So, what do you do if you see an update message (“#wordpress xx.x is available! Please update now”) in your WordPress Admin Screens? Never ignore that message. There are enormous variety of Scams and other malicious activities circulating around the internet. When wordpress notice a new malicious activity, they add updates to defend against them. WordPress constantly add new features, improvements and release ‘updates’ at regular intervals. Well, not just the WordPress core, but also plugins and themes providers also release ‘updates’ at regular intervals.
Check current site for updates
To check your website for WordPress Core, plugin, or theme updates, log into your wordpress admin and click Dashboard>>Updates.
Updates menu
You can see list of updates there.
updates available
Note: If a WordPress Plugin update is available, it also will be shown on the Plugin’s menu title, and on the Plugin List Page. If a WordPress theme update is available, it also will be shown on the theme List Page(Appearance>>Themes). You should always update WordPress Releases, Plugins and Themes to the latest version to make sure your website is also up-to-date with new features and security updates.
Version 3.7 onwards WordPress introduced automatic updates for minor releases (For example, it will automatically update itself from WordPress 3.7 to 3.7.1.). But this Auto update is not enabled for major releases like 3.7 to 3.8.
Update/upgrade your WordPress core, themes and plugins easily
Sure, updating can be a pain, but now you are able to update/upgrade your WordPress and plugins to a newer version easily and users never even realize that WordPress has updated. If your site is hosted with a managed WordPress hosting, the host usually takes care of automatic updates. For other users, you can enable automatic updates in 2 different ways.
Configure the settings
Go to the settings page by clicking Settings >> Advanced Automatic Updates.
Go to settings
Select your options and click “Save Changes.
Update plugin settings
Method2: Edit your wp-config.php file
Login to the Cpanel and then click on the File Manager icon in the Files section.
click on the File Manager icon
You’ll see a pop-up window. Select your site and click on GO in order to proceed.
click Go
The wp-config.php is the file contained in the root of your WordPress file directory. Click on it and from the top menu choose “Edit”.
Open file to edit
Add the following to enable major WordPress Releases updates
Add the following line of code in your site’s wp-config.php file. Add the following to enable plugins updates
Add the following line of code in your site’s wp-config.php file.
Plugin update
Add the following to enable themes updates
Add the following line of code in your site’s wp-config.php file.
theme update
Once you’ve finished editing the file click on SAVE CHANGES in the top right hand corner.
There are times you like content elements on a blog post (perhaps a table design, some styling, or some layout which remains consistent) and you want to create another post with same configuration including all its widgets, template settings ect. Well, an easy way to do this, without having to know how to format anything, is by duplicating the post and making changes.
You can easily create a #duplicate post by using a plugin called duplicate post.
Duplicate Post plug-in Settings
The plugin comes with a number of settings. Avoid this step if you want to use default settings.Go to Settings >> Duplicate Post. There you can decide whether you’d like to do things like copy the original date, the original status (draft, published, pending), the original excerpt, the original attachments, children of the original page, and taxonomies and more.
Duplicate Post Settings
Create Duplicate
There are two ways to duplicate a post or a page. Method 1:
Go to Posts > All Posts (or Pages > All Pages). Mouse over the title of the post(page) you want to duplicate. You will see two new links there – Clone or New Draft.
Duplicate Post
Clicking “Clone” will copy the post/page without opening it. Clicking “New Draft” will copy the post/page and also open it in the editor for you. Method 2:
Open the post you can to duplicate in edit mode.
Open post in edit mode
On the post writing screen, you can click the link that says, “Copy to a new draft.” This will open a duplicate of the post or page in a new edit screen.
Including images in an article is the best way to illustrate your ideas. Adding Images make your content interesting and make readers more engaging. WordPress makes it really easy to add images to your posts. In this article we will discuss how to insert images into WordPress posts (or) pages.
Create a New Post/(Page), or Open an existing Post/(Page)
To create new Post, from your wordpress Dashboard go to Posts>>Add New (To create new page, go to Pages>>Add New ).
Add New
Note: If you want to add image to an existing post, open your post. Go to Posts>>All Posts>>click on the post’s title to view the edit page.
Edit Post
Click the Add Media button
Now you are in the post-write screen. Place your cursor where you want the image to appear and click the ‘Add Media’ button.
Add Media
Now you will see insert media screen. To insert image, you have following 3 options.
insert image
Insert Your Image
Upload From Computer
First let us see how to upload images that are already saved on your computer. Click on upload files>> Click on the ‘Select Files’ button.
