In today’s guide, we’ll look at a few WordPress tricks you probably don’t know.
Thanks to the features you will discover, writing your articles will be much easier and faster.
WordPress tricks to write your articles faster
Let’s start with some very useful WordPress tricks to make your work faster.
Some often unknown features, in fact, will allow you to avoid unnecessary laps that could make you waste time.
1. Quick draft functionality
How many times have you found yourself in front of the blank page without knowing where to start?
Staring at the screen for hours, without being able to finish anything, is a waste of time and energy that you definitely want to avoid (the famous ” blogger block “).
Solve the problem with this trick.
Whenever you think of an idea for an article, a sentence, a topic, however fragmented and messy your thoughts may be, access your Dashboard.
On the home screen, you’ll find the Quick Draft pane .
Write in here everything that comes to your mind.
Don’t worry about style or planning your speech. Write straight away and save.
The next time you start writing an article, you’ll have a good starting point and won’t run out of ideas.
2. WordPress hotkeys
WordPress has many key combinations (shortcuts) that help you perform some actions very quickly.
You will probably know the ctrl + C and ctrl + V combinations for copying and pasting text.
Think about how much time you save using them, compared to selecting text, right clicking, selecting Copy, moving around, right clicking again, selecting Paste.
Think that you can speed up many other operations on WordPress!
If you also learn why a particular letter was chosen, you will remember keyboard shortcuts much easier.
So here are the most interesting shortcuts.
Text formatting (if you are using the Mac, replace the Control with the Command key):
ctrl + B = bold (from the English word B.old);
ctrl + I = italics (from the English word THEtalic);
ctrl + K = insert a link (from link).
Insert items (if you use the Mac, alt + shift must be replaced with Ctrl + Option):
alt + shift + M = insert an image from the media library (from the word M.edia);
alt + shift + 1 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) = insert a header of level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;
alt + shift + U = insert a bulleted list (from English Unordered list);
alt + shift + O = insert a numbered list (from English ORrdered list).
3. Screen settings
Sometimes, when creating a post or page, there are options that just can’t be found.
Maybe if you took our WordPress video course, you found yourself in trouble because the elements on your page did not match what was shown in the lesson.
Here is the mystery revealed.
The trick is to click “ Screen Settings ” at the top right.
Here you will find many items to check. All active items will appear on your screen.
This option is not present on all pages of the Board and, depending on where you are, the entries may change.
And here is another of the fundamental WordPress tricks to save time, you will no longer have to go around in circles in search of something that cannot be found.
4. Distraction-free writing mode
Sometimes I write an article and get distracted by the various items I see in the menu or toolbar.
You know the notification of updates, which continues to attract your attention and promptly say “Yes yes, I’ll do it later”?
Losing focus with these little distractions can be a real waste of time.
For this reason, many people prefer to write their posts in a text program like Word, and only when the draft is ready to transfer it to WordPress.
However, there is a simpler solution: it is the distraction-free writing mode.
To activate it, simply click the “full screen” symbol found in the WordPress writing toolbar, in the classic editor, or in the options if you use the block editor.
I add that there is also a shortcut for this function:
- in the block editor: ctrl + alt + shift + F;
- in the classic editor: shift + alt + W.
And by the way, if you don’t find the feature it’s likely to be disabled from the Settings screen (see step 3).
5. Incorporate items from other platforms
Enriching your article with multimedia elements that are stored on other platforms will help you make the content more interesting and grab the attention of readers.
In the past it was quite complicated to embed these elements, it was necessary to paste the code and you could run into some display problems.
Today everything is much faster.
If with the classic editor it is sufficient to enter the URL of a YouTube or Vimeo video to show the video within the page, with the block editor it has become even more practical.
In fact, if you go to the list of available blocks, you will find the Embeds section .
You will have a very rich list of platforms from which you can embed elements, not only YouTube, Twitter or SoundCloud, but also many others: Spotify, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, Amazon Kindle …
The only thing you will need to do is select the block and enter the URL to embed. In a few moments, your embed will be ready.
WordPress tricks for managing the dashboard
Let’s now move on to other tricks for WordPress that will be useful in various situations, will help you to better visualize some pages and to manage your Dashboard.
6. Deactivate the administration toolbar when you are logged in
When you log into WordPress and then browse the live site, the overhead toolbar is always visible.
Sometimes, it is useful to have the toolbar always available, at others, it is a real annoyance!
To deactivate it, just navigate to Users> Your profile and uncheck the item Toolbar, Show the Toolbar when viewing the site.
7. Mobile Application
Did you know that WordPress also has an application for smartphones and tablets?
The app is available for both iPhone and Android and can be used to manage both sites on WordPress.com and sites built with the .org platform.
You will manage posts, pages and comments, as well as some site settings.
8. Live preview of installed themes
From time to time, it’s common to get tempted by one of the many WordPress themes available.
Not always, but the final result is like in the demo.
Thanks to WordPress, you will be able to test themes, and use the options of the ” Customize” panel , without activating them!
To do this, install the theme you are interested in, but do not activate it.
Then click ” Live Preview “. You’ll be able to work on the customization options and see the changes live.
In order for them not to be saved, just exit the page.
9. Export contents with the “Export” feature
It is always a good idea to back up your site: there could be problems with updates, a hacker attack, an error on your part …
The absolute fastest way to make a copy of your content (attention! Not of the whole site, only of posts, pages, etc.) is through the “Export” feature included in WordPress itself.
10. Insert images into the widgets
Some users have asked us how to insert images in the sidebar.
In fact, most of the themes have a specific widget for images, but in some this functionality is not present.
If that’s the case for you, the good news is that you won’t need to install any additional plugins. Just proceed as follows:
- upload the image to the media library
- then, click “edit” and identify the so-called “file URL”.
- finally, navigate to Appearance> Widget and insert a text widget in the sidebar.
- Inside the text field enter this code:
<img src = "copy the url of the media file here">
Save the widget and you will see that the image appears on the live version of your site.
Conclusion
You’ve discovered 10 awesome WordPress tricks you probably didn’t know and now you can’t do without them.
Do you think they are all useful, or will some of them never help you?
