August 02, 2021

What is WordPress?

WordPress is user friendly, customizable, and powers 40% of the internet. With thousands of plugins available to extend functionality, it’s easy to see why so many use WordPress for their sites.

If you’re looking to learn how to use WordPress, you’re in the right place. Here, you’ll find out most useful WordPress resources. Keep reading to learn WordPress basics, performance best practices, and more.

Learn How to Use WordPress: Understand Your Options

There are a number of CMS options available. If you’re not sure WordPress is the right CMS for you, learn about Drupal vs. WordPress. You may also want to consider Website Builders vs. WordPress as well.

As mentioned above, WordPress is the most popular choice. Why WordPress?

WordPress history extends back to 2003. It is a versatile and powerful platform. And while WordPress trends come and go, WordPress usage has remained strong through the years. As you can imagine, there are many Wordpress versions available. But it is important to start using the most recent one. There’s also WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org to choose from.

Additionally, there’s also headless WordPress to consider. This option is gaining popularity and aims to accelerate page load time. What is headless WordPress?

WordPress does not limit you to a certain type of site. You can create a blog, an ecommerce site, a portfolio, and more. You could create a WordPress online store to sell items or services. You can use WordPress for dropshipping, or make money through affiliate links in WordPress.

Learn about the types of WordPress websites you can easily set up. You can even monetize your WordPress site. If you already have a site, you can migrate to WordPress all on your own.

WordPress Hosting

You may be wondering, is WordPress hosting worth it? Do I really need it? There are a number of advantages of WordPress hosting that are hard to deny.

With WordPress, you’ll also want an optimized host to power your site in the background. But you have a few different options when it comes to hosting, such as managed WordPress hosting and shared web hosting.

What is WordPress hosting? And why do you need hosting for WordPress? Here’s a breakdown of the difference between WordPress hosting and web hosting.

You may also be interested in: Shared Hosting vs. WordPress Hosting >>

There’s also WordPress cPanel versus Managed WordPress and DIY to consider.

You may already have a shared hosting plan for your WordPress account. But shared hosting plans can leave much to be desired. Here’s how to tell when it’s time to leave shared hosting and upgrade to Managed WordPress.

Top 10 Questions to Ask a Cloud Hosting Provider >>

Getting Started With WordPress

Now it’s time to get started with your WordPress site. Lucky for you, we’ve put together some very handy guides on getting up and running.

First, you’ll need to log into your WordPress admin login page. Put your site into WordPress maintenance mode as you’re getting set up. You can customize your WordPress dashboard to your liking.

You’ll want to research your options and select one of the fastest WordPress themes. Speed is critical to providing a good user experience. It’s also key to ranking on Google. If you find a theme you like, know that it’s possible to customize a WordPress theme to your liking.

Get started building your site with WordPress Gutenberg — a WordPress editor that makes site creation simple and easy. By using Gutenberg, you can simplify the content creation process in WordPress. WordPress Gutenberg blocks make it easy to edit and adjust your site.

There’s also full site editing for WordPress. This newer feature is supported in block-based themes. The WordPress block editor makes editing and changing pages a breeze. You can even use WordPress reusable blocks to make updates even faster.

From there, you can…

Learn How to Use WordPress Plugins

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available for your site. Not sure where to start? Start by exploring the most popular WordPress plugins. These ones are fan favorites and are widespread for a reason.

Learn more about the top WordPress plugins and how to use them strategically in our Essential Guide to WordPress Plugins eBook.

There are plugins for just about every function you could want on your website. For example, you could add WooCommerce to WordPress to start an online store.

Below you’ll find out recommendations for the top WordPress plugins for popular functions.

It’s also important to make sure your plugins aren’t hurting your site’s performance. There are a number of ways to detect slow WordPress plugins so you can triage the problem and boost site speed.

Remember, it’s important to keep all of your plugins updated. Managed WordPress hosts like Nexcess automatically update your plugins.

Explore Fully Managed WordPress Hosting by Nexcess.

Learn WordPress Performance Best Practices

Why is my WordPress site so slow?

Many site owners ask this question after getting their site up and running. But once your site is up, you need to keep it optimized. Here’s why website performance matters:

  • It is critical to the user experience.
  • It is necessary to rank well on Google.
  • It provides more visibility and organic traffic.
  • It improves your conversion rates.

Here are some helpful WordPress resources to improve performance.

WordPress Security & Maintenance Resources

Of course, you’ll want to ensure your site stays up to date, secure, and safe. You may be wondering, is WordPress secure?

WordPress is a secure platform as long as you follow security best practices for hardening WordPress. In case your WordPress blog gets hacked, know that there are ways to rebuild and recover your site.

As a precaution, you’ll want to stay on top of WordPress updates. Make sure you stay current to protect your site. You’ll also want to implement WordPress cleanup best practices to stay optimized. Remove fonts, themes, and plugins you aren’t using. And be sure to use WordPress redirect best practices to provide a good user experience.

You’ll also want to keep your site backed up in case anything were to happen. Here’s our handy guide on how to backup a WordPress site. If you so choose, you can also learn how to backup a WordPress site manually.

WordPress Resources for Developers

Learn about the built-in features of WordPress for developers, and how to best use them for your site.

Using WordPress Local Dev Environments

You can use a WordPress local development environment, and you have a few options outlined below. A local dev environment allows you to set up a server environment on your own machine, rather than on the server environment from your hosting company.

The benefit here is that you can go into the local dev environment to customize your site and make any changes you need, without having to push it online until you are ready.

Get Scalable, Secure WordPress With Nexcess

With Nexcess, better is built in.

Power your site with optimized WordPress hosting from Nexcess. Nexcess provides fully-managed WordPress hosting that includes:

  • Automatic updates.
  • SSL for security.
  • Built-in CDN.
  • Image compression.
  • Caching.
  • And more.

With Nexcess, your site is optimized, secure, and fast. Contact us today to learn how Nexcess can take on-site performance tuning for you automatically.

Or, check out our fully managed WordPress hosting plans to get started today.

Nexcess
Nexcess

Nexcess, the premium hosting provider for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento, is optimized for your hosting needs. Nexcess provides a managed hosting infrastructure, curated tools, and a team of experts that make it easy to build, manage, and grow your business online. Serving SMBs and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them, Nexcess has provided fully managed, high-performance cloud solutions for more than 22 years.


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