Are you so busy in these days?
It has to be if you’re blogging part time. Job, family, friends, leisure, oh gosh! How can you blog in such short time?
The answer is relatively “YES”. Blogging is not the matter of time; it is moreover tactical, skillful. 2-3 hours a day will be enough for you as a part time blogger. The only privilege, you need, is the ultimate use of possibilities.
WordPress is the most popular blogging software, even our favorite. But it is a matter of great sorrow, most of the wordpress users don’t know or use the secret speeding features. That makes them feel “wordpress and blogging” are so time-consuming.
Hey wait, busy bloggers need the following 7 lessons
Today I’m going to share 7 shining lessons that will make you realize, “Yeah, I can also blog in no time”.- Forget your mouse when writing, do everything with your keyboard
You might be amazed to know yes, it happens. You can save a lot of your valuable time by performing these actions with a keyboard. In fact, it will take not more than a blink of your eyes.
Can’t believe it? I think you didn’t check the rounded question mark in your wordpress post editor. It is aligned with the other toolbar options. Do click on it to see all the keyboard shortcuts, you can use right away.
Need to change headings? No more uses of the mouse. Just place your writing point on a line and type the following keys:
- For H1: Ctrl/Cmd + 1
- For H2: Ctrl/Cmd + 2
- For H3: Ctrl/Cmd + 3
- For H4: Ctrl/Cmd + 4
- For H5: Ctrl/Cmd + 5
- For H6: Ctrl/Cmd + 6
Want to create text styles? A few more shortcuts for you:
- For Bold: Ctrl/Cmd + b
- For Italic: Ctrl/Cmd + i
- For Underline: Ctrl/Cmd + u
The Last but not least. Here are some extra shortcuts though the keys are not the same:
- For Strikethrough: Alt + Shift + d
- For Ordered List: Alt + Shift + o
- For Unordered List: Alt + Shift + u
- For Quote: Alt + Shift + q
- For Link Insert: Alt + Shift + a
- For Link Remove: Alt + Shift + s
- For Image Insert: Alt + Shift + m
- For More Tag: Alt + Shift + t
PS: (1) Ctrl (Control) is for windows, and Cmd (Command) is for Macintosh. (2) Make sure to place your writing point in the text or select the text before performing the shortcuts. (3) WordPress default visual editor supports all of them where the simple text editor wouldn’t. (4) This is not the complete list. Click on the help button in your post editor for the full list. (4) Your wordpress version has to be 2.7 or above to run them.
- Moderate comments blazing fast using the keyboard shortcuts
Typically we use the mouse to select comments, specify actions and click the apply button. Unfortunately, it is time-consuming as we can guess at the explanation. But if you moderate comments with your keyboard, you can be more flexible and make it done blazing fast.
This feature is available from wordpress version 2.7 to above. However, this is not activated by default. All you have to do is, navigate to Users > Your Profile from wordpress admin and check the label entitled “Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation”. When you’re done, you can proceed to the next steps.
Now go to comments screen and practice the following actions by your keyboard:
- Next Comment: j
- Previous Comment: k
- Approve Comment: a
- Unapprove Comment: u
- Spam Comment: s
- Delete Comment: d
- Restore Comment: z
- Quick Edit: q
- Edit Screen: e
- Reply Comment: r
Need to moderate multiple comments at the same time? Don’t worry, here are the solutions:
- Mark Comment: x
- Approve Marked Comments: Shift + a
- Unapprove Marked Comments: Shift + u
- Trash Marked Comments: Shift + t
- Delete Marked Comments: Shift + d
- Spam Marked Comments: Shift + s
- Restore Marked Comments: Shift + z
- Skip media library, drop media directly into post editor
You will click the “Add Media” button, move to “Upload Files” tab, select or drag the media into it, am I right?
Hey STOP, why are you working so hard to upload media. This is made so easy that you never thought. Just drag the media from your device and drop it directly into your post editor.
From wordpress version 3.9, you can just drag and drop media to your visual post editor for instant upload, bypassing the “Add Media” button. You can save your valuable time by using this feature.
