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Efficiency is everything in the fast-paced world of business. Every successful organization values competent workers that generate the most profit and minimize waste. What does it take to be an efficient business professional? You must...
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Do you want to disable the default WordPress sitemap on your website?
The default sitemap feature was introduced in WordPress 5.5, and it enables WordPress to publish XML sitemaps for your website automatically. The challenge is that this feature is lacking advanced WordPress SEO features that you need to rank higher.
In this article, we will show you how to easily disable the WordPress sitemap and improve it with a more powerful solution.
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in an XML format, which makes it easy for search engines to discover and index your content.
Sitemaps are very beneficial for your website as they bring more traffic and improve the SEO rankings of your site.
However, numerous WordPress SEO plugins like All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, and Google XML Sitemaps already implement sitemaps on your website, which results in WordPress pages having two sets of sitemaps.
Duplicate sitemaps for the same WordPress page can confuse search engines and can drop your SEO rankings.
If you’re not using a SEO plugin for your sitemap, then you’re missing out on advanced features. For example, many popular WordPress SEO plugins offer features like Video Sitemap, News Sitemap, RSS Sitemap, etc that you need to outrank your competitors in SEO.
With that being said, let’s see how you can easily disable the default WordPress sitemap.
If you’re using any of the popular WordPress SEO plugins, then they will automatically disable the default WordPress sitemap feature and replace it with a more powerful solution.
For the sake of this tutorial, we will be demonstrating AIOSEO plugin because that’s the plugin we use on WPBeginner.
All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to easily optimize your WordPress website for search engines and social media platforms. Over 3 million websites use AIOSEO including our own.
By default, All in One SEO will enable their Sitemap feature for you which automatically replaces the basic WordPress sitemaps upon activation.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, you will need to configure the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to set up All in One SEO in WordPress correctly.
After that, head over to the All in One SEO » Sitemaps page from the WordPress admin dashboard to review your sitemap settings.
Next, navigate to the ‘General Sitemap’ tab. Here, make sure that the ‘Enable Sitemap’ switch is set to ‘Active’. This will disable the default WordPress sitemap.
Aside from the General Sitemap, we recommend that you enable the video sitemap, news sitemap, as well as the RSS sitemap on your site to maximize your SEO rankings.
You can also easily disable the default WordPress sitemap using code, too. You can add the code snippet in your theme’s functions.php file.
However, the biggest problem in adding code to your functions.php file is that even a tiny mistake can break your website.
That is why we recommend using WPCode to add custom code to WordPress. This free plugin makes it easy to add code snippets in WordPress without having to edit your theme’s functions.php file.
First, you need to install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For further instructions, check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Next, go to the new Code Snippets entry in the left-hand menu of your WordPress dashboard. This will bring you to the ‘All Snippets’ page.
Next, just click on the ‘Add New’ button.
WPCode will then take you to the ‘Add Snippet’ page where you can choose to add your own custom code or search to find an existing snippet from the WPCode library.
As we have to add custom code, simply hover over ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option and click ‘Use snippet.’
Now you will be directed to the ‘Create Custom Snippet’ page. You can start by typing a name for your code snippet. It can be anything you like.
Then, select a ‘Code Type’ from the dropdown menu to the right. As we will be using a PHP code, simply click on the ‘PHP Snippet’ option.
Next, simply copy and paste the following PHP code snippet in the ‘Code Preview’.
add_filter( 'wp_sitemaps_enabled', '__return_false' );
It will look like this when you’ve done so.
After pasting the code, scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section where you will find two insert methods.
Simply choose the ‘Auto Insert’ option since you want it to run sitewide.
Now, go to the top of the page, toggle the switch from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’ at the top right corner, and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.
Once, you have saved and activated the code snippet, it will be active and the default WordPress sitemap disabled.
We hope this article helped you learn how to disable the default WordPress sitemap. You may also want to check out our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to improve your rankings, and see our comparison of the best managed WordPress hosting.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Easily Disable the Default WordPress Sitemap first appeared on WPBeginner.
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Are you wondering whether you should use an excerpt instead of full posts in your archive pages?
A summary helps provide a quick glimpse to your visitors about your content. Users can read through the short excerpt and decide if they’d like to view the entire blog. However, using the full post may get more eyes on the content because it doesn’t require extra action on the user’s part. But which is better?
In this article, we will compare full post vs summary (excerpt) in your WordPress archive pages.
