9 settings I always adjust as soon as I install a new WordPress blog
Hopefully the step-by-step guide on how to install self-hosted WordPress has helped you set your own blog. WordPress features many customization options and settings, even before you start installing the different plugins. In this article I will look at the 9 settings I adjust as soon as I install a new WordPress blog. Watch the video:
Setup blog title and tagline
(In Settings – General)
- You don’t want your blog to be branded as “just another WordPress weblog”
- Write your blog title and explain why your blog is unique in the blog tagline
Change permalinks
(In Settings – Permalinks)
- You don’t want your blog articles to be called something like:
http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123
- You want to make your URL’s unique, keyword-rich, SEO and user friendly
- On HowToMakeMyBlog.com I use the custom option field like this:
/%category%/%postname%/
- By doing this my blog permalinks look like this:
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/category/postname/
Change the admin nickname
(In Users – Your Profile)
- You don’t want “Admin” to be the name of the author of the blog posts you write
- Change admin nickname to your own name and have it displayed alongside each post
Clean up
- Delete Hello World! generic post (In Posts)
- Delete the generic About page (In Pages)
- Delete generic blogroll (In Links)
- Delete Hello Dolly plugin (In Plugins)
Activate comment spam filter
(In Plugins)
- Akismet is the best comment spam filter and it comes with your WordPress
- You just need to get the free WordPress API key to be able to activate it
No to email updates
(In Settings – Discussion – E-mail me whenever)
- As default WordPress notifies you via email when there is a new comment on your blog
- I prefer to use WordPress Notifier (Mac only – not sure what the Windows software is) to get updates on my desktop so I change the default option to no emails
Update ping services
(In Settings – Writing – Update Services)
- Pings help you promote your blog by automatically notifying different online services when you publish a new blog post
- I use the following update services on HowToMakeMyBlog:
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b http://api.feedster.com/ping http://api.moreover.com/ping http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2 http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2 http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi http://coreblog.org/ping/ http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php http://ping.blo.gs/ http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc http://ping.feedburner.com http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2 http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/ http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping http://rpc.twingly.com http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
Make it visible to search engines
(In Settings – Privacy)
- Make sure your blog is visible to everyone, including search engines
Get own blog theme
(In Appearance – Themes)
- You don’t want WordPress Default to be your blog theme
- Read why I use Thesis Theme on my blog
- Find the theme you like and download it
- Upload the theme onto your server (/wp-content/themes/)
- Activate
Image by TwoBlueDay
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I have experienced many wonderful benefits achieved by having a blog. It has made an amazing difference for me in my life and career.
You can do it too. It literally takes 5 minutes to have your blog up and running. Follow my step-by-step guide on how to install WordPress and start blogging today.