Five Cool WordPress Features You Probably Don’t Know About
A more accurate title for this post would “Five Cool WordPress Features You Probably Don’t Know About (and One You Might Have Forgotten About).”
Even if you’ve been using a WordPress website for years, you might not know about these often-missed and super-cool features of the platform! Some are new (just released in November) and some have been around for years but haven’t gotten a lot of press.
1. There’s an App for That
A lot of people don’t realize you can use the WordPress app even for self-hosted sites! (On the login screen, just select the option to “Log in to your site by entering your site address instead.”) The app gives you access to some basic stats and the ability to write and publish posts on the run.
2. Posts via Email
If you’ve ever wished blogging could be as easy as emailing your best friend, you’re in luck! If you log in to your WordPress dashboard, you can find your own super-secret email address in the Writing settings. Just send an email to that address and the content will be published on your site.
3. Custom Post Types
Cooking bloggers are ALL over this feature for sharing recipes and it’s time music teacher bloggers got on board! Do you find yourself formatting the same type of blog content over and over? Maybe you make up music games and every time you include the same details: number of players, time limit, supplies needed, skills developed, etc. But inevitably you forget some piece of info? Or put it in a different order on accident? (The horror!) With custom post types, you can create a fill-in-the-blank style blog post generator for your most common post types. A developer could whip this up for you in a jiffy or you can use a plugin, like Toolset Type to handle the technical parts!
Want to set up your own studio website on WordPress? My WordPress for Music Teachers video course is launching soon!
4. Favicon Support
Does your website show your web host’s logo in the browser? You can change this! In version 4.3, WordPress added a way to change the “site icon” or “favicon” (a.k.a. that little icon that shows up in your top left corner of a browser window) without having to venture into the depths of your hosting account. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Customize and click Site Identity. Add the appropriately-sized picture under the Site Icon Voilà!
5. Scheduling Theme Customizations
Late last year, WordPress released the 4.9 update that gave us the ability to draft theme changes! This is huge if you’re revising your site design and can’t finish your work in one sitting. (Who can?) Once you’re happy with your design, you can even schedule the changes to go live on a certain date.
6. User Roles
I work on a lot of websites and clients are always giving me their passwords. I appreciate that they trust me, but a more secure way to share website access is to set up separate user accounts with appropriate permissions for each person who needs access to your site.
WordPress is my favorite website-building platform because it strikes the right balance between flexibility and accessibility. Some website platforms are super flexible, but just too difficult to work with. Others are easy to work with, but are quickly outgrown.
If you want to learn more about all the WordPress has to offer, check out my self-paced video course!