Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2013 on WPBeginner

Yet another year is about to come to an end. We want to thank you guys for supporting WPBeginner for 4+ years of our existence. As we look back at the year of 2013, it was full of success and joy for the WPBeginner team. With your help, we built a school, launched floating social bar, launched OptinMonster, and very recently launched the WPBeginner Glossary.

Over the course of the year, we wrote tons of WordPress tutorials. We thought we should compile a list of our favorite ones. Let’s do a year in review of WPBeginner.

January 2013

How to Add MP3 Audio Files in WordPress – When you add an MP3 audio file in WordPress, WordPress does not embed it to your blog posts and instead a link to download file is added to the post. In this article we showed you how to add MP3 audio files in WordPress oEmbed in an HTML5 media player.

How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress – A common problem that most WordPress users face at some point is to bulk edit categories and tags. This usually happens when you are not using them right (see our guide categories vs. tags). In this article we showed how to bulk edit categories and tags in WordPress and even merge them.

Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch? – One of the most commonly question asked about WordPress, is that Why is it free> In this article we explained exactly how WordPress is free, what are the costs associated with creating a WordPress site, and what’s the catch.

February 2013

Why You Should NOT Remove Dates from Your WordPress Blog Posts – A common misconception among users is that if they removed dates from their WordPress articles, search engines would think that date is not relevant to the article and it will always remain fresh. We debunked the myth and explained exactly why it is a bad idea to remove dates from your WordPress blog posts.

How to Track Links in WordPress using Google Analytics – Google Analytics has so many great features that can help you build your site, plan your content strategy and do a lot more. In this article we showed users how they can track links in WordPress using Google Analytics.

March 2013

How are WordPress.com and WordPress.org Related? – Sometimes users confuse WordPress (the software), with WordPress.com, the blog hosting service. In this article we explained the relationship between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

How to Create Custom Taxonomies in WordPress – Custom taxonomies are a great way to sort your content with custom post types. In this tutorial we showed users how to create custom taxonomies in WordPress and how to use them.

April 2013

Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Database Management with phpMyAdmin – WordPress is written in PHP and uses MySQL as its database management system. To use WordPress you don’t need to learn either of them but a basic understanding of how WordPress stores data can help you troubleshoot problems easily. In this article we showed how WordPress stores data in your MySQL database and how you can manage your database using phpMyAdmin.

How to Add Additional User Profile Fields in WordPress Registration – The default WordPress user registration form is very basic. However, if you are running a a membership site or a multi-author WordPress blog, then you might want to give user the ability to provide extra information during the registration. In this tutorial we showed you how to add additional user profile fields in WordPress registration and user profiles.

May 2013

How to Import External Images in WordPress – When moving a WordPress site from one location to another, sometimes your image imports may fail. In this article we showed users how to search and import external images in WordPress. You can import them to your site and they will be available from your media library.

How to Install WordPress on your Windows Computer Using WAMP – The most efficient way to learn WordPress is to install it on your computer by creating a local server environment. We wrote this step by step guide to install WordPress on your Windows computer using WAMP.

How to Style Your WordPress Comments Layout – Comments are the soul of a good successful blog and online community. A great design for your comments section encourages users to submit comments. In this article we wrote about how to style your WordPress comments layout using the default css classes in WordPress.

June 2013

Best WordPress Magazine Themes of 2013 – WordPress is not just used by blogs, thousands of magazines, portals, and news sites are also running on WordPress with themes designed specifically for magazine websites. In this article we compiled a hand-picked list of the best WordPress magazine themes.

How to Properly Move WordPress to a New Domain Without Losing SEO – When moving your WordPress site to a new domain name, the most dreadful thing that can happen is to loose your site rankings and all its traffic. In this article we wrote about how to properly move your WordPress site to a new domain without losing SEO and traffic from other sources.

How to Add Affiliate Links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates – Affiliate marketing is a growing niche, it allows website owners to promote products on their website and earn commission. This extra revenue stream can provide a sustainable base to any online publication. In this article we showed our users how to add and manage affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates.

