- Organization is the key to success.
This applies to everything from your business to your home,
all the way to the websites you work on.
WordPress users start off fresh and clean
and build an amazing responsive website.
But the backend can be a huge mess with a plugins,
alerts posts and more just cluttered everywhere.
I mean, this can be extremely annoying,
kind of productive and even stressful
having to navigate through irritating clutter
whenever you visit your dashboard
and it may seem unavoidable,
but it doesn't have to be
let's make your WordPress life easier
and more satisfying.
- Starting with organizing the WordPress dashboard.
Often neglected, often underused.
The dashboard is something we often always see,
but rarely ever use to our advantage.
So how can we make the dashboard useful when we log in?
Start with decluttering, I love decluttering,
your dashboard and remove what you don't want.
I mean, why bother seeing the same information
and widgets whenever you log in
that you don't ever use?
I think about this actually, when I look at my desktop,
which gives Nealey anxiety
when he sees me on a screen share,
but the easiest way to do it
is that tiny button at the top of your dashboard
labeled Screen Options.
- Yeah, in screen options,
you can hide or show screen elements,
or these dashboard widgets with a click of a button.
You don't want to see this site, health status
or the welcome message.
You don't need to, just uncheck those boxes
and declutter your dashboard.
- Next up, organize the WordPress admin menu.
Another area that you can organize
and minimalize is this admin menu
and it's the horizontal menu in WordPress backends.
And it often gets cluttered like most things
with items as you download different plugins
and use different themes
and that can get very confusing with time.
Some plugins end up going under settings
and others have their own main menu entry
and some are under appearance.
So it can be a nightmare, absolute nightmare,
finding the right settings for plugins
that you literally just installed,
they are like already lost.
(chuckles)
Over those and extremely handy plugin
that can come to your rescue.
- That's right and this plugin is fantastic for that,
and it's Admin Menu Editor
and it does exactly what the name suggests,
edits the Admin Menu and lets you customize it
as much as you want.
You can change the ordering,
change the name or the links,
or even create sub menus.
You can also group different menu items together,
like grouping together all plugin menu items
or all theme related menu items et cetera, right?
So you can customize your heart out
and organize the admin menu to have a cleaner
and more efficient website backend
really one that works for you.
- And get the most of your folders, right?
I mean imagine having every single file on your computer,
scattered all over your desktop
without any structure or hierarchy or association
and no folders, AKA my desktop.
(chuckles)
You wouldn't even want to touch that computer,
unfortunately though, this is how it feels.
Whenever you go to WordPress media
or posts and pages, sections,
every single image that you uploaded
every post or page
just lumped together sorted by the date uploaded,
but no structure, none, zip, zero
and wouldn't it be great
if you could organize them into folders
so you can find them easier later?
- Well, there's good news.
You can, Folders is an amazing plugin
that as to the point of the name suggests
help you organize your images, posts, pages,
and more into folders.
You can activate folders for anything from media to posts,
pages, portfolio items, menu items, anything
and within them you can put an image
or post in multiple folders,
make special folders by starring them,
name them whatever you wish and organize your website
like never before, it gives you a whole new dimension
in helping organize your website,
making it easier for you to navigate
through the backend, with less clutter.
- And be sure to categorize and tag everything.
Labeling your posts and content with categories
and tags is another great way
to not only have an organized site for your visitors
but it helps organize your WordPress backend as well.
And whenever you create a blog or any custom post
or item like products, items, courses, et cetera,
you get the gist.
You can set both categories and tags to sort them out
and help filter through them later
and there are two distinct tools here,
categories, which are more for like general grouping
and tags, which as the name suggests helping
and tagging posts with certain keywords.
So, for example, if I have a blog on pizza,
which I should,
I could use different categories to describe
what I'm talking about,
so for example,
like restaurant reviews or recipes
and the tags could be used more liberally
describing like what the blogs are talking about.
Tags could be gluten or dairy free,
love some good dairy free cheese pizza,
could also be like wood oven or deep dish,
you know, Chicago style or more,
most WordPress themes and blogs
can sort post according to categories and tags,
which make it easier for visitors to get what they want,
which is what you want.
And in the backend,
you can also see which posts are in which categories
and contain what tags
and then you can then filter them out
with a click of a button that's right,
just a click of a button.
So if you want to review all the posts
that you have about pizza, to add in a link you want,
then you can just simply click pizza and the categories
and get every single post written about,
yep, you guessed it, pizza.
- Oh, now I am hungry,
so thanks for that Emma,
but with all this clean out your unused content,
just like when you organize your closet or your junk drawer,
please don't ever look at mine.
You're bound to find something
that you don't want in there anymore.
And as you're going through your website,
delete unneeded pages or posts or deactivate old plugins.
I mean, Marie Kondo that shit,
even just organizing the dashboard menu,
media and post could help immensely in decluttering
and organizing your websites,
making working in them a pleasure rather than a chore,
having to navigate through the rebel and chaos.
- All right,
when you organize WordPress for efficiency
suddenly, oh my gosh.
There's more time in your day to focus on what matters most,
you're welcome, all right.
That's a wrap, but your journey doesn't have to end here,
we have over 250 videos for you to watch.
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thanks for watching, this is The Journey.