Select files
Find image file from your PC and click on Open button. Wait for WordPress to upload and crunch the image. Click on the blue Insert into post button to add the image to your post.
Insert
Note: After uploading an image from your PC, You will see a number of options(attachment details and attachment display settings) on the right hand side. You can either use the default setting displayed there >> Click on the blue Insert into post button or see how to use these settings .
Insert from Media Library – If you already have uploaded images and have a Media Library in your blog, select from any images in the media library by clicking on it, click on the blue Insert into post button to add the image to your post.
Insert from Media Library
Note: After selecting an image from media library, you will see a number of options(attachment details and attachment display settings) on the right hand side. You can either use the default setting displayed there >> Click on the blue Insert into post button or see how to use these settings.
Insert from URL
Insert from URL
Different settings for uploaded image – after uploading an image from your PC (or selecting an image from media library), You will see attachment details and display settings on the right hand side of the media up loader interface. Attachment details:
Attachment Details section displays:
A small thumbnail of the image
File details
A links that allow you to Edit Image
A links that allow you to Delete image from your site.
Enter the title of this media.
Enter a caption that will be displayed below the image.
Enter the Alt text for the image to describe the media.
A description for this particular media.
Image details
Attachment Display settings
Display settings
Alignment
The Alignment setting controls where your image will be displayed and how it interacts with content on the page.
Align
Link To You can create different types of image links here.
Media File: This is default option.This will automatically link to full-size version of the file.
Attachment Page: Links your inserted image to its WordPress media attachment page.
Custom URL: Allows you to set a custom link URL for your inserted image
None: This setting will remove the link completely.
Image size – The Size settings determine the size of the image you are adding to your site.
Image Size
How to edit Image Attributes in an existing WordPress Post
You can always edit different image attributes such as the alignment of an image or alt/title/caption/description text of an image that already inserted in a post. Open the post in the post-write screen(follow step 1 on this page). Make sure that visual editor tab is selected. Click on the image you want to edit. You can see two icons over the image. The left icon (pencil Image) allows you to edit the image properties and the right icon (X Image) will delete the image from your content.
edit image
Click the edit image icon to edit the image properties. A pop-up window will appear and you can edit the various image properties there. The Edit Original button allows you to do some simple manipulations such as Crop, Rotate, Scale, and Flip Images. The Replace button allows you to replace the image entirely.
edit attributes
After making changes, click the Update button to save your changes. If you do not want to make any changes, click the small ‘x’ in the top-right of the pop-up window to close the pop-up.
WordPress blog comes with a great visual editor to #write a post mixed with images, links, and other html elements. Here is a step-by-step process for writing a new post in WordPress. Log into your WordPress administration panel(e.g. use URL: http://www.yoursitename.org/wp-admin). From your sidebar on left side, go to Posts > Add New
Add new Post
Now you can see Add New Post screen – following fig illustrate 6 simple steps to write a post.
Write a Post
Write your title
Enter a title in the first line of the form. Always choose titles that will interest people and indicate what your article is about.
Write your article
Start writing your post in the wordpress text editor. The WordPress text editor can be used in 2 forms – the Visual Editor and the HTML Editor. The visual editor is the default editing mode for WordPress. Click the “text” tab at the top of the text editor box to go to text editor mode and “Visual” tab to go to visual editor mode .
Visual Tab
Visual editor allows you to easily create, edit, and format your blog content similar to that of a word processor. Let us see some editing icons contained within the visual editor. Make yourself familiar with the options available. Pass your mouse over the icon and a small tooltip will appear describing the icon and its purpose.
editing icons
Create bold, underlined, italic, strike-through text: Highlight the text and click on bold, underlined, italic, strike-through icon.
highlight the text and click on bold, underlined, italic, strike-through icon
Add, Edit & Remove Links
To add a link, highlight the text you want to add link and then click on insert/edit link icon. To edit a link, highlight the link you want to edit and then click on insert/edit link icon.
Click on icon
A pop-up box will appear. Enter the fields and click on Add link button.
Insert link
To Remove Links, select the link text and click on ‘Remove link’ icon.
Remove link
Lists and Block quotes Lists and Blockquotes
To create ordered list or unordered list, click on icon as shown in figure. Type your fist entry and hitting enter will create another list element.
