More and more websites are being converted to WordPress simply because it provides a really comprehensive and easy-to-use content management system (CMS). WordPress has changed the way websites are managed and gives much more control to the website owner.

In the past CMS could provide very limited access to change the main content on pages only or be quite complicated to use. WordPress is almost idiot-proof – which is what busy business owners need, no messing about, something straightforward and pretty much obvious as far as the basics are concerned.

These are a few tips that will help you get the most from your WordPress website:

Widgets are little bits of code that create a particular item that can then be dragged to the position you want it in. To find widgets look on the dashboard menu under ‘Appearance’.

You’ll see a number of options and, on the right, places that they can be placed on your website.

• You can have sidebars for your blog showing:
  • All the categories under which you’ve posted
  • The last few blog entries
  • The keywords that feature in your blogs.
• You can have a sign up form to capture people’s email addresses
• You can have a log in facility
• A news feed can be inserted
• A list of related pages can be added
• You can include calendars for booking systems showing availability (some programming of the calendar to do what you want will be needed first)
• Page specific contact forms so you know exactly which page your contact was viewing when they decided to get in touch.

You can also create your own text widgets that you can put anything you want to in.

These are all options – there are many more and some you’ll need to upload, but it gives you flexibility in customising your website, without costing you lots of development fees.

Extra tip: When you write content for pages or blogs in Word be careful to use the ‘paste from Word’ function to avoid all the formatting that underpins Word being transported in and causing all kinds of problems you don’t need!