In WordPress, the screen options tab holds additional and helpful information in various locations across the site. In Appearance > Menus, you can show additional information such as CSS Classes, Link Targets and even custom post types to add to your menu.

Note – This menu feature was introduced in WordPress 3.0.

Let’s jump in and see how to get links to open up in a new window or tab.

First, go into Appearance > Menus.

Click on the Screen Options tab, typically found in the upper-right of the WordPress admin area. A screen of additional options will slide down.

Under “Show advanced menu properties” check the box for Link Target. The features enabled above in screen options, will show and hide elements on this current menu page.

As you can see, there is now a link target option. Click Open link in new window/tab and WordPress will automatically add the target=”_blank” to that specific menu item in your menu.

That’s it! Don’t forget to click Save Menu after making your changes to individual menu items.

Enabling or disabling comments in WordPress can quickly be done site-wide or on a per-page or per-post basis.

To change the comment settings site-wide, go into Settings > Discussion.

To enable or disable comments on a per-page or per-post basis you first need to be be editing the page or post. Then, go into the Screen Options tab (upper-right) and check the box for Discussion.

The Discussion box will appear (typically under the main post editor) and you can control whether to allow comments and trackbacks on that specific page or post.

I often get asked how to create the “Read More…” link in WordPress posts, and also how to customize it on a per post basis. It’s quite simple actually.

The first method is to use the Insert More Tag (Alt + Shift + T) in the WordPress visual editor but I prefer to flip over to HTML mode and customize it directly:

<!--more Continue Reading!-->

or simply…

<!--more-->

More information can be found in the WordPress Codex.

One of the most common questions I receive is related to an error message stating the stylesheet is missing when installing a WordPress theme.

The most likely culprit? You’re not uploading the correct files.

Be sure you are only uploading the theme folder if using FTP or the theme .zip file if using the Appearance > Themes menu.

The theme folder will always contain index.php and style.css at a bare minimum but typically consists of many files and sub-folders such as functions.php, page.php, single.php and so on.

Open the style.css file and you should see something similar to the code below. It gives the required information about your theme to WordPress.

/*
Theme Name: Your Theme Name
Theme URI: http://example.com/themes/themename
Author: Jane Doe
Author URI: http://example.com/
Description: Theme Description...
Version: 3.1
License: GNU General Public License
License URI: license.txt
Tags: dark, light
*/

If none of files mentioned above can be found, you may be trying to upload a Tumblr, Joomla or HTML/CSS theme instead of one built to run on WordPress.