WordPress & CMS articles

WordPress & CMS 382 How to install WordPress in a few clicks You don't have to download WordPress, create a database and upload files by hand. The installer in cPanel does all...
WordPress & CMS 336 Common WordPress errors: white screen, critical error and how to find the cause The site stopped opening and shows a blank white screen, or the line «There has been a critical error on this...
WordPress & CMS 294 Cannot get into the WordPress dashboard: the six usual causes The site opens, but the admin dashboard does not. Either it asks for the password in an endless loop, or it says the...
WordPress & CMS 391 How to remove WordPress from a domain, without leaving anything behind You want WordPress off a domain, because the installation broke, because you are starting over, or because the site...
WordPress & CMS 456 Protecting the WordPress login: three steps in order of effect WordPress’s login address is the same on every site in the world: /wp-admin and /wp-login.php. That means any...
WordPress & CMS 418 Getting started with Sitejet Builder: from cPanel to your first website Sitejet Builder is the drag-and-drop editor included in the cPanel of Interweb hosting plans. You build the site in...
WordPress & CMS 281 Choosing and customising a template in Sitejet Builder The template is your starting point: it brings sections, colours and fonts that already work together. Everything in...
WordPress & CMS 303 Checking and adjusting your Sitejet site on phones before publishing A large share of visits come from phones. Sitejet Builder templates already adapt to the screen, but it is worth...
WordPress & CMS 409 Publishing a Sitejet site, publishing again, and keeping the site you already had Publishing is the moment the site leaves Sitejet Builder and starts opening on your domain. It is worth knowing,...
WordPress & CMS 291 A Sitejet site and another website on the same plan A plan can hold more than one site, up to the plan's limit. What it cannot do is hold two sites in the same folder....
WordPress & CMS 291 Maximum number of websites in Sitejet Builder: what it means and what to do When cPanel shows "You have reached the maximum number of websites for this account. Contact your hosting provider...
WordPress & CMS 410 Sitejet Builder or WordPress: which one suits your site Both are in your hosting plan's cPanel and neither requires code. The difference is in what each one can do and how...
WordPress & CMS 258 Page titles and descriptions for Google in Sitejet Builder Sitejet Builder takes care of the technical side: the published site is light, adapts to phones and includes a site...
WordPress & CMS 259 What a CMS is, and which one to choose for what you want to build A CMS is a content management system: a program that lives on your hosting and gives you a panel, inside your...
WordPress & CMS 255 Installing Joomla Joomla installs from the Softaculous Apps Installer in cPanel, with no FTP and no touching the database. It takes...
WordPress & CMS 246 Recovering the Joomla administrator password You cannot get into /administrator any more. There are three ways back, and they are worth trying in this order: the...
WordPress & CMS 248 Installing Drupal Drupal installs from the Softaculous Apps Installer in cPanel like any other platform. The part that deserves...
WordPress & CMS 229 Backing up the files of a Drupal site A Drupal site has two halves: the files and the database. This article is about the files. The other half is in...
WordPress & CMS 260 Installing Moodle for online training Moodle is the most widely used distance learning platform in the world: courses, cohorts, materials, quizzes, grades...
WordPress & CMS 257 Installing Flarum for a forum Flarum is a modern forum: a single page, fast, no reload on every click, and good on a phone without any effort. It...
WordPress & CMS 246 Installing Mautic Mautic is a marketing automation platform you host in your own account: contact lists, forms, landing pages,...
WordPress & CMS 285 WordPress explained, and when it is the right choice WordPress is a program you install on your hosting to build and run a website without writing code. It is not...
WordPress & CMS 280 Creating a WordPress site from the control panel You do not have to download WordPress, create a database or upload anything. cPanel carries two tools that do all of...
WordPress & CMS 272 Signing in to the WordPress dashboard, and the right address The WordPress dashboard opens on your own domain, by adding /wp-admin to the address. There is no page of ours where...
WordPress & CMS 320 When a WordPress install fails: the causes and what to do An installer that stops halfway almost always leaves the same clue: the error says where it stopped. It is worth...
WordPress & CMS 308 The WordPress tool in cPanel: what it does for you cPanel carries a tool built for WordPress, in the Domains section. It knows about the installations on your account...
WordPress & CMS 278 Installing WordPress plugins: where, which ones, and how many A plugin is somebody else’s code running inside your site with the same rights WordPress itself has. That explains...
WordPress & CMS 251 Installing a WordPress theme The theme decides how the site looks: fonts, colours, width, where the menu sits, how a list of posts is laid out....
WordPress & CMS 235 Switching WordPress themes without losing the site Changing theme does not delete your content. Pages, posts, images, comments and users all stay where they were. What...
WordPress & CMS 254 Deactivating or deleting a WordPress theme WordPress has no button to deactivate a theme, and that is not an oversight: there is always exactly one active...
