Weekly Articles for WordPress Admins – Monday, 5/2/2022

How is it already May? To usher in the 5th month, I have 5 new articles procured just for you, all hand-picked for anyone running a WordPress website – Enjoy!

• How to Make Your WordPress Site GDPR Compliant (Intermediate)
  The GDPR requirements apply to anyone in the EU, or anyone with a website that European countries can visit. Luckily, WordPress now comes with tools to help you be GDPR compliant with a privacy statement and comments. However there are additional steps that should be taken and this article will walk you through it. I also wrote a short article on what GDPR means for your website back in 2018 with a few additional points.
• How to Set up a WordPress Sitemap and Why It’s Important (Beginner)
  To make it easier for search engines to find your content, you should generate a sitemap.xml file which is an xml file that contains a directory of all pages and posts on your site. WordPress now builds this for you automatically but a couple of sitemap plugins will do a better job of it. This article also covers how to submit your sitemap.xml to Google.
• Best Document & File Management Plugins for WordPress (Intermediate)
  Beyond the Media Library, there are other plugins you can install that give you a full document or file management system within WordPress. Most of the recommendations in this article are paid solutions but you can find also some good free options here: 7 Best Document and File Management Plugins for WordPress in 2021 (Note that the Memphis Documents Library is no longer available).
• The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Shortcodes (With Examples to Create Your Own) (Advanced)
  Shortcode = Shortcut + Code. Shortcodes allow you to add extra functionality directly into your content without worrying about all the code. Find out more about shortcodes in general, the shortcodes included within WordPress, how to use them, and how to make your own shortcodes.
• 25 Famous WordPress Websites That You’ll Definitely Recognize (Any)
  May the 4th (Star Wars Day) is in 2 days so for a little inspiration, here’s 25 websites that use WordPress including the Star Wars Blog and the Walt Disney Company website. You should also check out this tutorial on how to Create a Star Wars Title Crawl in HTML. And if you order today, it’s not too late to order some Star Wars computer accessories on Amazon!

Want another example of where and how to use shortcodes? My weekly signup button below is added to pages using a custom shortcode that I wrote so if I need to change the signup later on, I can update it in one place instead of having to update each article. Here’s the code that creates that shortcode:

//Shortcode for adding Weekly Articles Signup Button
//Usage: [weekly_email_signup]
add_shortcode('weekly_email_signup', 'wes_shortcode_function');
function wes_shortcode_function(){
 return "<hr /><p>Can't get enough? Get these in your inbox each week!</p>" .
 '<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link" href="https://fdeee5ab.sibforms.com/serve/MUIEACdgoafvY53ljOrLauzUTymd-G7r31NvED_StUzNH3rDWdHn2LqOdZQX2tY1MsFksFvemNR7L62EV95fdSn6kGBiuZPdwFphvyMKwSq9grmX80dDN1l7H-CIo_h5ScY2eGnVFiSS4pmFM59mY6d74fPRz6dLggCD6IWfpoHr5aec71omShS_DCnJutDNIzbIpWVrfzXWhaE6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to Weekly Articles</a></div>';
}

Have a great week!

[weekly_email_signup]