An excerpt is a short summary of an article that you can display on the archive pages in WordPress. The excerpt also has a link that users can click to read the whole article.
If you have limited space on your WordPress site, then excerpts are great for showing descriptions of your content.
By default, WordPress will use the starting 55 words of a blog post and show it as an excerpt. However, you can also manually add an excerpt.
Adding Excerpts in WordPress Posts
First, you’ll need to add a new post or edit an existing one. Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, you can click the ‘gear’ icon at the top right corner to open the settings panel.
Next, scroll down to the ‘Excerpt’ section and add your text in the ‘Write an excerpt (optional)’ field.
When you’re done, simply publish or update your blog post.
Adding Excerpts in WordPress Pages
If you need to add a summary to a WordPress page, then you’ll notice that there’s no option to add an excerpt. However, you can simply add the following code to your website:
add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );
To add the code, you’ll need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, head to Code Snippets » Add Snippet from your WordPress dashboard, and then select the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.
Next, you can enter a name for your code snippet.
After that, simply paste the snippet in the ‘Code Preview’ area and select the ‘PHP Snippet’ from the Code Type dropdown menu.
From here, you can scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select where you’d like to add the snippet on your site.
Next, click on the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose the ‘Run Everywhere’ option under ‘PHP Snippets Only.’
After entering the code, you can click the toggle at the top to activate the snippet and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.
This will add an ‘Excerpt’ meta box in the settings panel in your WordPress editor, where you can easily provide a short summary for your page.
Please see our tutorial on how to add excerpts to your pages in WordPress for more information.
That said, let’s see the advantages of using a summary vs a full post in archive pages.
When optimizing your site for a better user experience, choosing between excerpts and full posts in archive pages can play a huge role. You want users to easily browse the website, find what they are looking for, and improve search engine ranking.
With summaries, you can provide an improved user experience. It helps users find the content they want to read. Plus, it keeps your page organized and allows you to display multiple posts on a page. This would be very difficult if you show full posts in archives.
That said, here’s a closer look at why we recommend using summary (excerpts) vs full posts on your WordPress site’s archive pages.
1. Improves Page Load Time
Did you know Google now uses your site speed as a ranking factor? The search engine will rank fast-loading websites higher than the ones that take a lot of time to load fully.
By using excerpts on your archive pages, you significantly improve the page load time.
Imagine an archive page that shows 10 posts per page. If each of those 10 pages is 500+ words long with 5 images each, then your user has a lot to scroll through. The page will also load slower than normal.
By using excerpts, you can significantly improve the user experience.
Here’s a preview of how a short summary appears on WPBeginner when you view the archive pages.
Users can load and browse through our category, tags, date, and other archive pages quickly and easily. As for search engines, you will see a boost in rankings for archive pages and improvement in WordPress SEO with faster page load times.
2. Prevents Duplicate Content
By showing excerpts on your archive pages, you can prevent being flagged for duplicate content in search engines.
For example, WordPress by default has category, tags, date, and author archives. Publishing full posts in archives will make each article appear at full length on several different pages on your site.
Even though search engines are quite smart in finding canonical URLs for each post, they can still flag the site for duplicate content which will affect your search engine rankings.
3. Increases Pageviews and Reduces Bounce rate
Using summaries or excerpts can reduce the bounce rate and increase pageviews. Users can click through to the full post in order to read the entire article.
If you just have full posts displayed in the archive pages, then people will not see any other elements that are on the blog page itself, such as a popular posts widget inside the post or page content.
By displaying the full post, users might just leave your site after looking at a single page instead of clicking around.
A summary makes your archive page more engaging and allows your readers to see find more content easily.
1. Short Excerpts Provide Poor User Experience
If you don’t set an excerpt for blog posts, then WordPress will automatically create a summary using the first 55 words in the article. This is too short, and sometimes your sentences will be cut in half, resulting in a poor user experience.
You can always change the excerpt length in a WordPress theme, but that doesn’t fix the problem entirely.
One solution is to write a custom excerpt in the content editor before publication. Another solution is to write short, catchy introductions that will most likely make the user interested and can easily work as excerpts.
2. Hidden Content
Some users prefer to read everything on one page rather than having to go to a different page to read the entire article. This is useful if you have short blog posts that don’t contain many images.
These users are likely to stay on your site longer, even if they don’t click on any other pages, which is also a metric that Google uses to determine search engine rankings.
