 Yeah, some of these things that you you might be like, I knew that and then some of them you might be like Oh, I never noticed that because they're like They're built in the obvious. They've been there for a long time, but they're kind of some of them are a little bit hidden You might not have noticed them And a small caveat some of the shots in the presentation were taken a while ago they your admin might look slightly different now, but not not significantly at all of the Things still work the same way Cool. So the first thing that you might not know is that you can hide or rearrange your dashboard widgets So if you head to The dashboard in your WordPress installation, this is the kind of thing that you're going to see You've this these are like the standard dashboard widgets and You might not bother even looking at them or Maybe you do find them interesting These are fine the way they are, but as you install more plugins they're going to be More and more of these widgets here so if you want to hide any of them you go to screen options at the top and You can uncheck the dashboard widgets that you don't want and then you can just click and drag To rearrange the page and it might make it a little bit more efficient For you when you're logging in So the second thing that you might not realize is that you can get help for your WordPress dashboard directly in the dashboard. So you might not Know what this page does might not know what some of these settings mean Yeah, might not know what this page is for might be looking for something that you're having trouble finding And that help tab is also up at the top right It'll have some information at the left about the different things that you can see on this page On the right. It's got links to the WordPress documentation and forums if you do need to ask a question There's also a cool thing with This section you can get a plug-in. I believe it's called wp help, but Um, maybe somebody can confirm that later or I'll confirm it later Where you can customize this? So if you're actually, um, I'm getting a nod from d. So it's probably wp help You can customize this section. So if you have clients and you're building sites for them You can install wp help and add your own descriptions into this help section to help other people Use their site. So that's pretty cool. And also this help section is particularly useful with plugins like WooCommerce or Yoast. So both of those plugins have setup wizards That can make the initial experience good, but you might have skipped that the first time you installed it or You might want to go back and like reconfigure the way the basic settings work And so if you want to access that wizard again, you can pop up you go to the settings Page for that particular plug-in and then pop up to the help tab and the link to that wizard should be in there Um, the third thing is that you can sort the way Pages show in the pages list in your dashboard So by default they Show up in alphabetical order With and then child pages go below their parent pages You can click at the top of the page to temporarily resort them by something specific Like the date published the title. Maybe you want to go in reverse order but the other thing that you can do is You can use the page order setting The easiest way to access it you can edit the page and access it on the right hand side But the easiest way is to use quick edit and then there's just a few settings in the quick edit section and that Page order is right there. So the way the page order works is that every page is zero by default and The zero will be at the top Higher numbers will be at the bottom And so Maybe this amazon store Maybe it's like an embedded it's got embedded content from amazon I don't need to be editing it regularly. So I want to push it down to the bottom of the list So I might make the order five and just bump it right down there The other thing you can do is you can use negative numbers to make sure something stays at the top So it's less than zero It's going to stick at the top So you might be editing your home page more often than some of the other pages So that can Make things a little bit more efficient if you order them the way That you find most helpful in that section and it'll be more helpful as you have more pages So it's not such a big deal when you've got just one page of pages like this But once you get to like two three four pages You don't want to be like clicking through alphabetically all the time The other thing is bulk editing so you can do this for both pages and posts So to access the bulk editing option you use the bulk actions drop down at the top You check the boxes on the left hand side to say which pages or posts you want to edit And then you choose edit from the bulk actions and click apply So these are the options that you can do in bulk for pages The template is interesting. Maybe if you've changed themes And you might want to You know Apply the no sidebar template to a bunch of pages And then you disabling comments is like a really common thing that you're going to want to do in bulk Posts similar But you can you've got a few other options So these particular two that i've selected they're sticky. So I want to make them not sticky anymore Get the regular chronology back in my blog I'm going to add a tag to them so you can add tags to multiple posts You can also add categories. You can change post format Enable and disable comments as with the pages So yeah, that's pretty handy Uh the fifth thing that you might not have noticed is that you can really quickly and easily embed videos so, um