Headings & Paragraph Headings
Click on the drop down box labelled “Paragraph.” to view different headings and paragraph formatting
To change text color
text color
Adding images
Add images
Text Alignment
Text Alignment
Insert More tag
Instead of displaying entire post on your home page, it is a good idea to extract the first part of your post followed by a “more…” link. This will give visitors a good overview of your content without making them scroll forever and they can read full content by clicking on the ‘ more..’ link.
more..
You can accomplish this by using insert more tag. See the fig below. Insert your cursor in the place where you want to display ‘more..’ link and click on “Insert read More tag” icon.
insert more tag
Write your posts in HTML – If you’re ready to write your posts in HTML, click on text tab and write your article in the post content area.
text tab
Select Categories
Now select in which category your article belongs to. Categories tie related posts. Categories help the search engines and readers find related articles on your blog. If you do not see relevant category there, you can add a category by clicking on “Add New Category” link.
There are two ways to add Categories. They can be added while adding/ editing your Post or they can be added via the Categories menu option.
categories
Add Tags.
Tags are another way to tie related posts. While categories are general, tags are specific.
tags
Preview your article.
Preview
Publish your article.
See the fig above. WordPress offers additional option while publishing a post.
Publish
Click on the Edit link next to “Visibility: Public”:You can make your post public and make it a sticky on the front page or you can choose to password protect it or make it completely invisible to people that are not logged in to your blog.
Click on the Edit link next to “Publish immediately“. You can also setup your post to be published in the future. Just set the date/time you want your post to be published.
WordPress is driven by loyal ambitious wordpress developers who have created plugins to extend its out-of-the-box functionality and in fact, you can find a plugin for anything. WordPress Plugin Directory contains a great variety of free plugins that anyone can use . And many premium WordPress plugins are available to help you supercharge your site. Using a wordpress plugin is the fastest and easiest way to extend the functionality of your WordPress site.
How to install a WordPress Plugin?
For the novice user, it is very easy to install a plugin right from your site dashboard. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps of installing and activating a Plugin on your WordPress Powered blog.
We can install a wordpress plugin using any of following 3 methods:
Upload a Plugin using FTP Manager and install from Admin Panel
You can also upload the unzipped plugin folder using FTP and later install it from WordPress admin panel. This is the least preferred method, but will be useful, if you don’t have a plugin zip file or if upload feature in method 2 does not work due to server getting timed out. This step involves using a FTP client to upload your files to your server. Click here for instructions ( in same page)
Method 1: Install a Plugin from WordPress Admin Panel using Search Option
Log into your WordPress administration panel.
From your sidebar on left side, go to Plugins > Add New
Install plugin
In this page you can see a list of featured/popular plugins available in wordpress plugin directory. Locate search box, enter the name of the plugin into the search field and perform the search
Search
Select your plugin from the search results and click on Install button.
Install
Wait for a while to download and install the plugin onto your blog.In the next step click on activate plugin.
Activate
Now you are done. Note that some plugins need some additional settings. So go back to Plugin page >> Find your plugin and check if your plug requires any additional settings. If so, click on settings link to enter your details. You can also read more details about your plugin by clicking on details link.
install Plugin
Method 2: Install a Plugin from WordPress Admin Panel using Upload Method
You can find many premium plugins to enhance your site’s features on internet. Download the plugin as a zip file. Please follow steps below if this is the case.
Download Plugin and save it somewhere on your computer.
download plugin
Save plugin zip file
Log into your WordPress administration panel. Go to Plugins > Add New. Click on Upload Plugin.
click on upload
Use the browse button to select the plugin zip file that was downloaded.
Upload plugin Select zip file
After uploading the zip, Click install Now button.
Install
In the next step click on activate plugin.
Activate
Now you are done. Some plugins need to fill more settings. So go back to Plugin page >> Find your plugin and click in settings link to enter your details.
install Plugin
Method 3: Upload a Plugin using FTP Manager and activate from Admin Panel
This step involves Extracting plugin files, using a FTP client and FTP user to upload your files to your server.
Extracting Plugin files
Locate your downloaded Plugin file. Mostly the Themes are zipped therefore you’ll have to extract them in a separate folder
extract file
Find the downloaded .zip file in the hard drive.
Right click on the file and select “extract all”
Extract files
Select the location to extract the files to and Click “ok.”
Launch FTP client FTP client lets you move files to your website Host. Personally, i use “FileZilla FTP Client” and it works for me. If you do not have FileZilla, follow FileZilla installation tutorial to install and connect to your host.
Launch FileZilla and connect to your hosting(Refer this tutorial if you need any help on this). After a successful connection, you can see Local Site displays data from your local machine. and Remote Site displays data from your Host web space directory.
