WordPress now has about 17,098 listed plugins on their site which gives users LOTS of options to choose from depending upon the specific functionality they would like to have on their website.
Looking for the right plugin or coming across an interesting one you might like, can however be tough with so many of them available. Also, there are several things that can be done without a plugin; you just need some help in the right direction.
Here are 3 WP tricks I recently came across and really liked:
1. Random Redirect
This is an amazing plugin that helps you create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which automatically redirects your website visitor to a random post on your site.
This works great, especially if you have a site where fresh content is posted regularly by a number of different authors. I think it creates a great impression of your site right away for your visitors.
2. Styling Individual Posts Using the_ID
Suppose you want to style a specific post in a different way than all others. To make this work, find the code similar to the following in your index.php
<h3><?php the_title(); ?></h3>
The h3 tag might be >h2> or <h1> in your theme template.
Change this to the following:
<h3 id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></h3>
As you can see, we added the code- id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>” to the original line so that when a post is viewed in the browser, it will generate an ID for each post and the name of the ID will include the post ID associated with that particular post. E.g. For Post with ID 45, the above code will automatically generate <h3 id=”post-45″><?php the_title(); ?></h3>
Now, open your stylesheet (style.css), create a new style for ID post-45 & specifiy unique styling.
E.g. #post-45 { background: #113355; font-family: ‘Lucida Grande’, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; }
3. Social Metrics
Social Metrics is a Social Media Analytics tool that helps you track your WordPress site performance on popular social networks. This data can be very useful to decide which social media websites are working better for you and where you should promote your content the most. It even lets you access Social Metrics from your WP Admin bar.
Hollywood Web Design
Thank you for sharing such useful tips. It will be really of great help for new web designers like me. Sharing your post to my team. Staying tuned for more great web design tips.