youtube and vimeo I'm sure you know that you can embed videos, but All you have to do to do it is copy the link from the top of the youtube page You don't actually have to go to the share embed code all of that Um just grab a new line in your postal page paste the link maybe click Enter or it might embed straight away depends how fast the javascript's going, but um Yeah, you can embed it that quickly and then For files that you've uploaded to your site so you can embed videos and audio Uploaded to your site as well. So you can link to the download of the mp3 Or you can embed an audio player in the postal page Also, you may not know that webpress supports emoji Kind of fun So, uh, all you need to do for that is access an emoji. So, uh, if you've got a mac It's control command space to get this emoji screen Um, and then If you can't remember that or um, you're not on a mac You might want to use a Website like a get emoji.com where you can just copy and paste whatever emoji. Um, you fancy So i'm gonna look for the bunny because I really love bunnies. I have two pet bunnies at home You can check them out on my instagram. They're pretty awesome Um, so yeah, the piano guys are pretty awesome and bunnies are too um And you might not have noticed that you can drag and drop images into quite a few different places in wordpress, so You've probably seen it where you go to add a new image and it's like, hey, you can drag it right here But you can also drag it straight into the post editor And it'll upload straight to the site there Classic australian internet it's kind of slow, but you know, uh It'll upload and then you can click the Insert button change any settings that you want, uh, insert it into the post You can also edit the images. Uh, so, you know, it's just a few editing options, but um Really handy if you don't want to crack open photoshop for just something like resizing or um cropping The way you do that once it's uploaded you click edit image on the right you can scale the whole image Um, you can click and drag over the image to create a selection and then click the crop icon um at the top left to Cause that crop You can do flip and rotate and then also over on the side you can apply it To all the image sizes or just to the thumbnail. So you might want to re crop A square just only for the thumbnail and that's pretty handy And then you can also restore the original image. So if you decide you don't like your changes Or you changed the wrong image or whatever it was you can restore this one All right, the other thing you can do is you can insert multiple images Um at once, uh, so not just a gallery, but inserting multiple images Um, even with different settings all at once Uh, the way that you do that is you hold down control Or command if your windows mac While you're clicking on the images or shift to get a consecutive bunch of images And uh, then they're all selected Uh, then if you want to change the settings the insert settings for a particular one The one that you're editing in the sidebar is the one Outlined in blue and you can change the size and the alignment and uh edit the caption and then Clicking on another one outlines it in blue doesn't remove the check icon from it Um, so that's handy And then once you've got all your settings right, uh, you can go ahead and insert them into the post Um, however, you can also change the order That they're about to insert so You know, maybe when you were going through and checking them you were like, uh, I want this one and this one and this one But they're not in the right order You don't have to uncheck them and add them back into the selection You can edit the selection at the bottom Um, and so you can click and drag these to reorder them You can remove them again from here if you want you can Edit a few of the details if you need to And then once you're ready You can insert them into the post And you can go back and forth between those screens And you won't lose your settings So that's inserting individual Images in a bunch Uh, you can of course also create galleries So to do that You go to your ad media screen and then before you start selecting or actually even after click create gallery because they'll stay checked Even if you started checking them before you click create gallery Uh, and then you don't have to hold down control when you're in the create gallery section You just keep clicking away and adding your images Um, so the difference between the gallery and the inserting all individually is that um, the gallery Has a layout so Yeah, it goes in columns it chooses a specific size of the image and applies those same settings to all of the images also, uh Random is kind of interesting So you might notice they're all square except for that one and I think the reason for that is Um, that file was really enormous and the thumbnail didn't get generated properly It's neither here or there, but I so I removed it because I didn't want to deal with that right now um, but You can also edit your gallery after it's inserted Um, so hopefully you saw when you click on the gallery it outlines it and you get the little pencil icon to Edit the gallery settings Alrighty, so, um Obviously, you know, you can make links in wordpress. Um, we're using links in posts and pages all the time You can also add any custom link to a menu So any external link, you know, you can add pages to menus And you probably have done that but you can also add links to whatever website or That you want in your menu So There i'm adding a link to my photo blog Which is separate to this website I'm popping that in there And while