On the left, i.e. Local Site, locate the directory where you extracted your plugin files.
On the right, i.e. Remote Site, locate the directory where your WordPress blog is stored from the main directory. Click and open it. WordPress has its files arranged in a special directory listing as: wp-admin/., wp-content/, wp-includes/. Plugins are in wp-content/plugins directory. Browse through to plugins folder and click to open. Now you’ll have all your plugins in their folders.
You simply drag plugin’s folder (for e.g. nofollow-for-external-link) from the local machine and drop to plugin folder, and then wait until transfer is complete.
Now, i need you to login to your WordPress blog. Go to dashboard, under Plugins, you will see all your plugins in place. Find your plugin and activate it.
Initially I collected and compiled my data in a Google drive spreadsheet. Once data was ready, I wanted to present the data in a wordpress post, in a way that reader should be able to sort the data by any column(ascending or descending). So I was in search of a good plugin that can help me do so.
There are couple of good plugins for fancy table display in wordpress posts. But I chose Easy Table Plugin, based on its features as well as user ratings and reviews in wordpress.org site.
At the end of this article, we’ll also have a quick look at Posts Table Pro. This plugin is an interesting alternative to Easy Tables because instead of entering data to your WordPress tables manually, it automatically creates tables listing content already stored on your website.
Easy Table Plugin
Idea behind this plugin is to generate table data using CSV(Comma Seperated Values) format. With simple additions, you table data is ready for display in your wordpress page or post or even inside a widget. Good thing is this is very simple to use and you don’t need advanced skills to use it.
Let me illustrate this with a simple table example here. Now, if you mouse over any column, a sort icon appears. You can click this icon to sort that column in ascending or descending order. So simple.
Year
Make
Model
Length
1997
Ford
E350
2.34
2000
Mercury
Cougar
2.38
So let us see how to install this plugin and then how to use it.
Install Easy Table Plugin.
Log into your wordpress admin.
Go to Plugins >> Add New.
In the search box enter ‘Easy Table’ and search.
Select ‘Easy Table’ from search results and click on the link ‘Install Now’.
Go to Plugins >> Installed Plugins. Find Easy Table and activate the plugin.
How to use Easy Table. A full example :
Generate table data using CSV(Comma Separated Values) format.
Table data in CSV format means text that is separated with a comma. You can create a CSV using a text editor such as Notepad, Microsoft Excel and Google Docs. Here we are using Google docs for demo purpose.
Open Google Drive >>Click on Create >> Spreadsheet.
Create CSV
Enter data and and click File, Download as, and then select CSV (current sheet).
Generate table data using CSV(Comma Separated Values)format
Open CSV in Notepad.
Open CSV
Step 2: Embedd CSV data between <table> and </table> tags
Create a new post and embed table data. Actually you can embed csv data in 2 ways.
Method 1: Copy and paste CSV from notepad.
Embed table data
Look at the table data here. The entire table data is embedded between<table> and </table>. First row is reserved for table titles(Note: you can also create table with no heading using table parameter.). And you see that next 2 rows in the example are data rows. So simple.
Method 2: Upload CSV file and insert the file path
Embed file path
Look at the table data here. Save and upload the CSV(Comma Separated Values) . Insert the location of your file between<table> and </table>( See fig above).
The result:
Year
Make
Model
Length
1997
Ford
E350
2.34
2000
Mercury
Cougar
2.38
Other Features
You can add additional parameter to this <table> tag and use cell attribute to control other features of table.
Table with initial sort order on load
You can control sort order on load in 2 ways. Add sort=”desc” or sort=”asc” to <table> tag. Method 1: Using table parameter Table with initial sort order using table parameter. See the table example below. First column is sorted descending on load.
Year
Make
Model
Length
1997
Ford
E350
2.34
2000
Mercury
Cougar
2.38
2010
Nissan
Micra
4.38
Table with initial sort order
Method 2: Using cell attribute
Initial sort order
Table with first column descending, second column ascending
For example, the following table on load sort first column descending and then sort second column ascending.