If your articles are short and do not contain a lot of images, then you can get away with displaying full posts on your archive pages.
However, in most cases, we always recommend using a summary or excerpts for your archive pages. Most WordPress themes come with a built-in option that allows you to choose between full posts vs excerpts from the settings.
Excerpts provide a better user experience and make your site look clean and organized. You can boost user engagement, increase pageviews, and show multiple articles on your archive pages.
We hope that this article answered the question of whether you should use a full post or summary in your WordPress archive pages. You may also want to see our guide on how to move a WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS and WooCommerce made simple.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages? first appeared on WPBeginner.
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Do you want to add a login form to your WordPress sidebar?
A login form in the WordPress sidebar allows users to quickly log in from anywhere on your website. Having easy access to a login form can increase sales for ecommerce sites, boost retention for online courses, and more.
In this article, we will show you how to easily add a custom login form to your WordPress sidebar.
If you run membership websites, online stores, or sell online courses, then you likely need your users to login to perform certain actions.
Since the sidebar appears throughout a website, it makes the login form more noticeable and easily accessible from every page on the site.
Adding a login form to your WordPress sidebar makes it easy for users to sign in to their accounts quickly. This boosts engagement, provides a better user experience, and increases form conversions.
That said, let’s look at how to add a login form to your WordPress sidebar easily. We’ll show you how to add the default login form in the sidebar and create a custom login form.
You can click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section.
You can show the default WordPress login form in the sidebar of your website. This makes it super easy for users to enter their username and password to access the WordPress admin area.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the Astra theme. Do note that the options may vary depending on the WordPress theme you’re using.
To start, you need to go to Appearance » Widgets from your WordPress dashboard.
From here, you can click the ‘+’ button and scroll under the ‘Theme’ heading and click on the ‘Login/out’ widget block to add it to your sidebar.
Next, you’ll see the ‘Login/out’ block in your widgets area. You can then enable the options to display login as a form.
When you’ve made the changes, click the ‘Update’ button at the top.
After that, you can visit your website to see the default WordPress login form in action.
Do note that you’ll be logged in if you immediately go check the form. Simply log out of your site to see how the form will appear to your members.
The default WordPress login form only offers a username and password field. However, you can create a custom user registration form with more fields and customization options.
The best way to do that is by using WPForms. It is the most popular WordPress form plugin, and the premium version of WPForms allows you to easily create WordPress login and registration forms with custom fields.
WPBeginner users can use the WPForms Coupon: SAVE50 to get 50% off on their purchases.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can get your license key from your WPForms account on their website.
After verification, you need to go to WPForms » Addons page.
From here, you need to scroll down to the ‘User Registration Addon’ and click on the ‘Install Addon’ button.
The addon will now automatically install and activate on your website.
You are now ready to create a custom WordPress login form. Simply visit WPForms » Add New page to launch the WPForms builder.
First, you need to enter a form name at the top and then select the built-in ‘User Login Form’ template. Simply hover over it and click the ‘Use Template’ button.
It will display the login fields pre-loaded in your form. You can click on a field to edit it or add new fields from the left column.
WPForms offers multiple form fields you can add using the drag-and-drop builder. For example, you can add a name or CAPTCHA form fields to the login form.
Afterward, head to the ‘Settings’ tab and click on the Confirmation section.
This is where you need to define what to do once a user successfully logs in to your site.
The options include a message, a custom page, or a redirect URL to any page on your site.
Ideally, you would want to redirect users to a page once they are logged in. This could be your homepage, WordPress admin panel, or any other page on your website such as their membership dashboard or client portal.
Next, you can click the ‘Save’ button at the top and exit the form builder.
Your login form is now ready. From here, you can add it to your WordPress sidebar.
Simply visit the Appearance » Widgets page in your WordPress admin area. On this page, add the ‘WPForms’ widget block in the sidebar widget area of your site.
Next, you can select your user login form from the dropdown menu.
You can view more options in the settings panel on your right. For instance, there are options to show the form title and description.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button when you’re done.
You can now visit your website to see the custom login form.
You can also use WPForms to create a custom user registration form with anti-spam features.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add a login form in your WordPress sidebar. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide on how to start a WordPress blog and the best email marketing services for small businesses.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Add a Login Form in Your WordPress Sidebar first appeared on WPBeginner.
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Do you want to improve your WordPress comment notification emails?
Comments drive discussion and user engagement on many blogs. However, WordPress doesn’t do such a great job when it comes to notifying users about comment activity.