we're talking about menus The other thing that you can do when you're on the menus screen Is you can check out the screen options So there's a bunch of different settings for a menu that you can enable that are normally hidden So screen options at the top right You can enable things like a space for a css class Tags if you want a link to tag archive pages Um, you can enable a description for your menu items And so that depends on your theme as to whether the description will show up or not But you can see, um Yeah, so that's where those go so you could use the css class to style Different menu items differently And in the 2015 theme that i'm using on this site, it does support descriptions. So We can see how those look It's essentially like a subtitle for your um For your menu items Um, something else you may not have noticed So you've probably used the customizer to change a few settings in your theme in your active theme You can also preview themes in the customizer without having to activate it Um, so one of the ways that you can do that is if you go straight into the customizer It has the active theme and you can click change This is one of the things that looks a bit different now. It actually loads the theme differently, but The functionality is completely the same. So you pick whatever theme you want to preview on your site um, you can Change the theme settings see how they're going to affect your site um Before you activate it before any of your visitors see the changes um, yeah, so I mean this particular theme 2014 um Has a few settings. It has a custom way of showing featured posts. Um, it's got a color setting built in there So yeah, you can play around around with how the header and logo looks so that kind of looks weird because it's on the side I think in the end. I would have probably put it in a widget instead something like that um, and then uh, the other thing that you can do in the customizer is Preview widgets before they uh go live so you add your widget as usual as usual and um You can see it right there. So I mean if a lot of us are getting more adept at using the customizer now, um, but um When I first wrote this point a lot of people were still using the older widgets page under appearance So you go appearance widgets in the dashboard And you add your widget to the sidebar, but you have to save and then go to the site and look this is cool because you can um See the changes before your visitors do cool, so that's my uh 15 things that you maybe didn't know WordPress can do So, uh, we'll go to questions now just raise your hand and wave at us for a microphone if you have a question And maybe have a question about one of the things christen demo, um, but I think we could probably also have time to just take Yeah, happiness engineer happy to answer whatever I Have the answer to right or maybe there's something you have just always wanted to do and you're pretty sure There must be a way to do it, but you just don't know what that would be a good question Hi, I was wondering um for bulk editing if you have thousands of products Is there a way to edit bulk edit the product data like the descriptions? That's a great question. I haven't really tried bulk editing products my inclination knowing how bulk editing works is that probably uh, the description is not going to be Uh included because that's usually something that's unique to each product So you wouldn't normally be changing that On a bulk scale to add the same Description because when you bulk edit it applies the new setting in exactly the same way to all of the things so like So if you're bulk editing products, you might be able to like make them all Virtual downloadable that sort of setting that uh is a simple setting but descriptions. I don't think would be Included in that I have a feeling. Yeah Well, yeah, cool All right tomorrow 255 what's your name? Sorry Andrew come to Andrew's session tomorrow So the question there was how how would you duplicate product? I think he's just saying you can duplicate products. So if you've got a product With a particular description you can duplicate it a bunch of times so that that description is automatically filled Yeah We'd like it for the video. Sorry When you change the screen options to see different things. Is that saved at a user level? um So your client if got a different login won't see those screen options that you change Yeah, it's definitely personal to you and I don't know off the top of my head if it's saved In the database or as a cookie in your it could be a cookie in which case It's you but also only in that browser that you are using um Anyway, if you change the screen options for you, it definitely doesn't change them for somebody with a different username Yeah I find that I change images To be to look better for a responsive situation And it's really great to change it inside the dashboard without jumping out into photoshop Is there a way though that I can duplicate the image? So if I'm changing a big a big image That I just want to be a little square part of that Can I duplicate that image inside the media library? Yeah, it's a great question not by default. I am pretty sure there would be a plug-in That can add a duplicate Yeah, sure. Yeah Yeah, yeah, not by default. Yeah, and I just got confirmation. It's not a cookie so Save yeah saved in the um dashboard for your user settings I have a database I mean Oh, it's working. Good. Hi there. I've got a question for you about the the media files. I've come unstuck I've come from another background So I've come from jumella background and then I got into