WordPress & CMS 228 Updating WordPress itself The WordPress core is the part that is identical on every site in the world, which is exactly why flaws in it are...
WordPress & CMS 288 Adding a WordPress user, and which role to give them Everyone who works on the site should have an account of their own. This is not paperwork: it is how you know who...
WordPress & CMS 268 Changing a WordPress username WordPress will not let you change a username on the profile screen. The field is greyed out and you cannot type in...
WordPress & CMS 286 Changing the WordPress administrator password There are four roads, and which one you take depends on one thing only: how far you can still get. Start with the...
WordPress & CMS 272 Creating and editing pages in WordPress A page is content that stays put: about us, services, contact, privacy policy. A post is content with a date on it,...
WordPress & CMS 270 Writing a blog post in WordPress A post has a date, joins a list and can be filed under categories. It is the right shape for news, notices, customer...
WordPress & CMS 242 Moving a Blogger blog to WordPress It happens in three stages: get the content out of Blogger, put it into WordPress, and deal with the old addresses,...
WordPress & CMS 261 Two domains on the same WordPress site People who ask this nearly always want one of four different things. Pick the right row before touching anything,...
WordPress & CMS 281 Turning on WordPress MultiSite, and when it is not worth it MultiSite turns one WordPress installation into a network of sites. There is then one core, one themes folder, one...
WordPress & CMS 300 Changing the WordPress site address, and what breaks when it goes wrong WordPress stores the site address in two fields, and confusing them is behind half the sites that become unreachable...
WordPress & CMS 277 Something has gone wrong with WordPress: where to start WordPress always breaks in the same half a dozen ways. This page exists to save you the searching: find your symptom...
WordPress & CMS 288 Giving WordPress more memory The symptom always looks the same: a heavy operation stops halfway, or the page goes blank, and the error log...
WordPress & CMS 235 Changing the WordPress login address Every WordPress in the world has its door in the same place: /wp-admin and /wp-login.php. Moving it to an address...
WordPress & CMS 271 Putting a captcha on the WordPress login A captcha is a box the form puts in the way to tell a person from a program. On the WordPress login it does one very...
WordPress & CMS 278 Making WordPress send e-mail properly, with SMTP The site’s form messages never arrive. Password recovery never arrives. Shop notifications never arrive. And there...
WordPress & CMS 255 Using Elementor Elementor is a visual builder for WordPress: instead of writing code, you drag blocks onto the page and see the...
WordPress & CMS 188 WordPress permalinks and the 404 that follows You changed the permalinks, moved the site or updated something, and now only the home page opens: everything else...
WordPress & CMS 165 The “HTTP error” when uploading images to WordPress You drag a photo into the media library, the bar fills up, and at the end it says “HTTP error” and nothing else. The...
WordPress & CMS 167 WordPress login redirect loop: the causes, in order You type the username and password, WordPress does not complain, and it shows the sign-in screen again. Or the...
WordPress & CMS 193 Mixed content after moving to HTTPS: the padlock that will not turn on The certificate is installed, the site opens on https, and the browser still says “not secure” or shows a padlock...
WordPress & CMS 171 Stopping spam comments in WordPress If your blog has comments open, sooner or later it fills up with offers for watches, links to doubtful sites and...
WordPress & CMS 166 WordPress stuck in maintenance mode The site shows one dry sentence saying it is “briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance”, and it will not go...
WordPress & CMS 169 Raising the WordPress upload limit You try to upload a theme, a backup or a video to WordPress and it answers that the file exceeds the maximum upload...
WordPress & CMS 177 Moving WordPress to a new domain without losing anything Changing name is more than swapping an address. If the site already has visitors, links pointing at it and a...
WordPress & CMS 179 WP-CLI over SSH: updating and fixing WordPress from the command line The short answer: WP-CLI is WordPress on the command line. Instead of opening the dashboard and clicking, you type...
WordPress & CMS 190 WordPress Heartbeat: what it is and why it keeps calling the server The short answer: Heartbeat is a “pulse” that WordPress sends to the server every few seconds while the dashboard or...
WordPress & CMS 176 WordPress shortcodes: what they are and why one breaks your page The short answer: a shortcode is a word in square brackets, like [gallery], that WordPress swaps for a bigger piece...
WordPress & CMS 186 A multilingual WordPress site: plugin options, URLs and what Google needs The short answer: WordPress on its own has a single language. For a site in several there are three ways: a plugin...
WordPress & CMS 176 Slimming the WordPress database: revisions, spam and expired transients The short answer: over time the WordPress database fills with things nobody uses any more: revisions of every text,...
WordPress & CMS 238 Moving from WordPress.com to your own hosting: what you can take with you The short answer: WordPress.com is a service where the site lives on another company’s servers; the WordPress you...
WordPress & CMS 202 Menus in WordPress: building the main menu and choosing where it appears The short answer: a menu is the list of links at the top (or bottom) of the site. In WordPress you build it once,...
