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GPLWP Guides

Right. How do I actually do that?

Step-by-step guides for the jobs WordPress makes harder than they should be — and the tools that do them for you when you would rather not.

Guides
447
Steps written
2,642
Tools compared
502
Topics
21

Latest guides

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How to use Oxygen Builder with Gutenberg

Oxygen can design Gutenberg blocks and full pages, but Oxygen Classic requires its separate Oxygen Gutenberg plugin for this workflow. Create the layo…

1 tool
How to plan and schedule content in WordPress

You can plan content with a spreadsheet and schedule each finished post using WordPress’s built-in date and time controls. The manual route is fine fo…

1 tool
How to personalize content on a WordPress site

You can personalise simple content with WordPress theme logic, such as showing different text to logged-in users. For location, behaviour, cookies, au…

1 tool
How to add multichannel chat to a WordPress site

WordPress can link visitors to WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram and other channels without a plugin, but it does not provide one built-in floating multic…

1 tool
How to generate PDF files from WordPress form submissions

You can manually open a stored form entry and save it as a PDF from your browser, but WordPress does not provide automatic form-to-PDF generation by i…

1 tool
How to create a searchable document library in WordPress

WordPress can store files in the Media Library, but it does not provide a visitor-facing searchable document library. For a few files, add links to a…

1 tool
How to create content directories in WordPress

You can create a simple WordPress content directory with posts, categories and the Query Loop block. For structured listings with custom fields, fast…

1 tool
How to manage custom code snippets in WordPress

WordPress has no built-in central snippet manager. For a few changes, use a child theme, a small custom plugin, Additional CSS, or properly enqueued J…

1 tool
How to build a business website with Elementor

Build the site page by page in Elementor, using global colours and fonts for consistency, then create the header, footer, navigation and responsive la…

1 tool
How to build a medical clinic website with WordPress

You can build a medical clinic website manually with WordPress using pages, a block theme or page builder, and a booking plugin if patients need appoi…

1 tool
How to sell digital products with Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads gives WordPress the product, checkout, payment and protected delivery features needed to sell files. The core setup handles one…

1 tool
How to create photo galleries in WordPress

WordPress can create a basic photo gallery without a plugin using the Gallery block. Upload or select your images, arrange them, choose columns and de…

1 tool

What’s in every guide

  1. The short answerWhat the answer actually is, before any steps. If the honest answer is “you need a plugin”, it says so up top.
  2. What you needThe prerequisites, so you find out about them now rather than four steps in.
  3. The stepsIncluding the manual route where one exists, with the parts that make it annoying left in.
  4. Tools that do this jobEvery product we have covered that solves this task — a list that grows as we cover more.
  5. SourcesThe documentation each step was checked against, so you can verify it yourself.

By topic

How this works

01

The job comes first, not the product

A guide is about a task you are trying to finish. Whether a product is involved is a detail, and sometimes the answer is that you do not need one.

02

The manual route stays in

Where a job can be done without installing anything, we show you how — including why it is irritating. A tutorial that opens with “install this plugin” is an advert.

03

Guides get better with age

Several products usually do the same job. Rather than publish a page for each, we keep one guide and add each tool as we cover it. The comparison at the bottom keeps growing.