Is WordPress Easy to Use What You Need To Know And How To Fix It

Last updated on August 1st, 2018 at 06:18 pm

Is WordPress easy to use and what are the most important things I need to do when launching my first blog?

I’m not going to lie, WordPress is not an easy platform. Especially, if you’ve never used it. As a new blogger, it’s so easy to waste time on things that aren’t important.

>> READ MY GUIDE ON HOW TO START A BLOG <<

Today, I’m going to share something that I think you should know. Then I’ll share some things that are complete time wasters and you shouldn’t spend time on them.

Is WordPress Easy to Use My First Experience

I still remember the first time I set up my first WordPress site for a client. It took me 8 hours to set up the site. The site was ugly, but I was so proud that I finally figured it out.

Today, I’ve been working with WordPress for over 8 years. I am now managing over 35 sites for clients and now the basics come pretty easy to me.

But it wasn’t always like that. It took a lot of time online playing with WordPress and learning the ins and outs of it before I finally became comfortable enough to offer my WordPress services.

Now I’m looking to walk away from my freelancing business and turn this blog into a full-time business.

I thought I would go ahead and share some tips that you can use to help you build a solid foundation on your blog.

Plus I’ll also show you how to implement these tips so you won’t walk away wondering what to do.

If you’re completely new to WordPress, you may want to consider picking up my WordPress Complete Beginners Guide: A Reference Guide to Help You Set Up Your First WordPress Blog to help you better understand WordPress.

Important Foundations to Follow

I am a huge believer in setting up the best foundation possible. Once you’ve implemented these tips you can then start focusing on writing amazing content for your readers.

So follow along and let’s make sure that you’ve set up WordPress blog with these foundational items.

Set A Strong Password

We’ve all heard of the importance of using a strong password. I personally use Roboform to generate a 35 character password for my blog.

I’m no fool and I know that hackers are smart. This is why I make it a point to change my password every 3-6 months.

I got this idea from my banking account. They require that I change my password every 6 months, so I figured why not do this for my blog as well.

How Do I Change My Password?

Changing your WordPress password is extremely easy, once you’re logged in. Head on over to Users >> Your Profile

Scroll down until you see Account Management.

Click on the Generate New Password. You can either let WordPress generate the password for you, or you can create your own.

Don’t forget to update your changes to make sure that your profile is updated.

Delete Unused Themes

I still don’t understand why some people want to keep all the themes on their blog that they were once using and no longer use.

For security reasons, you want to make sure that you don’t have a bunch of inactive themes on your blog. While I personally think it’s okay to have one inactive theme in case something happens with your live theme,

You’ll be able to activate your inactive theme to keep your blog going. (don’t laugh, I’ve had that happen to a client) Thankfully she had an inactive them available and we just activated it and her site was accessible.

However, if you’re one of those bloggers who has not taken the time to delete your unused themes, let me show you how to do this.

It’s easy to do and won’t take any time at all. Be sure that you have a backup on hand, just in case something goes wrong.

Deleting Themes Using cPanel

You can do this via FTP or your cPanel hosting account. For this tutorial, I’ll be logging into my hosting account.

Go to cPanel then go to File Manager and choose your domain.

Next, go to wp-content >> themes

You’ll see all the themes installed on your WordPress blog. Make sure that you don’t delete the active theme. You’ll notice that I am also using the Genesis Framework on this testing site, don’t delete that either.

To delete a theme you’re not using, just highlight the theme and then click delete.

Now you’ve deleted all those themes that you’re not using anymore. That’s another step you’ve taken to protect your WordPress blog.

If you still haven’t found the right WordPress theme, don’t forget to check out Tiffany’s WordPress themes.

Start Optimizing Your Blog For Organic Traffic

You’re going to be writing a ton of content on your blog. One of the best things that you can do is make sure that you’re optimizing all your content.

Eventually, as your blog starts to age (kind of like fine wine) you’ll start to notice that your Google organic traffic will start to increase.

I recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin because it will help you ensure that your blog post is properly optimized.

How to Use Yoast SEO

First things first, you’ll want to make sure you’ve done your keyword research or have an idea of what you want your post to rank for.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you take your time to create a title that makes people want to click.

Once you have that information, it’s time to add the information to Yoast SEO.

This will help you stay on track while writing your blog post. Then you can check your score before you hit publish.

You’ll notice that I have a green light on both the readability score and the SEO score. To tell you the truth, I don’t always get a green light on the readability score.

If this explanation was not thorough enough, here’s a great article that will show you how to properly optimize your blog posts.

Creating A Backup

If you’re just starting your blog, you might not even think a backup is important. However, if you get this taken care of from the start, you won’t have to worry about it as your blog starts to grow.

