3 Things To Know Before You Start With WordPress

March 5, 2009

Flickr photo by steepways

So you just installed WordPress and picked your theme, and you are ready to rock out your brand new web site and blog. Pages! Posts! Widgets! You’re probably can’t wait to get started.

If you’re sitting down with a hot cup of coffee in your hand, ready to spend some serious hours in front of the computer hacking out the first version of your new web site and blog…

Let me save you some time.

WordPress software has its own quirks, and every new user makes mistakes when they are first learning their way around. Unless you enjoy doing things the hard way, here are three secrets that will save you the heartbreak of wasted hours and lost work.

1. Use Firefox to do all of your WordPress development.

You probably have a favorite browser for surfing the web, checking email and social networking. But in my experience, other browsers do surprisingly weird things to WordPress. Several of my coaching clients have spent hours and hours working on their site in another browser, only to have it end up as a garbled mess.

WordPress simply works the best on Firefox. If you’re a beginner, develop the habit of opening Firefox before you log into WordPress. If you don’t already have it, you can download Firefox here.

As your skill grows, you may want to download cool developer add-ons for Firefox to extend the browser’s functionality with handy tools like MeasureIt (a ruler that measures the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage) and Google Pagerank Status (which displays the pagerank of any web site, a good tool for competitive research.)

2. Never use Microsoft Word to create your pages and posts.

This is one of the most common causes of heartache among new WordPress users.  Excited about adding their first page or post to their new site, they write their text in Microsoft Word, then spend hours adding bold, italics, lists etc. to get it to look just right.

Flickr photo by dev null

Then when they try to copy and paste their work into WordPress, they find that it is a big pile of garbage code. It takes more time to fix it than it does to dump it all and start from scratch. That’s right — all of that time flushed down the drain. (This is where is where I have my coaching clients step away from the computer and take a deep cleansing breath.)

If you prefer to compose your pages in post in another program, then you should only compose in a program like TextEditor (Mac) or Notepad (PC) using plain text. Save your fancy formatting for the WordPress visual editor.

3. Know your niche and use keywords.

One of the reasons entrepreneurs love using WordPress is that it has many powerful search engine optimization features. But here’s the catch: these features are all based on using keywords and key phrases that have been proven to appeal to your target audience. You need a core message.

I tell my coaching clients to create a target persona to think about when they write their pages and posts.  If you have a clear picture of who your ideal customer is, and if you can describe their pain points and desires, then you can create a set of key words and key phrases to use in your text, headlines and metatags.

I recommend keeping a list of up to 25 key words and phrases next to your computer, and use them as often as you can in your posts and SEO fields. The more consistent you are, the faster your site will rise to the top of search result pages.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with using your site as a testing ground. You can use the “throw it up and see what sticks” approach to figure out what people click on the most, but it will take you far longer to build any meaningful traffic that way. If you’re shooting in the dark today, I guarantee you will eventually need to overhaul the language on your entire site to “retrofit” it to your audience’s needs and desires. Why not do things right from the start?

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Posted in Blogging, Featured Posts, Search Optimization, WordPress