin that you like. You can favorite that plugin if you’re logged in to your WordPress account. This is useful when researching various plugins, you’d like to use, but you don’t want to install them yet.
Once you’re interested in a particular plugin, you can read more about it later to see whether it has any issues. If you like it, then you can install it.
Conclusion
You don’t have to start using these features all at once. You can pick a favorite or two and start using them. There many more WordPress hidden features that we also haven’t talked about as well. We don’t want to bombard you with a lot of information so we decided to keep it short. These are the most useful features that you were probably not aware of. We encourage beginners and seasoned professionals to try them out.
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