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Practical WordPress Tip #17: Use the tail of your Drafts queue for “notes”

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

Benefit: Tactics for post management help produce daily or regular posting, which encourages frequent search engine indexing for your site.

Problem: By default, WordPress content is either a post or a page, which limits it’s functionality as a content management system (CMS).

Practical WordPress Tip: Posts which are important yet difficult to finish can be dated well in the past to remove them from the head of your Drafts queue.

Here’s how: Really easy, just change the date on these posts to move them from the front page of your Edit Posts page. A date before the oldest published post works well.

Why: Having a healthy drafts queue provides a lot of fodder for regular posting. But many drafts never really go anywhere, or require substantial effort to finish. You need to have these articles archived somewhere. The bottom of your Drafts queue is as good a place as any. For example, I’ve re-dated all Drafts in the C programming category at There Is NO Box to January 1, 2006. I’ll continue writing on C programming in the future, but not in the near future.

Previous Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #16: Create a Template Blog Posts With Common Structure

Next Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #18 Deep link to internal anchors. Deep linking adds blog value by exposing more content to both readers and search engines. Learn a little used technique to expand deep linking opportunities.


Do you have a Tip? Would you like to write a Practical WordPress Tip? Each Tip is very short, and focuses on a single action that anyone can use right away, no programming required! If you have a Tip that fits into this series, and you’d like to publish it here on Website In A Weekend, send it on!


Practical WordPress Tip #16: Create Template Blog Posts With Common Structure

(Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes)

Benefit: Search engines love it when you write often.

Problem: Creating daily (or more) articles – ex nihilo – for your blog can become overwhelming.

Practical WordPress Tip: Create templates for common article styles to make it a real snap to pound out blog posts.

Here’s how:

  1. Find a group of articles with a common theme. You should have at least 3; 5 to 10 would be better.
  2. Analyze the structure of each article, and see where they overlap and where they differ
  3. Write a short description for each part that overlaps. Use this Practical WordPress Tip as an example: Benefit, Problem, Practical WordPress Tip and Here’s how are descriptions for overlapping parts.
  4. The parts the don’t overlap have in common… the property of not overlapping! This is the “Why” description below.
  5. Create a Draft or private template page you can copy each time you’re inspired to write an article using the template.

Why:
This tip is a little more advanced than most. You will need a fair bit of writing experience to exploit it correctly. But, following this procedure, you can cut the learning curve to shreds. There is even a WordPress Post Template plugin you can use to help you get started. I don’t actually care for this plugin myself, I tried and didn’t like it. But Extreme John likes it, so it can’t be all bad.

Long time readers can see other article templates evolving here on Website In A Weekend, for example, the WIAW Week in Review.

Previous Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #15: Adjust Image Size to Theme Width

Next Practical WordPress Tip: Practical WordPress Tip #17: Use the tail of your Drafts queue for “notes”


Do you have a Tip? Would you like to write a Practical WordPress Tip? Each Tip is very short, and focuses on a single action that anyone can use right away, no programming required! If you have a Tip that fits into this series, and you’d like to publish it here on Website In A Weekend, send it on!