Simplify WordPress Administrator Tasks For Both Developers and End-Users
Make WordPress an efficient tool for your web project & for your clients by killer WordPress plugins, WordPress website builder & WordPress tips.
WordPress is easy — like any other CMS. There is no doubt about that. But saying WordPress is easy doesn’t mean that you are only a few clicks away from creating and managing a fully-functioning website.
To savvy developers and designers, playing magic tricks (yes, I mean coding and designing) with WordPress is an enormous amount of work and they need to spend more time on this than focusing on WordPress administration jobs. End-users, however, usually find the WordPress admin jobs difficult.
Has this question ever crossed your mind?
“Are there ways to simplify the administrator tasks for me and my client?”
Luckily, the answer is MANY.
Let’s see how we can improve our productivity and efficiency with WordPress admin jobs. In this blog, we’ll look at:
- Best practices and tips to save time on administrator commands
- Content versioning for better control of WordPress element versions
- How to get the job done faster with some super-useful WordPress plugins
And I hope that with this article, both developers and end-users will sweat less over admin tasks while still keeping their website streamlined and efficient.
Let’s roll!
Best Practices & Time-Saving Tips For WordPress Administrator
Life is short, human patience is limited, so why waste time on things that you could do faster?
Here are the best time-saving tips recommended by WordPress experts for anyone who loves their job but still wants to spend more time with their family:
Use Screen Options
I hope you don’t ask “What is it?” Look at your Dashboard’s top right and you’ll see the hero:
Screen Options in Admin Dashboard
Screen Options in Add New Post
Using Screen Options, you are able to hide unnecessary meta boxes you won’t use. You can do the same in Add new post/Add new page view. No more getting slowed down!
Use WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts
One of the most useful principles for any WordPress user is: Get the most out of everything WordPress offers. WordPress gives us shortcuts, so why not use them?
First, enable keyboard shortcuts by going to your user profile. Then just use the keyboard commands below when you work with the Visual Editor:
You can Download WordPress Shortcuts to print them out and stick them around!
Automate The Permanent Removal In Trash
There are many times we delete a post/a page and where do they all go? Into the Trash Folder. However we don’t always remember to clear the trash for a cleaner house.
Well, you don’t need to remember this task anymore. Simply, just automate the process of removing permanently all items in the Trash folder by inserting: (‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 15); in your wp-config.php file.
Note: 15 is the number of days between each removal action.
Some Other Small Hacks For WordPress Admin
Do you know? To link internally, you can just enter the address after the trailing slash on the domain name instead of typing in the entire URL in the “Insert/edit link”.
Do you easily get distracted while composing a post? Use the distraction-free writing mode:
After that you will have a fullscreen editor view. No more switching between scrolling the visual editor and scrolling the actual web page. Just write.
Instant Image Import From Direct URL To WordPress Media. With this option you can get rid of right-clicking, saving an image and then selecting the file to upload in WordPress media. Drastically simplifying the process, WordPress now allows you to grab an image from remote URL and save it into your own WordPress media library.
WordPress Content Versioning For Better Control Of All Versions
It may sound unfamiliar to WordPress beginners and end-users, but for WordPress professionals, content versioning (or version control) is an essential WordPress practice.
Content Versioning helps:
- Regularly update your site’s backup
- Make a change quickly and push it to live
- Easily create workflow of version controlling for teams
- And much more
In a recent WordPress Deployment survey made by Smashing Magazine, surprisingly 45% of respondents said they do not use version-control software in their workflow while nearly half of them are designers/developers. That is to say, content versioning is too underrated and taken too lightly even among WordPress professionals.
Also according to the survey, the most popular Version Control System is Git. Workflow is simple with Git:
You create something in your local server –> Set up the deployment system to your live server –> Deploy your changes into the Live site
Git allows your development team to track code revisions, share code and manage multiple software versions from a single codebase.
Watch a presentation by Paul Tela on Wordcamp Columbus 2013 on “Keeping WordPress Under [Version] Control With Git”.
For end-users, this may be a little complicated. However, for developers and designers, you shouldn’t skip this practice. Here are some good resources for you to learn content versioning by playing with Git:
Must-Have WordPress Plugins To Get Your Job Done Faster
As an Internet geek, I’m one of those users who can’t wait more than 7 seconds for a webpage to load. It’s the same with WordPress admin tasks — I always want to find a way to get this and that done faster.
So, after trying many plugins, I’d like to introduce some super useful ones I am using to help speed up your admin tasks as well as boost your productivity. Enjoy.
Save Time & Effort Building Beautiful & Well-Functioning Pages With IG PageBuilder
Hitting 7 thousands downloads in only 3 months and with its innovative features, the five-star rated IG PageBuilder “makes other WordPress website builder plugins look like nothing” (I quoted this from their plugin’s page review on the WordPress repository).
IG PageBuilder Interface
Using this drag and drop website builder helps you save a great amount of time in creating a layout for a page or coding for your desired style. What I love about this little superhero is that there is no need to touch any code because it includes full page elements, widget support, built-in shortcodes and many more options that provide an unlimited number of style variations.
For developers, a free WordPress website builder plugin like this helps minimize the building website process. And for end-users, they can build pages on their own without bugging web developers!
You can download and use IG PageBuilder here at the WordPress Repository:
Bored With The Same Action Over Again To Replace Strings In Multiple Posts?
If so, you should try this Search and Replace plugin. Of course it’s free too and you can download it here:
This WordPress plugin saves me from wasting my precious time finding and replacing a number of the same links, words or phrases in multiple posts in my website. Besides this, you can search in ID, post-content, GUID, title, excerpt, meta-data, comments, comment-author, comment-e-mail, comment-url, tags/categories and categories-description.
Automate SEO For Images! Why not?
If you’re like me, it’s really a pain in the butt to enter an Alt tag and title tag for each image in your post/page. Get this buddy do this for you: SEO Friendly Images Plugin.
This plugin automatically updates all images with correct Alt and Title attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have Alt and Title already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according to the options you set.
Last But Not Least, Save Time By Making Your Site Load Faster
And W3 Total Cache is the choice. This plugin, with more than 3 million downloads, is designed to improve your site’s user experience and page speed by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
Bravo to a good looking and fast loading website!
Did I Miss Something?
That’s all I have for now. I’ve shared with you various useful tips to boost your productivity with WordPress. I hope that they greatly reduce the burden of administrator tasks for you like they have for me.
Ahhh, I admit that these are not enough to cover all the best practices and time-saving tips that you’re probably practicing right now. I’d love to learn more tips from you so share with me anything I’ve missed!
