Reusable blocks are one of my favorite features of the new WordPress editor. They can save a ton of time and can be used for so many things. This post is about ways to use and how to make reusable blocks in WordPress. But what is a reusable block? It’s a set of elements you […]
Beginner
How to update plugins without breaking your blog
Updating plugins can be a little nerve-wracking, especially if you’ve had a problem before. Ideally, you click the update button when you see it, and your blog only improves. That’s not always how it works though. Updating could do something as small as losing the functionality, to as big as the dreaded “White Screen of […]
How to prevent your own pageviews from showing in Google Analytics
If you’re using Google Analytics, you probably already know what a massively helpful tool it is for bloggers. But when it’s recording your own views, it can totally skew things (and either make you think you’re suddenly super popular, or that your visitors have really weird reading habits…). Either way, it won’t leave you with […]
How to show your picture automatically in blog comments
When you’re setting up a new blog, there’s a little detail that makes a big difference…but it’s often overlooked. It’s having your picture show in the comments section of each post! It’s always good to reply to your visitors when they take the time to comment on one of your blog posts. But if you […]
Why your blog visitors leave and never come back–and 4 ways to fix it
Want to know why your first time visitors leave your blog and never come back? Let me tell you a first-hand story. I recently clicked a Pinterest pin to a read a blog post about a specific hair problem I’ve always had. It was a fantastic tip. I was excited. So I went to see […]
How to add categories to your blog
Categories are super important to your blog. Unfortunately, almost nobody tells that to new bloggers (especially those “Start a blog in 20 minutes!” posts). Special side-note request since I can’t help it: please don’t ever start your blog in 20 minutes. Take a proper amount of time, do research, and plan before you dive in […]
What categories you should use on your food blog
Short cuts: The right structurePlan your categoriesFree printable category planner When most bloggers start blogging, categories are kind of an afterthought. Nobody explained how or why to set up categories strategically and so many food blogs end up with a disjointed list of both broad and narrow subjects. It’s never too late to get your […]
The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
Don’t care about details? Skip to the 2 second summary. It’s a little tricky to understand at first, but I’m going to try to make the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org easy. Let’s start at the beginning. Forget about .com and .org right now and let’s talk about WordPress alone. What is WordPress? WordPress itself […]
Black Friday Deals to Upgrade Your Blog
Guys. Does your blog need any upgrades? 4 of my very favorite website and business tools are having huge Black Friday sales. And I may be jealous if you get to take advantage. Here they are (and they are affiliate links): SiteGround If your site is slow, if you’re having security issues, or are just […]
How to add meta tags or tracking codes to your blog
At some point, you will receive a meta tag or tracking code that you will need to add to your blog. If your site is built on the Genesis framework, as all the ones I build are, adding that code is super-easy. In your dashboard, just hover over “Appearance” then click “Customize.” In there, scroll […]
How to get rid of “The post appeared first on”
You got your RSS feed set up (woohoo!). But when you test it, there’s a line at the bottom that says “The post appeared first on” It shows in your MailChimp emails, MailerLite, in feed readers. And it’s annoying. Mostly because you can’t where it’s coming from. So where did the text come from? The Yoast […]
The easiest way to display a series on your blog
A blog series is a great way to build engagement and create repeat visitors for your blog. What exactly is a series? Remember how TV shows used to occasionally end an episode in “To be continued…”? And then you couldn’t wait until next week to see what happened? Each episode was still an episode, but those […]
The Best Recipe Plugin for Food Bloggers
Before the latest WordPress update, there were several decent recipe plugins to choose from. After the update though, most stopped working and the developers didn’t want to go through the work of updating them. (This can be one of the struggles with free plugins in any category.) Thankfully, there are a couple of good ones […]
How to change your DNS information
Before I tell you how to change your domain name’s DNS info, I want to give you a quick explanation of what it all means. That way what you’re doing will make sense and if the particular company you’re using does things a little different than my instructions, you’ll be able to figure it out […]
Move contact form labels to inside fields
Moving the labels on a contact form to inside the fields is as easy as replacing the word “Label” with the word “Placeholder.” Really. We’ll use a simple Jetpack contact form as our example, but it’s basically the same procedure for MailChimp sign up forms or any other forms you can access the HTML or […]
Why aren’t my latest blog posts showing?
On average, I get an email about once a month asking “Why aren’t my latest blog posts showing on my home page? The blog post is there, but it won’t show up on the home page.” It’s a maddening issue that is becoming a pretty common problem. Every single time someone has asked me that, […]
How to use affiliate links
I am asked fairly regularly by clients about affiliate links, what they are and how to use them, so here are the basics of how it works, along with my recommendations. When you are an affiliate for a company, you advertise their products. If someone purchases something, or signs up for something from your advertising, […]
How to make a square image round
If you have just one or two images that you want to be circles instead of squares, there’s a really simple line of code you can add to the image. It will be much faster than editing your image in Photoshop. If you remember from this post, you’ll remember that the code to add an […]