- Don’t write codes anymore, use auto embedding
No doubt, you will open up the video in your browser, click the “Share” button, switch to “Embed” tab, copy the code and paste it on post editor. Or you will consider writing it by yourself if you’re a web developer, isn’t it?
Hats off to your hard labor. If you ask me, I will just write down [ video src=https://www.youtube.com/embed/t74gQHtEybM ] or even copy and paste the video link. It wouldn’t take more than 10 seconds for me.
The latest wordpress versions support two types of auto embedding:
- Shortcode
- oEmbed
But the shortcode has to be created first with the functions before you can use it. Though a few handy shortcodes are available in default. You can use them in your visual post editor:
- [ audio ], Example: [ audio src=”audio-slug.mp3″ ]
- [ video ], Example: [ video src=”video-slug.mp4″ ]
- [ gallery ], Example: [ gallery ids=”294,102″ ]
PS: (1) There will be no space after the opening third bracket and before the closing third bracket in shortcodes. I’ve given them to prevent rendering here. Please delete those spaces to make it work for you.
oEmbed: This feature makes shortcodes totally down. Looks like wordpress has started to reflect our minds. Now you don’t need to write any code, even shortcode to embed third-party media. Just copy and paste of the URL in post editor will do.
For instance, suppose a youtube video needs to be embedded. So what you have to do is, copy the video URL (ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74gQHtEybM) and paste it into your wordpress editor. It will automatically embed it.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t support all third party websites. oEmbed allows 29 specific sites including almost all popular items like YouTube, DailyMotion, SlideShare, Vimeo, Twitter, Scribd, Issuu, Instagram, Hulu, Flickr and forth on.
- No more finding or scrolling, use wordpress screen options
If you didn’t, you’ve missed out a solid time-saving opportunity. Let me explain you why.
As usually happens in our case, we spend too much time in finding and scrolling between wordpress dashboard, post, page or comment screens. Do you know why? A many of the unwanted info appear where from we need to find our required one.
Sounds not so clear? Let’s make it easy for you.
Your “All Posts” or “All Pages” screens might be scrawled with lots of unwanted columns if you’re using plugins for SEO, authors or images. Normally it will be quite hard to find something, even puts extra pressure on your brain.
So why not cut out the less necessary columns?
This is what “Screen Options” will exactly do. Click on it from your particular page and tick on or off the labels you want to see or hide. You can do the same thing to your WordPress Dashboard, Posts, Pages and Comments screen. Use the flexibility, and you can save a lot more time.
- Don’t resize images, let wordpress do it for you
It will be either a photo editor you use before uploading or the wordpress image editor you use after uploading, isn’t it?
But that makes you do some extra works which will take some additional time. Why not let wordpress resize it for you, whatever the actual image size is?
Head over to Settings > Media from your wordpress admin. What do you see? Three image sizes Thumbnail, Medium and Large. Choose perfect sizes according to your theme or requirements.
So next time, when you will upload your image (any size), you can select sizes from the “Attachment Display Settings” (after upload) when inserting. It will save you more time as you don’t need to resize images manually.
- Interlinking made easy, don’t waste your time in finding URLs
Probably you will get the post URL from “All Posts” screen or manually visiting the post from your blog. Then you will copy and paste it into your post editor.
Unfortunately, that is the time-consuming method, and there is an alternative what will save all your interlinking efforts.
Click on the “Insert Link” button from your editor, and you will see an option entitled “or link to existing content”. Click on it, and all your internal pages will be showed. Now you can search and select your post to link without even knowing the URL. That means it saves you more of your time.
Conclusion!
There is a popular quote “Time is Money”. I totally agree as time is the key to making money.Therefore, it doesn’t mean, busy bloggers only need these tips. I think every single blogger should know “How to save valuable time”. They also need to implement these tips in order to lead an active, frugal blogging journey.
What do you say, what is your secret time-saving ingredient? We are eager to know it!
About the author: Abrar Mohi Shafee is a digital marketing worm, who blogs at BloggingSpell.com, the place to learn secret spells of blogging, marketing and seo.
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