Year
Make
Model
Length
1997
Ford
E350
2.34
1998
Maruthy
Zen
3.38
2000
Mercury
Cougar
2.38
2000
Nissan
Micra
4.38
2000
Maruthy
Zen
3.38
2000
BMW
Micra
4.38
Table with initial sort
Disable sort for any column
Look at the table below. Sort for third column is disabled here.
no
Item
Kg
Price
1
Orange
2
100.00
2
Grapes
1
75.25
3
Pinapple
5
130.00
4
Mango
8
250.00
You can do this 2 ways. Method 1: Add a table parameter ‘sort=,,false’.
table parameter
Method 2: Add a cell attr ‘sort=false’.
disable sort by adding a cell attr
Set index to table
For example see following table with auto index, start from number 2
No.
head1
head2
head3
2
row1col1
row1col2
row1col3
3
row2col1
row2col2
row2col3
4
row3col1
row3col2
row3col3
5
row4col1
row4col2
row4col3
initial Index
In addition to setting auto index to a table, you can give a title to that column and you can set width of that column.
auto index
Other features
For example see following code shows how to add table parameter to create a table with specific width, style etc.
Adding table parameter
Following code shows how to use attribute in some cells.
attribute in cells
Posts Table Pro
Alternative table plugin – Create instant WordPress tables with Posts Table Pro
As you can see, Easy Tables is a neat plugin that lets you display static data in a table on your WordPress site. Before we finish, I’ll tell you about another WordPress table plugin that lets you create instant tables without having to enter data manually.
Posts Table Pro works by generating tables of information already stored on your WordPress website. It’s a great alternative to Easy Tables if you want tables that will automatically update with the latest data. Here are some examples of websites that would benefit from this type of WordPress table plugin:
Index of blog posts or articles – It doesn’t take long for a WordPress blog to become so big that it’s hard for visitors to find your older posts. No one wants to scroll through multiple pages of posts! Use Posts Table Pro to create a blog post index or article directory, which will automatically update when you add a new post.
Document library or knowledge base – If you want to create a WordPress document library then you can create a ‘Documents’ post type and use Posts Table Pro to list your documents in a table view. Your visitors can either download the document directly from the table, or click through to a single page for each document. You can categorize documents and add filters to help customers find the documents they need.
List of events or e-commerce products – Amazingly, Posts Table Pro can list any WordPress post type in a table. This opens the door to many other possible use cases. For example, if you’re using a WordPress events plugin or e-commerce plugin then you can list your events or products in a table layout too.
The dynamic table plugin is easy to set up and comes with lots of options. There’s a detailed plugin knowledge base to help you configure your WordPress tables in any way you like.
So we have seen how to use “Easy Table” plugin to create a nice sortable table. Have you created sortable tables using other plugins? Share your experience below.
If you have spend much time around #wordpress, then there is a good high probability that you have come across the term “WP_Query before. However, if you are totally new to the concept, then let us guide you through it.
WP_Query is a #php class that has certain properties but it contains a lot of powerful behavior. Some of the things you need to understand about WP_Query is that by default, when you just say new WP_Query, you don’t get much use from it. Rather, you get most of the value from WP_Query from understanding how to initialize it correctly.
In choosing the right hosting platform for your WordPress site, there are three options to choose from: Shared, Managed, and Dedicated or VPS. A Virtual Private Server or VPS can be a great choice for websites that need more resources such as a more powerful server, or more bandwidth. If your website is very large or it makes use of very complex features, and is also getting a lot of visitors and page views, then a VPS hosting is the best option for you.
This is because you’ll be sharing with less users than a regular shared hosting. You will be allocated to a much more substantial portion of the server compared to a shared hosting. With this, you can optimize the server for your website in order to get the best performance.
As a beginner,you have probably heard of various free and paid #wordpress themes available online. You may have tried out a few themes until you’ve found one that meets your needs. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install a WordPress theme.
This guide will cover the three different ways you can install a theme. However, before installing a WordPress theme, keep in mind that once you activated a new theme, it will change how your website looks and functions. If you are switching from an existing theme, then you need to do several checks first before changing to a new WordPress theme.
Here are the different ways to install a WordPress theme. Read More
As a WordPress beginner, its not a surprise that you’ll get hiccups from time to time. But a great thing about committing mistakes is that you learn from it. Experience is a great teacher, but experience teaches you nothing if you don’t learn from it. So before you commit such mistakes, here are some of the common WordPress mistakes a beginner usually commits.
First of course is choosing the wrong platform. How is it that free hosting platform is better than a self hosted one?
install Plugin
Go to settings
Update plugin settings
click on the File Manager icon
click Go
Open file to edit
Plugin update
theme update
As you can see, Easy Tables is a neat plugin that lets you display static data in a table on your WordPress site. Before we finish, I’ll tell you about another WordPress table plugin that lets you create instant tables without having to enter data manually.
