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In this current day and age, you require an online presence if you wan to excel. However, not everyone can have spare time to learn web development, and hiring a developer can be expensive. Luckily, there are CMS solutions like WordPress which can help you build your dream website/blog, without any coding knowledge. In fact, with WordPress, you can get your own site running in a matter of hours.

The success behind WordPress lies in its ease of use and availability of useful options. There is an active community of developers who are all in creating new plugins and themes for you - the WordPress user. In fact, all these third-party technologies are what makes WordPress so appealing. But this doesn't imply vanilla WordPress don't have exciting feature-set. On the contrary, it boasts many features which many WordPress users have never even tried.

With new updates, WordPress receives many new abilities and features which many existing users don’t bother about. Whereas new users are - new users, and it is understandable if they don’t know all that WordPress has to offer. And so for this read, we will be going through some of these features which have been not known or used by most people. So without further ado, here are 10 Hidden WordPress Features You Didn’t Know Existed:

Keyboard Shortcuts:

Any person accustomed to a desktop will tell you it is much faster to work with your keyboard, then it is to involve your pointer(mouse). Just look at competitive RTS players hitting away hotkeys. And so if you were ever wondering whether or not WordPress supports such keyboard shortcuts, then you are in luck, as it does.

Do note, the list of shortcuts might not be too extensive and covers some basic markdown and formatting shortcuts. The following are some examples:

• * and - are shortcuts to unordered lists.
• 1. or 1) are shortcuts to ordered lists.
• # translates to h1, ## translates to h2, ### translates to h3, and so on.
• > is the shortcut for blockquote

And much more which helps you to control the text formatting, some basic copy-pasting, undoing, redoing, inserting tags, inserting images, turning on full-screen mode, etc.

Click here to learn about some more keyboard shortcuts on WordPress.

Distraction Free Writing Mode

Many people require a minimal canvas, devoid of distracting buttons, to come off with their best work. As you know, the WordPress visual editor screen, where you write your posts, is clogged with multiple options and is frankly a mess.

So if you require doing away with all these options while you write, there is a handy distraction free mode which you can use. The button activating this mode is located in the upper right corner of the text editor, in an icon of an expanding screen.

Once activated, it will hide all WordPress sidebars and panels around the text editor. So keep writing without feeling claustrophobic, and once you are done, simply hit that button again to come back to your feature ridden text editor.

Splitting Posts into Multiple Pages

Most of us use headings to allocate a users attention to a particular topic. But for the aggressive skimmers, you might want to split your single posts into multiple pages. That way, there is a clear jumping off point and readers will be able to navigate better through your post.

If you are interested in trying this technique, then you can either start experimenting with certain website builders, or use a native WordPress feature. All you have to do is go into the text editor while you are composing your post and write <!--next page--> where you want to split your content. There are no limits, so you can do this as many times you like.

Image Editor

Sometimes it is necessary to tweak the images you upload to your WordPress website. For this reason, WordPress comes with an inbuilt image editor. Now it is worthwhile noting that it is by no means an alternative to software such as Photoshop, but is more than capable to help you crop, resize, flip, and rotate your images. To avail these options, you need to head to media, then the library, then select the image you want to tweak and hit Edit Image.

Change Default Image Sizes

You might have noticed that when you upload an image, WordPress offers four sizing options - thumbnail, medium, large and full size. Now how does WordPress decide on how large is a large image, and what measurements to consider for the thumbnail?

By default, WordPress sets some specified sizes for these options, but they can be customized to your likings. To access and customize the default image size presets you need to go to Settings and then to media. Here, your required options are located.

Widgets Accessibility Mode

As you know, WordPress comes with sidebars, and Widgets are used to add content to these sidebars. By default, you can place these widgets onto the sidebars by simply dragging and dropping. However, if you dislike said gestures then you will be happy to learn about the ‘Accessibility Mode.’

With the Accessibility Mode, you will get a new screen where you can configure the position of your widgets by simple clicks. However, Accessibility Mode isn’t that readily available. You will have to go into Appearance, then onto widgets, screen options, and then click on enter accessibility mode, to turn on the feature.

Dashboard Widgets

The Dashboard is sometimes taken to be synonymous with the WordPress Backend. But, it simply and only refers to the page/screen with which you are greeted with as you log in. Now what is impressive about the WordPress Dashboard, is that it can be customized like your phone’s home screen to give you quick access to some your site’s statistics.

The WordPress Dashboard supports widgets and a boatload of them. Some of these widgets include latest WordPress news, quick posts, at-a-glance stats, and more widgets are added along with certain plugins which supports them.

Furthermore, you can organize all these dashboard widgets by simple drag and drop. The WordPress dashboard gives you around four columns which you can use to arrange these widgets. Also, if you want to hide some unwanted widgets, then you can do so through Screen Options, a feature which we shall talk next.

Screen Options and Help

Screen options

Many impressive abilities and functions are tucked away behind screen options. And guess what, this one had been staring you at your face.

WordPress is designed to show only the most common and relevant functionalities on a particular screen. However, there might be more features that might be of help to you which WordPress mistakenly took as unnecessary.

And so, there is a Screen Options dropdown menu to the top of some screen, which will show you many hidden features that screen has to offer. Simply click on the button to get access to all the hidden features about the screen. And if you think that the page is now filled with too many options, then click it again to revert back(or hide) all those extra features.

Help

All Screens on your WordPress Backend has this help button. This is a similar drop-down menu button like screen options. You can use it when you want to know something regarding the page where you are at. It also has some links to take you to the official WordPress documentation, or the WordPress support forums.

Menu Configuration

Menus offer one of the easiest to use navigation options out of the lot. All your WordPress menu features are conveniently located under the Appearance section. Here you will find that menus are configured to let you add posts, pages, external links and categories by default.

However, there are plenty more menu items which you can add by simply ticking the different checkboxes available here. But it is worth noting that all these options are visible only after hitting the Screen Options drop-down button.

There can be even more menu items like custom post types, depending on which theme or plugin you have installed.

Master Options Panel

The more advanced options are mostly hidden away by good practice. This is so that new users don’t mistakenly stumble into these settings and messes with them. All of the settings inside the master options panel are very important and tampering with them can cause many problems.

In fact, the options here are so important and crucial that there aren’t even any direct links to access it. Interested users, who have experience in WordPress can access the Master options Panel by adding “/wp-admin/options.php” after their site’s URL.

Through this screen, you can tamper with your site’s URL, time format, blog name, site descriptions, default image size, default post category, and much more. There might also be options exclusive to your web host. You can learn about them by going through some detailed web host review of your hosting provider.

In Conclusion:

So this has been my picks for the top 10 WordPress features which most people aren’t aware. So tell us, which ones do you like? Also, did any of these surprise you?

Furthermore, if you know some other awesome features which we left out from this list, then do mention them in the comments section. Your fellow readers will love to know about some more unknowns.

Kiera Hayes is a passionate Blogger and Web Developer. She enjoys reading and writing articles whenever she gets time from her work.

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