5 Things You Didn’t Know Were Possible With WordPress (Part 2)

by Vipe Team in WordPress Development; Published on 29.06.2021

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Welcome back to the second and concluding part in our series on things you absolutely didn’t think WordPress could do, let alone be great at – and it IS great at them. Without further ado, here are 5 more ways you can use WordPress that you never knew:

WordPress – the Online Shop

For those who are just starting out, using Amazon or Etsy for your wares might be a good idea, to begin with, but once you get serious, it’s always best to have people shop at your own little space on the Internet – and one way to do that is to create your own WordPress eCommerce shopping experience.

Nearly anyone who’s heard of WordPress has also heard of WooCommerce by now – it’s just that popular, quietly, and efficiently running 28% of all online shops. It’s easy to set up, it has a bucketload of extensions (including tons that are free) that let you design exactly the kind of shop you want to create. In the end, you get a professional product.

There are heaps of other plugins, like Shopify eCommerce that can be better suited to your ideas, and we would recommend getting the qualified opinion of your WordPress agency for development to make up your mind.

Performance Optimization

WordPress allows you to create a website with very little technical knowledge, and have it up and running, but with just a little more effort you can optimize that website to load faster and feel near-instantaneous to all visitors.

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For instance, pick from any number of page speed test tools like WebPageTest or Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your website speed and how you can go about improving it – such as by optimizing media or switching to a lighter theme.

Security Upgrades

Using WordPress and keeping it updated is already among the best practices to keep your website secure, but there are a bunch of ways to harden security, as well as plugins for methods like 2FA and backups that ensure your website stays safe from hackers.

You can also upgrade to a hosting provider who’s among the many that support advanced security features like managed updates, security audits, and threat detection.

Membership Programs and Subscriptions

You have a multitude of options these days to monetize your content, and a good old-fashioned subscription or patron scheme can provide you recurring payments and a steady income stream.

Plugins such as WooCommerce Memberships and WP-Members can help you simply and quickly add a patron system to your WordPress. These run the gamut from plain subscription to multiple member levels and integrate effortlessly with your other plugins and payment platforms.

Shortcodes

Coding can be quite the hill to climb when it comes to making your website your own, and as we mentioned in the previous part, code isn’t exactly for everyone. That’s why shortcodes exist – so you can use the power of code without you having to write any code! They are a WordPress feature that lets you use shorter embedded code than you would need to otherwise memorize.

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The best thing about shortcodes? There exist many plugins, such as WordPress Shortcodes that can handle most of the work for you, essentially making a quick feature simpler still to use.

Is that the end?

And so, our series on expanding your WordPress horizons has drawn to a close. Feel free to explore these 10 ideas, then reach out to either us at Vipe Studio or any favored WordPress agency for development for further queries. Until then, enjoy the WordPress life, and keep learning! We also have many other articles you can find on our blog.