Did you know these 7 obscure super-secret WordPress tricks? For a while only Chuck Norris knew these!
Screen Options
On most views within the WordPress backend there is a very subtle hidden menu named “Screen Options.” This will let you change what shows on the view and sometimes even the number of items.
- Want to see more pages at once? When viewing all pages change it from 20 to something like 50.
- Don’t really need to see the Custom Field, Author, or Excerpt meta boxes when editing a post? Hide them.
Soft Return
If you hit “enter while holding shift” it will let you go down to the next line without adding a bunch of extra space.
Resize and edit images in editor
You can drag the corners of an image in the WordPress Editor to resize the image. Use carefully as the image can be distorted and pixelated if you resize it too much past its normal size. I recommending only resizing it smaller too. If an image doesn’t look quite right after you upload it, there are simple tools for cropping and rotating.
Easily embed YouTube (and more)
WordPress has this nifty tech called oEmbed. It lets you just paste a link (e.g. to a YouTube video of goats yelling like humans)
Full list of embeddable items.
Paste a URL over Text
This one feels like magic – you just highlight some text and then paste over it if you have a link you’ve already copied. WordPress will automatically make that text a link!
Text Styling Shortcuts
This is similar to Markdown and gives you a quick method for writing your content while adding formatting. Try typing a * and then hitting the spacebar. Magic!
Typing * or – will automatically give you a proper HTML list right away. Same for 1. or 1) Pressing backspace will undo this change. You can also use the undo button, ctrl/cmd+z or esc.
Starting your paragraph with two to six number signs # will convert that paragraph to a heading. Similarly the greater-than symbol > will convert the paragraph to a blockquote.
Bulk Post / Page Editing
When editing posts or pages you can bulk select and edit a bunch at once. For instance, you could change the author on a bunch of posts at one time.
In the course of writing this post I found several posts that had the same idea. If you’ve enjoyed this one take a look at these ones for some other tips.