In this article, we will show you how to better manage WordPress comment notification emails to boost user activity on your website.
Comments are an important element of many WordPress websites, particularly on news sites and WordPress blogs. More comment activity means a more engaged audience which results in more page views and ultimately more revenue.
However, the comment system that comes with every WordPress website is fairly limited. It sends comment notifications only to site administrators and article authors. Apart from that, there isn’t a default option for other site users to be notified of new comments.
Wouldn’t it be nice if users were able to get comment notifications for the posts they like or when someone replies to a comment they left?
That said, let’s see how you can enhance the default WordPress comment system and notification emails for a more engaging user experience on your website.
By default, WordPress does not have an option to send notifications to commenters.
However, it does have an option to send email notifications to site administrators when a new comment is published and when a comment is held for moderation.
You can view these options by going to Settings » Discussion from your WordPress dashboard and navigating to the ‘Email me whenever’ section.
Both these notifications are only sent to the site administrators. However, WordPress also sends an email notification to the post author about new comments.
If you get a lot of comments on your website, you might not want to receive email notifications for all comments held for moderation. You can simply uncheck the box here to disable those.
If a user’s comment is held for moderation, they will see a message telling them so. However, they will have no idea whether you approve it or not without returning to your site.
Unfortunately, many of these users never return to your website to check, so they won’t ever know that you approved their comments.
You can fix this by using the Comment Approved Notifier Extended plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Comment Approved Notifier Extended will notify users when their comment is approved. It works right out of the box, and there are no additional settings you need to configure.
You can also see our list of best plugins to improve WordPress comments.
In addition to not knowing if their comment was approved, commenters will not be notified about replies, either.
Once they leave a comment, they will have to manually visit your website again to see if someone has replied.
To solve this, you need to install and activate Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
It allows your users to subscribe to comments on any article with or without leaving comments. Users can also easily unsubscribe at any time.
For detailed step-by-step instructions, see our article on how to allow users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.
Many users may not want to receive notifications for all comments on an article. However, they may want to know if someone replied only to their own comments.
You can add this feature as well using the same Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin. First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Next, simply visit the StCR » Comment Form in your WordPress dashboard. From here, click on ‘Yes’ next to the ‘Advanced Subscription’ option.
Users will now see a new option under the comment box whether they’d like to subscribe to all comments or just their own comments.
For more details, see our article on how to notify users of replies to their own comments in WordPress.
If you run a multi-author blog, then other authors may want to keep up with discussions across your website. If you already have comment subscriptions enabled, then each author can manually go and subscribe to comments.
However, if you want certain users to receive all comment notifications, then you can do this with Better Notifications for WordPress plugin. For more details, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is active, you can head to Notifications » Add New from your WordPress dashboard and can enter a title for your notification at the top.
Next, you can select ‘New Comment’ from the ‘Notification for’ dropdown menu. After that, simply add the user roles that will receive these notifications in the ‘Send To’ field.
The plugin also offers an option to send notifications to the post’s author and even exclude user roles from receiving email notifications for new comments.
Want to create your own custom comment notifications in WordPress? Custom notifications can allow you to replace the default WordPress notification with your own.
First, you will need to install and activate the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Notifications » Add New page from your WordPress admin panel to create your custom comment notifications.
You can edit the notifications for new comments, comments awaiting moderation, and comment replies. Additionally, you can send notifications to any user role or to individual users.
The plugin also lets you add email addresses manually that are not even connected to a user on the site.
You have the option to completely customize the comment notification sent by WordPress and use shortcodes inside the email text to add custom tags.
For more details, see our article on how to add better custom notifications in WordPress.
All the above tips will fail if your WordPress site fails to send email notifications or if those emails are marked spam by email providers.
To fix WordPress email issues and improve email deliverability, you need to install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, visit the Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure plugin settings.
This plugin allows you to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to send emails. SMTP is a much better and more reliable method than the default mail function used by WordPress.
It works with any email service that supports SMTP. This includes your free Gmail account as well as Google Workspace, Mailgun, and Sendgrid.
For details, see our article on how to use SMTP server to send WordPress emails.
We hope this article helped you learn how to manage WordPress comment notification emails. You may also want to see our ultimate step-by-step guide on improving WordPress speed and performance for beginners and how to start an online store.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Manage WordPress Comment Notification Emails first appeared on WPBeginner.
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