WordPress democratizes web publishing and gives every writer a chance to share content. Professionalism is up to you to practice with this platform, and with practice comes the skill level that marks a true professional.
WordPress is driven by a philosophy of collaboration and not competition. Quite a lot of WordPress users share their progress to others, creating a community of people who truly appreciate the platform and make use of it without selfishness or greed. This practice of giving back is what drives WordPress as an online publishing platform to spread from professional to professional.
Getting Started with WordPress
The best way to begin learning about WordPress is to become a consistent WordPress user. Get yourself used to the basics. Start out with a simple project. Write about something close to your heart. Try out a theme and plug-in and take it step by step from there.
Keep practicing and experimenting. Start another written work that you can publish. Get your feet wet. You will not become good at something by simply reading about it. You have to get started and then keep at it. You will learn more by doing and making small changes to your style each time.
Clarify your chosen niche and begin to define your website in order to better establish yourself in your chosen niche. Being clear with what you want to stand for or share will make your blog or website more memorable instead of one that is a hodgepodge of different topics.
After getting your feet wet with a few blogs and getting the feel of how to use WordPress, envision the direction in which you want to specialize. For some people, delving into the intricacies of coding is interesting while others would rather focus on writing content. Choose the direction in which you would like to specialize and work with others to fill in the gaps of what you can not do.
Getting Deeper into WordPress
Have some goals and commit to achieving those goals. For some people, publishing one article or blog piece a week is the target they stick to. Others may do more or less but what matters is that you create a target and commit to achieving that goal in order for you to build your content bank. Piece by piece your content bank will grow and that is what will bring even more visitors to your website. Building your content bank attracts more opportunities for you and your website.
Invest on your website for the long term. It is true that WordPress is a free platform. This does not mean that you should skimp on your website. It is alright to spend on upgrades or other services that will bring traffic to your website or optimize it. You can collaborate and ask help from web developers in order to make your website look better according to your vision or you may take the time to learn some basic coding or web development skills so that you can optimize your website yourself.
Optimizing Your Website
Make your website load faster. Even a small delay when loading a website translates into the loss of conversions for that site. One way to make sure your website loads quickly is by avoiding uploading big images or high resolution photos. Optimize your images before uploading them.
Find a great host for your site since this will mean that your website loads faster. If your host does not have caching then find a caching plugin that works for you. The experts at AliveBetter share many tips and fine points about using the WordPress platform, and one crucial thing to do in order to make your website load faster is to clear the cache on your server. Learning these technical skills will go a long way in making your website load quickly which means visitors will have a positive experience with your website.
Learn to keep your dashboard clean as well as your WordPress core updated. A neat dashboard tells visitors that the website they have visited is under somebody’s care and attention. In the same way that a visitor to your house would be better welcomed by a clean living room than a messy one, keeping your dashboard neat will convey the same message to your visitors. Another reason to keep your dashboard clean is that websites with messy dashboards tend to get hacked more than if it was neat.
Uninstall old themes, but also try out new themes when an update is available. This practice keeps you at an advanced level. If there was a cutting edge to websites, that is where you would be.
Securing Your Website
There are various ways to secure your website although there are no full proof solutions to the problems that hackers can bring. The first thing you can do to protect yourself is by choosing a strong password for your website. Remembering a complicated password may not be easy but easy passwords are no protection from creative hackers who can wreak mischief on your website.
If your host does not provide security features then find a plug-in that can augment the security capabilities of your website. Furthermore, it will serve you well to remove old installations of WordPress from your hosted website because the old versions are susceptible to being hacked.
Make sure that you have an automatic backup of your website. Find a plug-in that will help you backup the content of your website. Your host may also be able to take care of this. It is important to have a backup for your website so that if you do get hacked, then you can quickly bring your website back to its original state before getting hacked.
Defining Who You Are as a Professional
Defining who you are as a professional in WordPress or in real life really depends upon the commitment that you give towards learning new things and applying them in order to further your goals. WordPress is a platform that makes web publishing accessible to most people. It provides the tools that you need and gives you a space that you can fill with content and fix up to your specific tastes. Anything that you need can be learned or can be provided by someone else who has taken the time to learn it.
WordPress is a platform that has so much potential. It is up to you to learn what you can do with it. Take small steps first and before you know it you are striding and defining who you are as a professional through the platform of WordPress.
