Kokul’s World

The folks over at hongkiat.com offer tips through a blog post on how you can get the most out of your Wordpress site using 30 new useful tricks and hacks.

There are some great tips on that site. However I also wanted to add a few of my own in addition to what is there.

1. Keep your Wordpress site up to date.
   Of course the most obvious part of this is keeping your install updated since it means new features, bug fixes and additions. An outdated Wordpress install leaves you wide open to be hacked and also means you are missing out on the many improvements that are made to Wordpress during each release.
   However a not so obvious part that many people seem to forget is to update plugins and themes. Like the base install, plugins and themes are also updated regularly by their authors to add new features, improvements, security fixes and bug fixes. Thus, outdated plugins and themes leave your install open to errors, problems and hacking as well.
2. Validate your site with W3C tools.
   Search engines and most web browsers prefer if your site is 100% valid HTML and CSS markup. So once you get a theme and your site up and running, validate it using W3C’s markup validator. That way your users don’t see wonky effects and search engines are slightly happier. Also, keep checking your site with this tool periodically since updates to plugins, themes and Wordpress may cause problems. Also new plugins can also cause invalid markup when activated.
3. Get rid of plugins you rarely use or never use
   The most important reason for this is to improve the performance of your site. Too many unnecessary plugins means more server resources are being used to generate your site, slowing loading times. This may also lead to you getting in trouble with your web host. Also, the larger the number of plugins, the harder it is to maintain and keep compatibility with one another and with Wordpress.

That’s all I have for now. One last thing I can recommend is using Google and the news feed on your Dashboard to keep yourself up-to-date with what is happening in the Wordpress world. Things are always changing and the more knowledge you have, the better equipped you can be to keep that install running smoothly and working great. There are loads of tips articles out there, so read them and try them out. Keep in mind though that like this article will soon become, there are many that are outdated and things change fast in the world of Wordpress.