If you’re like me, I’m sure you’d want to bang out a blog post as quickly as possible. After all, we already have our hands full on other important stuffs right?

We all aim to be efficient in our work. Sometimes I’d think to myself, “Why should I reach over to my mouse to click on a tab. Isn’t there a quicker way to do it with my keyboard?” Luckily for us, there are a bunch of nifty WordPress shortcuts that will save you time and avoid unnecessarily expanding calories to click your mouse.

If you don’t already know, a large part of the Internet is powered by the content management system called WordPress. Almost every blogger loves using it, being user-friendly, SEO friendly, with easy publishing. While it is often known for a blogging platform, WordPress is more than that thanks to its extensibility.

Of course, you might think why you should go the extra mile to learn the WordPress keyboard shortcuts. This may not matter that much if you post in a low frequency, but if you’re likely to post several articles or more per day, it can add up pretty quickly. Thus, these WordPress keyboard shortcuts can prove nothing less than a blessing.

In the next few sections, we’ll look at shortcuts that you can use for different kinds of tasks.

How To Turn On WordPress Shortcuts

If you try using shortcuts in a fresh installation of WordPress, you will notice that nothing will happen. This is because keyboard shortcuts are disabled by WordPress by default. It may be inconvenient at first, but here are a few steps you should take before setting up.

1) Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard.

2) At the sidebar on the left, click on “Your Profile”

3) Once you reach the profile page, simply check the box next to “Keyboard Shortcuts” and click Update Profile.

It’s really that simple!

Editor Shortcuts

Basic Formatting

First up, let’s run through the basic WordPress formatting shortcuts. There’s a good chance you’re already familiar with these, but I want to make sure I cover everything because these are very important, though these WordPress shortcuts are widely known:

These are generic keyboard shortcuts that are used on most of the software applications.

Advanced Formatting

Now, let’s see the more advanced editor shortcuts:

• Alt + Shift + l = Align Left
• Alt + Shift + c = Align Center
• Alt + Shift + r = Align Right
• Alt + Shift + d = Strikethrough
• Alt + Shift + j = Justify Text
• Alt + Shift + u = Bulleted List
• Alt + Shift + o = Numbered List
• Alt + Shift + s = Remove Link
• Alt + Shift + q = Quote
• Alt + Shift + m = Insert Image
• Alt + Shift + p = Insert Page Break

Shortcuts for Managing Comments

If you have a busy blog, sorting through hundreds of comments daily can become a real chore.

Luckily, if you memorize some of these commands, you should be able to cut down your moderation time to a matter of minutes. In order to do so, you must select the comment first and then press the corresponding key.

Here is the full list of commands:

• A (Approve) – Approves the selected comment to be published
• D (Delete) – Sends the comment to the trash and/or deletes comment
• S (Mark as Spam) – Marks the comment as spam
• Z (Undo) – Undo previous command
• U (Unapproved Comment) – Sends a previously approved comment back into the moderation queue
• R (Reply) – Start a reply to the selected comment
• Q (Quick Edit) – Quick edit of selected comment
• E (Edit) – Advanced editing of selected comment
• X (X marks the spot) – Ticks the checkbox

Bonus WordPress Hacks You Should Know

Up until here, I figured it would be boring and insufficient to just talk about WordPress keyboard shortcuts. In this section, I’ve picked out 6 handy WordPress hacks that will change the way you blog forever (I will do a detailed post about it in the future).

Again, these WordPress hacks don’t require any sort of coding or technical knowledge, and you can implement them into your blogging routine immediately.

Let’s get started!

1. Go Full-Screen For Zero Distractions

To write as efficiently and effectively as possible, you need zero distractions. The simple solution is to switch to full-screen editor, which gives you a stark-white canvas to work from.

Upon clicking on it, the essential formatting tools such as headings, links and lists are still there. They are just hidden away, appearing only when you place your mouse pointed at the top of the screen.

To get into the full-screen editor (called the Distraction – Free Writing Mode in WordPress), click the full-screen icon from your standard WordPress editor menu.

You can also get there by using a keyboard shortcut. Just press Alt + Shift + w.

To close the full-screen editor, press Escape. Or click the “Exit full-screen editor” link. (Actually, just press escape. It’s faster, and that’s what this post is about right?)

2. Let WordPress Do the Heavy Lifting When Finding Internal Links

If you’ve noticed on all of our SEOPressor blog posts, we love to build internal links form our new articles to those published ones. So whenever we come across opportunities to link to something we’ve written before, we’ll jump at it.

In the past, this led to a ton of “site:blog.seopressor.com keyword” searches in Google to find a suitable content. But a far better way exists.

Inside the dialogue box to insert/edit a link, there’s an easily-missed option lurking at the bottom – “Or link to existing content”

The dialogue box expands to how all the posts you’ve ever written on your blog.

Click the post you want to link to and WordPress automatically copies that post into the URL and Title fields up above.

3. Clean Up Your WordPress Dashboard

If you’ve installed plenty of plugins, I’m sure your WordPress dashboard can get pretty messy. Want to clean it up so that it isn’t such an eyesore?

Keep what you need; hide what you don’t. Voila!

Simple. Just click on “Screen Options” at the top right corner of your dashboard, and a list of all the widgets/blocks which you’ve got on your dashboard will appear. You may hide or show the widgets as you please.

4. Keep Tabs On Your Word Count

You can check your word count any time by looking at the bottom of your post editor:

In the standard editor, the word count is at the bottom of the text box, just above the custom settings

5. Drop Images Right Into Your Post

This is a really cool feature on WordPress. For a while now, you could drag and drop images directly into the post itself, bypassing the “Add Media” button entirely!

A really helpful time saver.

6. Add Live Links With A Shortcut

If you’re linking out a lot to other contents when writing your posts, you’re sure to benefit from this feature. Basically, instead of having to select the text you want to add a link to and then clicking the “Insert Link” button from the toolbar, you can do it in a simpler way:

First, make sure that the URL that you want to use for the link is in your clipboard, then just highlight the text you want to link, and press Ctrl + v. The link will then be included automatically.

Takeaway

Now that you have been introduced to the amazing world of WordPress shortcuts, you should be able to exponentially increase your writing efficiency as you practice them. Condensing your actions down into split-second key presses will add up to a great amount of time especially when working on a long project.

Start byactivating your WordPress account to being practising. It’s okay if a shortcut or new workflow feels strange at first. Nobody becomes a true WordPress master overnight. But time spent learning these tricks could pay back ten times over.

In the near future, I will be back with a more advanced version of WordPress Keyboard shortcuts and hacks. So be sure to stay tuned!

What’s next you ask? Content optimization of course. To know more about it, you can check out this blog post on ways to optimize your On-Page SEO.

As for now, it’s time to take your blogging to the next level!

Do you have a favorite set of shortcuts that I haven’t touched on? Which shortcut do you find to be the handiest? Share your input down in the comments section down below and get the conversation rolling!

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Updated: 22 November 2024

About Winnie

Winnie is an aspiring copywriter & internet marketer in the vast world of digital marketing. She's as curious as she can be; constantly hunting for answers to her questions, never saying no to new experiences. When she's not spending her time typing up a storm, she is at home keeping up with her never-ending movie marathon & books.

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