I have more articles for you, spanning 5 topics that would be useful or interesting to anyone building or managing a WordPress site. You’ll notice that I don’t always cover topics that are just for WordPress but sometimes more general topics that would apply to any site owner. For example, in this week’s lineup, you’ll find articles on the free A/B testing service from Google and why you should be using the Google Tag Manager. The last article showcases what you can build with WordPress!
This week’s 5 WordPress topics:
- The Complete Beginner’s Guide to the WordPress Gutenberg Editor
(Beginner)
Learning the default WordPress editor can be confusing, and there’s definitely a learning curve, but once you get it, you’ll be able to edit your site content with ease. This article gives you everything you need to get running with the Gutenberg editor including how it works, working with the built-in content blocks, publishing, using keyboard shortcuts, and more. The author recommends one plugin to extend Gutenberg but as you see in my past coverage on Gutenberg plugins, there are other great options to choose from. - A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Database: What It Is and How to Access It (Beginner)
WordPress is a site builder and a content management system. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of content and other data that needs to be stored, updated, and retrieved and WordPress does that through the database. This article will further explain what a database is, how it works, how WordPress databases are structured, and how to access your database. Having a general idea of how it works will help you troubleshoot issues, or sometimes you can even log into your database directly to make updates. Note: only do direct updates in the database if you know what you’re doing. - Google Optimize Tutorial for Beginners (Beginner)
Never heard of Google Optimize? I just found about it a month ago myself. It’s a free A/B testing tool from Google that lets you test different versions of your site to improve user experiences. Basically it’s a way to try out different content or layouts to see if they perform better, allowing you to compare your current site with the new variant you’re trying out. Google Optimize works with Google Analytics and is easy to set up and get started. This article will show you how to create a simple A/B experiment and how to measure the results but there are also other kinds of tests that Google Optimize can do as well, which you can read about in this article: Google Optimize Complete Guide: Do A/B Testing for Free. And for an easier example to follow, without all the explanations, check out Google Optimize Tutorial: Setting Up Your First Experiment. - Benefits of Google Tag Manager: 14 Reasons to Start Using GTM (Intermediate)
Google Tag Manager (or GTM) is a free tool that allows you to manage all the marketing tags for your website in one place. Typically you would need to install a tag on your site for Google Analytics, and another for the Facebook pixel, and so on – making it so you have multiple scripts running on your site, possibly slowing it down or causing JavaScript errors. With GTM, you add one script to your site and the add all the other tags or scripts to GTM. This eliminates those issues but also supercharges your ability to track events and conversions on your site. Bottom line: if you’re not already using GTM, it’s time to start and you can thank me later. - The Webby Awards 2022 – Best Navigation/Structure
Looking for some inspiration? Out of the 49 Webby Award website winners in 2022, 16 were built with WordPress. And over the last 3 years, 37 winning websites were powered by WordPress, making WordPress the most popular platform for these breathtaking sites. Click on the menu icon to view more winning websites!
Personal note: yesterday I bought a drone and on my first flight I flew it into the side of the garage. On my wife’s first try, she got it stuck in a tree. The moral of the story is this: if you’re new to something (like WordPress or drones), expect to have some failures and to crash into a few things. After some practice, you’ll get the hang of it and will be flying like a pro!
Photo by Clayton Elliot on Unsplash
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