There are dozens of ways to go around growing your business and increasing your profits using WordPress. One of the most effective happens to be affiliate marketing, which – despite requiring some work to set up –  enables you to leverage your users, and get them to help you expand your business.

If executed properly, an affiliate program can bring in a lot of revenue and turn your business into a success story. All you need is a product to market, to pick the right tool for the job, and provide enough incentive for your affiliates to get the word out. It may sound like a lot of work, but the benefits can be significant.

Most users don’t get to spend that much time digging into the WordPress back-end or tinkering with databases. If you fall into that category, you may be doing yourself a disservice by not getting to know how databases work, since they can enable you to improve your site’s performance and tighten its security.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to get to know the basics of WordPress databases. Once you understand how they work and how to make your way around them, you’ll be able to troubleshoot your site more efficiently and even reduce loading times (which is always a plus).

Optimizing your WordPress site for speed is integral to keeping your audience happy. Users tend to have short attention spans, and they aren’t likely to stick around if a website takes too long to load. The bad news is, slow loading times may persist even if you’ve already implemented some basic optimization measures (usually due to your web host). That means you need to look outside the box for alternative solutions.

“Lazy loading” enables your site to respond faster when other optimization efforts have not reduced loading times suitably. It succeeds in this endeavor by delaying the loading of specific site elements until they’re actually needed. That way, users get to enjoy faster page loads, you get a lower bounce rate, and everyone’s happy.

When you think of a trail of breadcrumbs, the first thing that may come to mind is the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. While WordPress breadcrumbs work in much the same way – providing users with a simple navigation system to find their way “home” – they do require a bit more work to set up than just dropping food along the way.

As a tool to improve user experience and make your site more friendly to search engines, breadcrumbs can be a useful addition in most cases. If you’ve never used breadcrumbs before, then you’ll be happy to know that WordPress offers several ways to add them to your sites.

At some point, you might find yourself in a position where you want (or need) to change your WordPress username. This should be an easy task by all accounts, but unfortunately, the platform doesn’t make it as simple as it could be.

However, where there’s a will, there’s a way – or two, in this case. Our recommended approaches aren’t complicated, and getting acquainted with them may save you some trouble in the future if, for example, your credentials get compromised.

In recent years, WordPress has steadily increased in popularity among website owners and bloggers. As a side effect, the platform has become a juicy target for malicious attackers. This, of course, makes increased online security – including knowing how to scan your website for malware – a necessity for website owners.

As a WordPress user, it’s vital that you understand which types of threats you’ll be facing. You’ll also need to become acquainted with the best WordPress security tools out there and learn how to use them. This way, you’ll be prepared for any type of attack on your website and your data will remain secure at all times.

Low website loading times are paramount to an enjoyable browsing experience. If your website takes too long to load, visitors may outright abandon it, and your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be hurt as well. However, figuring out why your website feels sluggish and how to improve it isn’t always easy.

That’s where Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool – commonly referred to as the “Google Speed Test” – comes in. This service provides you with a performance score for your website (both its mobile and desktop versions) and several recommendations on how to improve it. Furthermore, since this is Google we’re talking about, you can be certain they know their stuff.

As many website owners do, you’ve likely spent countless hours learning the ins and outs of on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how to use it to best optimize your WordPress site. And while on-page SEO certainly plays a significant role in your website’s engine rankings, what’s even more important is ensuring that your website allows search engine bots easy and unfettered access to your site.

Fortunately, there’s a pretty quick fix for this universal necessity. Proper optimization of your WordPress website’s robots.txt file (and the creation of one, if necessary) can ensure your website is accessible to and understandable by search engine bots, thus putting you in the best possible position to benefit from increased search engine rankings.

WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that offers a wide variety of options for user management. However, not many people pay attention to the platform’s user roles – which is a shame, because they happen to be one of its most robust features. Furthermore, failing to define clear roles can lead to problems down the road, like authors deleting each other’s content.

Fortunately, the WordPress user roles system is relatively straightforward, and it includes several pre-defined types, which should make your life much easier. These roles will enable you to establish a clear hierarchy among your colleagues, prevent users from tampering with your site’s functionality, and protect your site in general.

WordPress is a fantastic tool for content publication and management, but the platform can be intimidating for new users. If you’re using the Content Management System (CMS) for the first time, you may be taken aback by the sheer volume of options available within the WordPress dashboard.

While the dashboard may appear complex at first, things get less intimidating once you get to know its main components. Additionally, studying each widget area and sidebar tab individually will get you a long way towards understanding the platform.

WordPress is a wonderful content management system (CMS) for building blogs and websites, in big part thanks to the myriad sophisticated themes it offers. However, too much tinkering with your themes can often lead to unintended consequences, such as losing your customizations during updates, or even site downtime.

Fortunately, WordPress offers a solution in the way of child themes that allows you to toy with a template safely. Child themes inherit the functionality of the original parent theme and offer several benefits, such as safeguarding against lost customizations. In short, they’re a key tool for customizing WordPress websites safely.

One of the most panic-inducing issues you might encounter on your WordPress website is the 500 internal server error. It can appear on any page of your website when there’s something wrong with your site’s file system or its server. Whatever the cause in your case, the outcome remains the same – your site will be offline, for all to see.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways you can troubleshoot your WordPress website, even before knowing exactly what caused the problem. Often, something as simple as deactivating themes and plugins or creating a new .htaccess file will do the trick.

Coding in a “live” environment can be a perilous — if not ill-advised — endeavor, and working remotely on a WordPress installation is no different. Any misstep in a live environment could result in an alteration that damages your site and lands you in a terrible mess.

However, there’s no need to live on the edge. It’s possible to install WordPress locally on your Mac machine, thus providing you with a safe working environment. This method will shield you from the effects of coding mishaps and supply a host of benefits, such as the avoidance of downtime.

There are myriad reasons why you might choose to work on an “offline” WordPress website – i.e. one that exists on your computer only and isn’t accessible from the web. Perhaps you’re not ready for the world to see your site yet, you want to test changes to an existing site before going live with them, or you are simply looking to tinker with WordPress without having to purchase a hosting service.

Whatever the reason(s), the process of installing WordPress locally on a Windows PC can seem unduly complicated. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be. With a completely free piece of software and this guide, you’ll be up and running with your own local WordPress installation in no time at all.

WordPress is a flexible and feature-rich Content Management System (CMS). However, its core software is relatively limited. This is by design; after all, there is no point bloating WordPress core with features that not all site owners will need. Nonetheless, if you build out anything more than a super-basic WordPress website, you will soon find yourself in need of additional functionality.

The best (and easiest) way to fill in the gaps is with plugins. WordPress offers thousands of free plugins via the WordPress Plugin Directory, and many more premium options are available across the web. There is likely a plugin for any element of functionality you can conceive.

Certain errors can dissolve all but the most hardened WordPress user’s resolve. One of the most potentially problematic is “Error establishing a database connection.” To add salt to the wound, this particular error can be due to one of many potential causes, making diagnosis a real challenge if you’re not sure where to start.

Choosing the right content management System (CMS) for your business can be a truly daunting task. There are a number of elements you need to factor in before making a decision, including (but not limited to!) customization options, ease of use, and community. And once all is said and done, how can you be sure that you’ve made the right decision? Switching from one CMS to another (such as Joomla or WordPress) once your site is set up is no mean feat.