11 Hidden WordPress Features – HootProof

If you’ve been working with WordPress for a while, you probably know it well – you can create posts and pages, edit your menu and make the most important settings. But there are a few less obvious features in the WordPress admin that can save you a lot of time. I bet you don’t know all of them yet (leave me a comment if you do).

1. Customize view for more options in backend

At the top right you will find a button with which you can set additional view options. For example, you can display additional information in the post overview or when editing.

2. Page template

Did you know that your theme (probably) comes with different page templates? With the page templates you can control whether a certain page is displayed with a sidebar or in full-width, for example.

3. Post Formats

The situation is similar with the contribution formats. Depending on which formats your theme offers, you can select them for each post. In addition to the standard format, you will often find variants for videos, links, picture galleries or quotes. Just try it out with your theme.

4. Organize your dashboard

By default, there are a handful of widgets on the home page of the WordPress backend (at yourdomain.de/wp-admin/). Some plugins are visible here as a separate widget, eg Google Analytics, Yoast SEO and Statify.
Did you know that you can rearrange, remove and show more of these widgets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bS8ruosxsA

5. Insert links directly into the text

Since WordPress 4.5, the link editor in the text editor looks a bit different. Conveniently, you can now simply select the desired text and paste the URL – with Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (Mac):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meFmten8GiA

6. Edit images in WordPress

In principle, you should edit the images according to your wishes before uploading them, crop them and, above all, reduce them to a reasonable size.

But even after uploading, you can still edit images in WordPress – you can, for example, scale, crop or mirror them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdd0-azERH0

7. Split blog posts into multiple pages

With very long articles, it can become uncomfortable to scroll a lot and lose sight of the rest of the page structure. The next-page tag helps, with which you can divide each blog post into several pages. Simply add “” (two hyphens) to the text as a page break (only works in text mode, not under “Visual”) and you will have a multi-page article including page navigation.

Unfortunately, the page navigation is not necessarily displayed in the desired place and is simply forgotten by many theme developers in the design. You can help with CSS or change the position by customizing the theme templates if you’re comfortable with that.

8. Embed social media links and videos directly

Paste a URL from YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Medium or some other popular services directly into the WordPress editor – WordPress will automatically convert the link and display the video or linked content directly. Handy, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_I82KSFL9o

9. Database Options

Go to yourdomain.de/wp-admin/options.php. Here you will find all options from the WordPress database table wp_options. This allows you to check and, if necessary, change settings when troubleshooting. But be careful if you change something here!

10. Text formatting shortcuts

Formatting an article well and clearly can be a lot of work. WordPress provides you with some shortcuts that make it much faster while you are writing. Here is a selection (the double quotation marks are not part of the abbreviations, but serve to identify them):

• Start a new list with “*” or “-” on a new line
• Start a new bulleted list with “1.” or “1)” on a new line
• Use Tab to move bullet points one level to the right (opposite Shift+Tab to move left)
• Start a new line with “#” to convert it to h1 (heading 1), “##” for h2, “###” for h3, etc.
• Start a new line with “>” to create a quote.
• Undo in the WordPress Editor: Ctrl+Z (Windows) or Cmd+Z (Mac)

11. Super fast comment moderation

If you get a lot of comments and/or pingbacks, managing them can take a lot of time. With these shortcuts it is much faster.

First activate this in your user profile:

The keyboard shortcuts:

• J = Go to next comment (down)
• K = Go to previous comment (high)
• A = Approve comment
• U = Unapprove comment
• D = Delete comment (“delete”)
• R = answer comment (“reply”)
• Q = quick edit mode
• Z = restore comment from trash

And was there anything you didn’t already know? Do you know any other “hidden” WordPress functions?