Using A Free Plugin

You can pay for subscription services like BlogVault or VaultPress. However, if you’re blog is brand new, I recommend using the Updraft Plus plugin.

It’s easy to set up and did I mention, it’s free.

Setting Up the Plugin

Once you’ve installed the plugin, head on over to your plugins and click on the Updraft plus settings.

You’ll be taken to your Updraft plus dashboard. You can choose to create a manual backup, which I recommend if you don’t have a backup plan for your blog right now.

Setting Up Automatic Backups

I recommend setting up automatic backups. This way you can focus on growing your blog and NOT worry about having a backup.

You’re going to have several different options of where you want to store your backups. When I used the plugin, I stored my backups on Amazon S3. It’s cheap to use and you can access your backup even if your hosting account goes down.

Remove Dummy Content

WordPress installations come with helpful demo content to help show you the publishing features of the software.

You’ll get a sample page called “Sample Page” and a demo blog post called “Hello World.” Be sure that you delete both of them before you publish your blog.

To delete the post or the page, all you have to do is click on the delete button.

Make Your Links SEO Friendly

WordPress comes pre-installed with default permalinks set up. Personally, I prefer to use an SEO friendly permalink.

It may sound confusing, but it’s really not. Most bloggers use the SEO friendly permalink.

Don’t spend too much time on this, read this if you want to know what the best permalink structure is for your blog.

Update Your WordPress Software

WordPress releases updates on a regular basis to help prevent vulnerabilities. You’ll know if your software needs to be updated if you see a notification when you log into your dashboard.

I know that it can be scary to update your blog if you’ve never done it. Remember, we’ve set up a backup plan for your blog. As long as your blog has been backing up, you should be good to go.

Go ahead and click on the update your software and follow through on the prompts. It doesn’t take long and before you know it, you’ll be running the latest version.

Keep Track of Your Visitors

Once you start promoting your blog and working on growing it, you’re going to realize just how much work goes into it.

You want to make sure that you know which marketing methods are working to drive traffic to your blog and what isn’t.

This will help you determine which blogging tasks you should continue doing and which ones you should drop.

Here’s a great tutorial on how to add Google Analytics to your blog.

Make Your Content Shareable

It’s going to take you a long time to write amazing content that helps your readers solve problems.

One of the worst things you can do is spend all your time creating content and not spend time promoting it. You need to have to learn how to promote your content.

It may take some time to learn how to drive traffic to your blog. But trust me, spending the time learning is well worth it.

If you still haven’t started using Pinterest, to help you grow your blog. Be sure to read about how I’m using Pinterest and read about my Pinterest case study.

Get People to Share Your Content

People are lazy, I am too. If I read an amazing blog post and I can’t find the share button, guess what, I’m not going to give that post any love.

As bloggers, there’s always so much to do. I don’t have time to dig around someone’s site just to share content.

Add clickable Tweets to your content. You might have seen them inside of people’s blog posts. All you have to do is click on it and it tweets it out for you.

You need your content shared and the best way to do that is to make it as easy as possible for people to share.

If you don’t have a plugin in mind or want to see some different ones, I suggest you look at both the Social Warfare plugin and the Monarch Social Sharing plugin.

Setup Your Author Profile

It’s your blog and you should be proud of it. Take your time to set up your author profile and let people know who you are.

A lot of new bloggers make the mistake of trying to hide and for some reason they don’t want to show their face.

There are so many online scams online in today’s day and age. One of the best things that you can do if you’re serious about building a profitable blog is come out from behind your computer.

Start showing your pearly whites and let people get to know you. I know that it’s uncomfortable. But people want to know who you are and what you do before they will do business with you.

That’s Really All You Need to Do

Now that you’ve run through those steps, that’s all you really need to do to get started. Yes, there are other things that you’ll need to learn as you continue working on your blog.

However, you don’t need to worry about them from day one. If you’ve followed through these steps, you’re ready to start blogging.

What You Should Focus On

The only thing you should be focusing on when you’re brand new and trying to grow your blog is writing amazing content that people want or need.

Then you’ll need to make sure that you’re following the 80/20 rule of promotion. Otherwise, no one will ever see or share your content.

Final Take Away

One of the biggest mistakes that most bloggers make when they start their blog is they think they will see success right away. While some people do have success right away.

The truth is that it takes time to start seeing traction on your blog. Put your head down and keep working towards your blogging goals.

Treat your blog like a business and one day you’ll look back and see the blogging empire that you created.

Don’t worry about getting stuck with WordPress or not knowing what to do. You’ll learn the basics as you continue logging in and working on your blog.

Before you know it, you’ll know exactly what to do and you won’t need to waste time searching for WordPress tutorials online anymore.

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Did you start on a self-hosted WordPress blog? If so what was your learning curve like?