For some of you I hear the question now: “Why only 3 more things?” Because if you’ve followed this blog for awhile, or not, you’ll remember that I had my first post in September 2010 on 5 Areas You Should Know More About In Your WordPress Admin Area, followed a month later with 5 More Things To Know About Your WordPress Admin Area and finally 4 Things You Can Do With Your WordPress Blog You Might Not Know Already. Frankly, I think I’ve shared more about the admin area than almost anyone else except WordPress.
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So today I have 3 more things I’ve discovered that you might not know about or haven’t paid any attention to. I have to make sure I’m not copying myself either; let’s see what happens.
1. Did you know that when you’re addressing comments if you hover over a person’s link under their name on the left side that WordPress will bring you an image of their website or blog? That’s pretty neat and it might help you decide if you want to keep the comment or not, deciding that a site might not be one you want to help promote via CommentLuv or through the link to the side if it’s just a website.
2. Did you know that, if you’re running CommentLuv, you can remove the “luv”, if you will, while keeping the comment? I don’t do this often but there are times when I look at the link and decide “no, this thing looks dangerous”, especially in combination with the first tip I just gave you. Of course if you’re like me most of the time you might have decided the comment isn’t worth keeping either in which case just delete it all, but this is another option if the comment seems legit.
3. Did you know that you can install plugins directly from your WordPress menu instead of downloading and then uploading them? All you do is go to Plugins over there and slide down to Add New. Once there, you can type in the entire name of the plugin you want, or if you’re unsure just type in a few words and do a search, and most probably lots of choices will come up with a ranking system from 1 to 5 stars. Much easier and saves time as well.
That’s it. What, you wanted more? Maybe next time! lol
Hi Mitch
Some good tips here and I’m pleased that I did know about Number 3. Whenever you do these sort of posts I always learn something … thanks 🙂
Patricia Perth Australia
No problem Pat. Always willing to share things I know with others.
I like these tips. I didn’t know about that hover trick with the comments, but I’ll be using it often from now on.
No problem Richard. It was a neat trick when I noticed it.
Hi Mitch,
I did know this stuff, but I have completely forgot about removing the luv from CommentLuv. Many times I don’t look at the links at all, I just see if the comment is of a good enough quality, and if it is, I’ll keep whatever link they added. But, like you said, I should probably take a closer look.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
No problem Jens. We easily look past this stuff that’s there all the time. I just see these links sometimes that I don’t want to pass on.
There are many things about the admin area, especially related to displaying options, disabling comments, adding short-codes, using plugins in the post, etc. I am sure that about 90% of the bloggers have never seen or used those options, which are making WordPress very powerful platform, beyong blogging only.
It’s fantastic stuff Carl, which is why I like when I discover it and then like sharing the stuff. You’re right, WordPress really is getting powerful and gives a lot of functions I’m not sure other platforms are keeping up with.
For sure latest versions of WordPress are going beyond blogging, but WordPress is still not enough flexible. Actually in the last year Drupal and especially Joomla have become extremely powerful, but actually both require much more knowledge compared to WordPress and also higher requirements for web hosting.
Carl, for my purposes and those of the overwhelming majority, WordPress is just fine. 🙂
That’s a good point, Mitch. Everybody should choose the most suitable CMS. For blogging WordPress is unbeatable, but recently there are new kind of tempaltes which can turn WordPress into social network, real estate, autodealer, article directory, etc websites. The other two CMS that I’ve mentioned doesn’t really offer a vision for the future where they want to go and for what purpose should be used.
As you know back in December I helped someone turn WordPress into a website and that was interesting. I don’t know a lot of software that flexible for most users.
Thanks for sharing these cool advices. They are really useful for me, because I1m a newbie to the wordpress blogger scene, and your tips are really helpful how to manage my blog. Thanks for sharing!
No problem Catwoman; enjoy them.
@Mitch,
I didn’t quite understand the first one. Where do you need to hover the mouse to get details? I tried on the name, it didn’t do anything. Is it due to any plugin that we have to install or a default WP feature?
It would be definitely useful for moderating comments, if it works.
Cheers,
Ajith
Had a typo Ajith. It was supposed to be “link”, and it’s under the person’s name on the left side in the comment area.
I was unaware of #s the person’s link and the comment luv. Thanks for adding this to me knowledge base.
No problem Marcie; it’s what I do when I can.
Assuming it’s not much different than a WordPress.com dashboard – isn’t the hover-over image a Gravatar thing? (Their ‘hovercard’, probably) or am I confusing that with something else?
By the way, with commentluv – are you able to edit out the links or links to the person’s site should you find it’s ‘bad’? Or don’t you have that option?
No it’s not Val. When we hover over the link you see this message saying WordPress is generating a preview, then it shows you the person’s website; totally different thing. As it pertains to CommentLuv, you can remove the link entirely; that’s pretty much it, but it’s enough.
Thanks for these cool tips. Actually there are a lot more to learn about the wordpress admin area. I guess it comes out of experience and trials that you keep doing. Anyway, it will help me a lot!
Anna, I like to think it’s just me being observant.
I love wordpress. They recently included a feature in the upper right hand side next to the name of the blog where it shows comments immediately and/or likes and you can respond from right there. Which is a nice new feature. I love wordpress myself. 🙂
Cool Sue, although to tell you the truth, the standalone software probably gives a lot more functionality than what you have, but you’ll see some things before the rest of us do.
Weird I got your comment via email but it’s not here yet. Anyway I don’t know anything at all about technical things. I’m just happy it all works 🙂
O there it is! I posted my response after reading the email and it not being here on site, it showed up. I must have missed it by a minute or something.
Trust me, you can’t get an email response unless the comment is showing already. 🙂
Hey Mitch,
#3 makes me laugh because for years I was installing plugins by going to my host files and downloading my plugins from there. One time I have a problem with unzipping the files and asked my host about it, he told me I should just download them directly from WordPress. Boy did I feel dumb 😐
WordPress does make things simple if you take time and just check everything out.
Thanks,
Liz
No problem Liz, because I did the same thing for years until I learned about it as well. Most of us will do what we know how to do to get things done, so we can miss the things made easy for us.
ah…you read my mind! Will go back and follow the previous sequels to this blog!
To answer all those questions in your article, sadly to say, no I did not know…
Thanks for enlightening! 🙂
More would be good too! Will keep a look out 😀