A Beginner’s Guide to the WordPress Dashboard

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.

How to Embed Google Calendar in WordPress and Why This Will Make Your Life Easier

Google Calendar is quickly emerging as people’s go-to calendar application all over the world. With exceptional functionality, ease of use, and integration with Google’s other services, this should come as no surprise. In fact, 57% of people surveyed say ease of use is their number one priority when it comes to choosing which calendar application to use. Hence, the reason Google Calendar ranks number one.

Why WordPress Child Themes Are Important (and How to Create Them)

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.

The 500 Internal Server Error: What it is, and How to Fix it

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.

How to Install WordPress Locally on Your Mac Computer

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.

How to Install WordPress Locally on Your Windows PC

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.

How to Install, Activate, and Update Your WordPress Plugins

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.

Favicon Fever: All you need to know about installing a Favicon via WordPress

Creating a tight, consistent brand is crucial in the web world, and one of the ways this is achieved is through a website’s overall look and feel. If you’ve overlooked the favicon, that little colorful icon sitting in the tab of your web browser, you are missing out on an easy way to keep visitors recognizing your site and brand. Your favicon is your company’s calling card, one that distinguishes you from the other 37 tabs sitting open on your user’s web browser. It’s a nifty little file that contains multiple iterations of one image at various sizes, which allows for image viewing across all the different browsers and operating systems.

Joomla or WordPress: Which is the Right Content Management System For You?

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.

Should You Consider WordPress Multisite?

Raise your hand if you have more than one website. Don’t be shy; I know it can be addicting. After all, launching your first website is an exciting adventure, especially when you do it all by yourself with the help of WordPress. It’s only natural that you want to feel that sense of accomplishment again and bring your next big idea to life. In fact, you probably have two or three sites under your belt. But, if you’re like most WordPress users, you’re probably logging into each website separately. In that case, you know the hassle of managing multiple sites. You have to update WordPress, themes, and plugins on one site, and then repeat the process for every other website you operate.

8 Best WordPress Contact Form Solutions and How to Use Them

You need a way for people to contact you via your website. No matter what your site is about, that’s a fact. But there’s a problem…there’s no default WordPress contact form tool. So to create an effective way for readers to contact you, you’ll need to turn to an external solution.

Whether you’ve already tried (and been disappointed by) a contact form plugin or this is your first go round, keep reading to learn all about the best contact form solutions for WordPress and how you can implement them on your site. I’ll give you options for both free and premium plugins, as well as some unique non-plugin contact form solutions.

How to Use the WordPress .htaccess File to Optimize Your Website

WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which (in part) means that you can make whatever changes you like to core files. In short, you’re in control of every aspect of your website. While that power can be intoxicating and you may be excited by the prospect, you might also reasonably be intimidated by making irreparable changes and damaging (or even ‘breaking’) your site.

Embed a Google Form in Your WordPress Site with these Simple Steps

Whether you are looking to collect user feedback, create client questionnaires, customer satisfaction surveys or contact forms, you will at some point need to generate a form for your website. Now, you probably know there are a ton of plugins and paid services that can help you achieve this, but before you wander off to plugin land, consider for a moment an alternative solution: Google Forms. These free, basic forms are a cinch to integrate into your site, and today we’re going to walk you through exactly how to embed a Google form to your website and get the most out of the data collection process.

How to Start a Food Blog – From Concept to Launch!

Food blogging is a fun and profitable way to participate in a community of like-minded creatives with a passion for food, photography, and writing. Don’t let anyone tell you that the market is saturated, because that’s simply not the case. This post will teach you how to start a food blog in a few easy steps and if you are willing to put in the time and effort, there’s nothing stopping you from building a vibrant, revenue-positive food blog that propels you into the next phase of your life.

This tutorial is for the food aficionado who has the passion to start a cooking blog but might not have all the technical know-how needed to take the first step. If this describes you, just follow the simple directions below and you should have a blog set up in as little as twenty minutes.

How to Start a Fashion Blog

Way back in 2005, Scott Schuman’s street style blog, The Sartorialist, rocked the blogosphere and launched a slew of location-specific fashion blogs. Everyone wanted to start one, including us (yours truly had a Portland Street Style blog at the time).

Since then, the fashion blog industry has taken the web world by storm, with top bloggers becoming brands in and of themselves and making well over $1 million a year from affiliates, product placements, social media marketing and more, according to a recent article from Fast Company. There’s no magic behind what these people are doing – they all start with the same tools: a laptop, a website template, and some zany idea that maybe, just maybe, they can make it. With a little luck and a lot of persistence, many of them succeed beyond what they ever thought possible. So how can you cash in on the internet fashion market? Read on for how to start a fashion blog.

How to Make a Wedding Website Using WordPress

When Kendall and I were planning our wedding in 2010, we wanted to provide our friends and family a website to visit where they could find the wedding schedule, maps, photos, and our registration. We were looking for a website that was simple and elegant. It needed to offer basic features like an RSVP form, and we had to be able to update it easily as plans for the event changed.

At the time, the options were pretty limited, so Kendall ended up creating something from scratch. It was beautiful and perfectly matched our wedding’s aesthetic, but the process opened our eyes to how difficult making a wedding website could be for someone outside the web development world.

Thankfully, over the following years, all that has changed and there are now a variety of wonderful ways to create wedding websites and hundreds of beautiful templates to choose from. In this article, we are going to work through how to make a wedding website with WordPress using one of the beautiful WordPress themes in the collection below.