Welcome to my series of quick tips for WordPress bloggers! Please note that nothing I post here will be for experienced users. Instead, the series is just quick little tips that I’ve come across since moving to WordPress. If you happen to have a random question about WordPress, feel free to send me an email and I’ll do my best to hunt down an answer!
This week’s quick tip…errors!
There are all kinds of error messages and issues you may run into when using WordPress, and they are all good at causing panic, but luckily, a little patience and logic can usually hunt down the problem even if you don’t speak a word of html.
The first thing to do when you encounter an error is try again. WordPress isn’t perfect and often you will receive a random error message that will vanish as suddenly as it appeared when you repeat your action. If the error persists, it’s time to think about whether or not you’ve made any recent changes. Most of the time, a Plugin is the cause of the problem and if you’ve just added a new one or updated an old one, finding the issue may be as easy as that.
If you haven’t made any recent changes or if you’ve made quite a few and aren’t sure where to start, it’s time to start using some good old-fashioned logic. Start with a Google search. WordPress has an impressive forum and often you will find that somebody else has had the same problem as you. If you can’t find an answer online, head back to your blog. If you’re getting an error message, check and see if there are any clues within the message itself. Often, the offending Plugin will be listed within the message, making the problem easy to solve.
If your problem isn’t one that results in an error message or if the message doesn’t hold any clues, it’s time to start deactivating Plugins one by one to find out if one of them is causing the problem. But rather than just running through them alphabetically, choose the ones that would be most likely to cause the problem you’re experiencing. If it’s an image problem, start with any photo editing Plugins you have installed. If your comments are acting up, try comment-numbering Plugins. And if you’re having issues with sharing your posts on other networks, deactivate the sharing Plugins before doing anything else.
If you discover that it is a Plugin that is causing your problems, don’t rush to delete it right away. Look through its settings and make sure that they are exactly the way you want them. It may have just been an unchecked box or an unspecified list item that caused your issues in the first place. If the Plugin itself simply isn’t compatible with your site, then delete it and look for another one that offers similar features.
In rare cases, Plugins aren’t the problem. I battled so many issues with my site near the end of 2011 and I learned eventually that they were all due to my incredibly out-of-date theme. But I never would have known that if it hadn’t been for my hosting company. When my site was gobbling up resources, my host was the one that found the problem, temporarily fixed it and told me what had caused it to begin with. So if you’re completely stuck and can’t use your blog the way it is, get in touch with your host! You may find that they know exactly how to solve your problem.
Solving WordPress errors is a matter of trial and error for those of us that don’t know how to analyze code. But a website designer once gave me a piece of advice that I have found to be true time and time again. She said, “First check the Plugins. Then check your Theme and WordPress Settings. Finally, if nothing else works, check with your Host.”
Taking your time, thinking it though and going step-by-step is absolutely essential in eliminating those pesky WordPress errors, so don’t panic. Solving the problem probably won’t be as hard as you thought!
Backing up your blog is something that not many bloggers do, but it is incredibly important. Just imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to see that your entire website, every post you had ever written and every comment that you had ever received, was suddenly and inexplicably gone. It’s not something that happens often…but it does happen. And if you aren’t prepared, you may very well lose your entire blog.
February can be a bit of a dreary month, so to brighten it up I have teamed up with a group of blogs to offer our readers a fun February giveaway. We are giving away $400 in Target Gift Cards to one very lucky person!
When you first start blogging with WordPress, it’s natural to want to spend most of your time customizing the look of your website and theme so that it suits you. But it’s incredibly worthwhile to also spend a few minutes running through your WordPress Settings. Checking out each and every one of the tabs in the Settings section and going through your options is an important first step to customizing your site since it lets you choose everything from the way your RSS feed is published to the way your readers leave comments. Let’s take a look at the tabs one by one and go through the things you should consider:
I found Nifty Creations by Jodi by looking for designers that had great looks and great prices to match. Some WordPress blog makeovers can cost more than one thousand dollars and while I wanted a new look, I didn’t want it THAT badly! Nifty Creations by Jodi had makeover packages for both Blogger and WordPress with prices that a stay-at-home mom could actually afford and Jodi’s portfolio of past site designs was stunning. So I offered to write a review about my blog makeover experience in exchange for a 30% discount on a design package and to my delight, Jodi loved the idea!
Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Spam
Welcome to my series of quick tips for WordPress bloggers! Please note that nothing I post here will be for experienced users. Instead, the series is just quick little tips that I’ve come across since moving to WordPress. If you happen to have a random question about WordPress that doesn’t have to do with actual programming issues (which I know nothing about), feel free to send me an email and I’ll do my best to hunt down an answer!
This week’s quick tip…spam!
I’ve already talked about the importance of a good spam filter Plugin like Akismet but even when it’s not being published to your site, spam can cause problems for you. If you let your spam folder get too full, it can overload your site’s resources and get your site shut down. And some themes keep a record of old spam comments so even if you delete your spam, it will still gradually clog up your files. When it comes to spam, the less you have, the better!
It took me a long time to figure out some tips and tricks for dealing with the spam on WordPress, but I’ve finally found some ways to make the spam situation more manageable. First of all, that horrible WordPress feature that tells people they are posting comments too quickly is actually in place to protect blogs from spam! If you run giveaways using comments as entries, you really have no choice but to use a Plugin to disable the feature (unless you want your readers to go crazy, that is!) but if you use Rafflecopter or another third-party giveaway method, do NOT disable this feature! Computers can post spam comments much faster than people can type them and this setting helps prevent your site from being flooded with comments about pornography and Zune.
Another important tip is, of course, to empty your spam folder regularly. This is one of those jobs that is pretty tedious but very essential. My best advice? Try to find some humour in it! Take, for example, this fabulous comment posted on a lip balm review:
Thank you for sharing. Not to many people in your position are so gracious. Your article was very poignant and understandable. It helped me to understand very clearly. Thank you for your help.
All I can say is, that man really must have needed some lip balm. Or this fabulous comment on a post announcing some recent winners:
If I told U I didnt agree? Would I be shot down like a… couldnt think of an analogy which is funny cos I am usually full of them.
Umm…it was a list of giveaway winners. What’s to agree with?
Of course, since 99% of spam is left by malicious computer programs, it’s no wonder the comments are so hilariously irrelevant. But as I mentioned, they can also be horribly harmful to a website’s operation. And so my very best quick tip for dealing with spam is this: turn your comments off after a certain number of days.
Changing the settings is easy. Click on the Discussion tab found under Settings in the WordPress dashboard. In the category Other Comment Settings you’ll find the option of automatically closing comments on articles older than __ days. Check the box, enter your desired number of days that you’d like to accept comments and then save your changes!
Of course, if you have posts that still get comments years after you’ve posted, this may not be a good tip for you. But if your comments tend to mostly come within the first few months, setting your comments to turn off automatically can be a lifesaver. Because I run giveaways for two to three weeks, my comments on a post turn off automatically after 30 days. Since changing that setting, my spam comments have dropped from over 1500 comments weekly to about 200. That’s a lot less you-know-what to sift through!
If you are completely desperate, there are plenty of Plugins to help minimize comment spam even more, from programs that block spam computers from even accessing your site to ones that add CAPTCHA words or math problems to comment boxes. But like all Plugins, they will eat up some of your site’s resources as well, so if you don’t need to leave your comments open indefinitely, closing them off is a much more resource-friendly way to deal with the problem.
Spam is one of those inevitable burdens website owners have to deal with. But a quick setting change or two could make that burden a lot less heavy. So try some different options out and see what works best for you!