wordpress and I I got a little confused with the the The the images so I'd have my main image in there and then I have a featured featured image You know, I understood that the featured image would be 200 by 200. That was all good every time I uploaded my images I'd end up with four or five copies of this image All different sizes a bit like as you were discussing there And so what I typically do is I'd I'd get rid of I'd keep my main image that had its file name And then I'd get rid of all the other ones and then the 200 by 200 when I'd rename that small or something like that And so then each of my blog posts will have the main image and then just the small one But I'm wondering if that's uh inefficient if whether I should do what I should do is let wordpress do what it does to the The images and create all those different copies because all those different copies are potentially being used for a responsive mode and Different screen sizes Just a question on that. Yeah, it can vary Depending on sort of what plugins You're using and the image behavior that they invoke but by default those different sizes that are generated are usually Called quite specifically So if you go to the media library and say I want to insert This image at the medium size. It's going to put the dash 300 times whatever URL in the post so It's probably better to Leave them there That said, yeah with plugins you can modify that behavior. So One example is the jetpack plugin When the image cdn is turned on it's actually Like using it's adding a whole bunch of different References to Image sizes and sometimes those image sizes are generated on the fly On the jetpack servers so In which case It would normally be fine to delete all but the largest version Yeah Hello, everyone I've tended to use the large version and in the in the main blog. So that's the featured image as such and then Or that's the main image and then for the featured item It's been the small one which I've Renamed what I was finding was sometimes the the images it wasn't finding them on certain screen sizes And I look at the URLs and think well, what's that URL? I don't recognize that and it would be 350 by whatever And so that came a little unstuck there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that can happen And the other thing that can happen is so when I had that gallery example And they were all square thumbnails except for that one cityscape That sort of thing can happen is where yeah you Not only is it the wrong dimensions, but It's also slow as heck to load because it's actually Loading a 2000 pixel image in this space so Yeah So one cool feature around the intermediate images sizes So that's the small medium large is that you can actually they have a default that's set But you can't actually change what that size is set to So you'll be able to find that via the general settings area. I think in the yeah in settings media. Yeah, um, it's best To do that like when you were first setting up the site so that they're all kind of consistent and work with your theme but if You know at some point you had a theme change or you decided that you always wanted thumbnails to be 200 by 200 instead of 150 by 150 you could make that choice As it might work better for what you're doing And if you find that you've deleted some images and now things are getting a little bit wonky The regenerate thumbnails plug-in Uh, you can install that you click a button and it regenerates all the sizes that Your install right now Has specified like whether they be from your theme or from like say woocommerce might generate sizes for product images and Yeah, we have another question over here Hi, christa. I'm matthew. Um back to the bulk editing editing thing, right? Have you experimented with guttenberg in any sense or way like for example with blocks and all those So if I want to add classes to those blocks, have you have you have tested that out yet? We've Gutenberg. No, I haven't done any bulk editing with Gutenberg. Yeah. Yeah. No, sorry Does anybody else have a potential answer for that one? Oh One more question down the front, I think Yeah, so back to images again. Um Is there a sensitivity in the edit of image? To the theme that is used because I found often that actually the edit fights the theme In particular like let's say 2017 or something like that It starts being really challenging when you start cropping and doing things. This doesn't seem to be In any way sensitive to what theme does it require? Is it entirely separate edit because it appears to be quite Detached. Is there a way of making it sort of more? So what should happen is that if your theme requires any image sizes that are A different to your regular thumbnail medium large sizes And you edit in the media library All of those sizes should be generated when you save the change to the image One thing that you might end up having a problem with is if you've cropped an image to smaller than a required size WordPress won't Blow up an image because then it starts losing quality So if you've say you've got an image that is originally 800 pixels You've cropped it so that it's 600, but your theme Um once a featured image of 800 then Yeah, you'll either You'll either end up with layout or quality issues so Yeah, in that in that case Yeah, you pretty much if you find that happening You pretty much need to find out what the recommended size for the theme is and just make sure that you don't go below that size, yeah So, um, thank you Christian for beautifully answering all those questions And hopefully showing us all some things we maybe didn't know existed