July 2013

How to Add a Floating Social Share Bar in WordPress – We have a floating social bar on our website which floats above the post area when a user scrolls down. We decided to release it as a plugin, Floating Social Bar. In this article we showed users how to add floating social share bar in WordPress.

We Built the School + WPBeginner Giveaway Winners – On WPBeginner’s fourth birthday we announced the largest WordPress giveaway ever, we also did fundraising to build a school and we were successful. In this article we announced the giveaway winners and our fundraising experience.

Beginner’s Guide: How to Restore WordPress from Backup – We advice our users to regularly backup their WordPress sites. Previously we showed you how to create a backup with BackupBuddy, BackWPup, and manual backups. In this article we showed users how to restore WordPress from a backup.

August 2013

5 Best Related Posts Plugins for WordPress – Displaying related posts with your articles is a great way to increase pageviews. You can display related posts in WordPress without a plugin. However, for our beginner users we compiled a list of 5 best related posts plugin for WordPress.

How to Fix Broken Links in WordPress with Broken Link Checker – If you are running a site for a long time, there is a good chance that you might have some links on your website that are not working anymore. Broken links cause a bad user experience and lots of broken links can also affect your site’s performance in search engines. In this article we showed you how to fix broken links in WordPress with Broken Link Checker.

How to Add or Remove Capabilities to User Roles in WordPress – WordPress comes with a powerful user management system which is based on roles and capabilities. The roles are easier to manage you can simply go to a user’s profile and assign them a role. Each roles comes with its own capabilities. In this article we showed users how they can add or remove capabilities to user roles in WordPress to create a customized user management system of their own.

September 2013

How to Build Your Email List in WordPress with OptinMonster – WPBeginner released OptinMonster in collaboration with Thomas Griffin Media. It is the best WordPress lead generation plugin, with beautiful optins to boost your email list subscriptions. In this article we showed how to build your email list in WordPress with OptinMonster.

How to Allow Users to Submit Posts to Your WordPress Site – Many of our readers asked us about how to allow users to submit posts to their WordPress sites without losing editorial and administrative control of their site. In this article we showed you how to allow users to submit posts to your WordPress site.

October 2013

How We Increased Our Email Subscribers by 600% with OptinMonster – We use OptinMonster as the lead generation plugin on our sites. This is the case study of how we increased our email subscribers by 600% with OptinMonster.

How to Create a Custom WordPress Widget – Widgets are the easiest way to add custom functions and features to your WordPress site’s sidebars or any widget-ready areas. In this article we showed users how to create a custom WordPress widget from scratch.

How to Disable Automatic Updates in WordPress – Since 3.7, WordPress comes with the ability to automatically update itself to a minor release. This was a cause of concern for many users who preferred to update their sites manually. In this article we showed how to disable automatic updates in WordPress.

November 2013

Which is the Best WordPress Slider? Performance + Quality Compared – There are many WordPress slider plugins out there. For new users this abundance of choice can be confusing. In this article we compared the most popular WordPress slider plugins for quality, features, user-friendliness to find out which is the best WordPress slider plugin.

Why You Should Start Building Your Email List Right Away – Many people who visit a website never return to it, there are lots of websites out there and it is hard to keep users coming back to your website. We have found that building an email list is the best way to keep users engaged. In this article we explained why you should start building your email list right away.

December 2013

Announcing WPBeginner Glossary – Dictionary of WordPress Terms We launched WPBeginner’s Glossary which lists commonly used WordPress terms and explains them to beginners. We were often asked by beginners to explain them common terms which were obvious to us but totally new to the people who never used WordPress before. This glossary will try to help those users.

How to Undo Changes in WordPress with Post Revisions – How to use post revisions in WordPress to undo changes and revert back to an earlier version of your WordPress posts and pages.

How to Fix the Image Upload Issue in WordPress – Many beginners face this file permission issue which prevents them from uploading their images in WordPress. This article shows how to fix that.

These were the best WordPress tutorials of WPBeginner in 2013. We hope that you liked them. We want to thank you for supporting us by sharing our articles, giving us feedback, and suggesting new topics. We would not be here without the support our community, so really thank you. We hope to add more useful tutorials in 2014.