WordPress & CMS 188 Widgets and sidebars in WordPress: what they are, and what changed with block themes The short answer: a widget is a block of content you put in a fixed area of the site, such as the sidebar or footer...
WordPress & CMS 175 Choosing your WordPress home page: a static page or your latest posts The short answer: WordPress can show on the home page your latest posts (like a blog) or a fixed page you wrote...
WordPress & CMS 185 Page or post in WordPress: which to use for what The short answer: use a page for what does not change with time and is part of the site (About, Services, Contact)...
WordPress & CMS 194 Categories and tags in WordPress: how to use each without making a mess The short answer: categories are the blog’s big sections (few, and each post fits in one); tags are loose keywords,...
WordPress & CMS 202 The WordPress media library: uploading, organising and replacing images The short answer: everything you upload to the site (images, PDFs, videos) goes into the Media Library, under Media...
WordPress & CMS 175 WordPress comments: switch them on or off, moderate them and keep them tidy The short answer: comments give a blog life, but on a company site they tend to cost more work (and spam) than they...
WordPress & CMS 230 Replacing old addresses in a WordPress database without breaking it The short answer: when you change the site’s address (a new domain, or from http to https), WordPress keeps the old...
WordPress & CMS 289 Turning on WordPress debug mode safely: WP_DEBUG and the log The short answer: when the site shows a white page or a “critical error” without saying why, debug mode makes...
WordPress & CMS 170 Letting visitors register on your WordPress site: roles, bots and the risks The short answer: WordPress can let anyone create an account (Settings > General, “Anyone can register”). It only...
WordPress & CMS 181 XML-RPC in WordPress: what it is and whether to switch it off The short answer: xmlrpc.php is an old WordPress file that lets outside programs publish to your site. Most sites no...
WordPress & CMS 200 Importing a theme’s demo content without wrecking your site The short answer: many themes come with an “Import demo” button that copies the example’s pages, images and menus...
WordPress & CMS 211 Exporting and importing content between two WordPress sites The short answer: WordPress has its own tool to carry the content (pages, posts, comments, menus, images) from one...
WordPress & CMS 182 The WordPress password reset e-mail does not arrive The short answer: you pressed “Lost your password?” and the e-mail does not appear. Almost always it is one of three...
WordPress & CMS 179 Featured image and excerpt in WordPress: what they do and where they show The short answer: the featured image is the main photo of a page or a post; the excerpt is the short text that goes...
WordPress & CMS 195 Profile pictures in WordPress: how Gravatar works and how to change yours The short answer: the small photo beside your name (in comments, on authors) comes, by default, from Gravatar, a...
WordPress & CMS 189 The WordPress RSS feed: what it is, where to find it and when to turn it off The short answer: the RSS feed is a list of your latest posts, written for programs to read, not people. WordPress...
WordPress & CMS 203 Updating failed in the WordPress editor: the REST API and JSON errors The short answer: you write a post, press Update, and the editor answers “Updating failed. The response is not a...
WordPress & CMS 172 Deleting a WordPress user without losing their posts The short answer: when you delete a user, WordPress asks what to do with what they wrote: delete everything or pass...
WordPress & CMS 214 Collecting subscribers and sending a newsletter from a WordPress site The short answer: the site collects the addresses (with a form), but it should not be the one sending a message to...
WordPress & CMS 182 Locking down the WordPress file editor and a few wp-config settings worth changing The short answer: WordPress has, in the dashboard, a file editor that lets you change the code of the theme and...
WordPress & CMS 195 Changing the language of WordPress: the site, the dashboard and each user The short answer: WordPress has two languages chosen separately: the site’s (under Settings > General) and each...
WordPress & CMS 212 A test copy (staging) of your WordPress site: changing things safely The short answer: a test copy is a second site, identical to yours, that only you see. You try the new theme, the...
WordPress & CMS 257 Redirecting old pages in WordPress: a plugin or .htaccess The short answer: when a page changes address or disappears, whoever saved it (and Google) lands on a 404. The...
WordPress & CMS 175 Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page in WordPress: the causes The short answer: you log in to the dashboard as an administrator and, on opening a page, WordPress says “Sorry, you...
WordPress & CMS 190 Hiding WordPress usernames: author pages, the REST API and login messages The short answer: WordPress shows, without meaning to, the usernames of those who write on the site: on author...
WordPress & CMS 165 Reusable blocks and patterns in WordPress: save a layout once and use it again The short answer: if you repeat the same piece on several pages (a contact block, a notice, a list of benefits), do...
WordPress & CMS 175 Search on a WordPress site: why the built-in one disappoints and how to improve it The short answer: WordPress search looks for the words you wrote in titles and texts, and little else: it does not...
WordPress & CMS 182 The mobile menu does not open on a phone: the usual causes in WordPress and other sites The short answer: on the computer the menu works, but on the phone the three-line button does nothing. Almost always...