WordPress installation is very easy and well documented. In five minutes you could have a working WordPress installation on your laptop or hosting server. WordPress feature many customization option and settings.
Some of the default setting values are good and shouldn’t be changed, but some need to be set, even before you install any plugin.
In this article I’ll discuss the 5 settings I adjust with every new WordPress blog.
Set ‘Blog Title’ & ‘Tagline’
In Settings -> General
- Set your ‘Blog Title’ to be something else than “just another WordPress blog”.
- Set your ‘Tagline’ with what your blog about. Spice it with some keywords as search engine value this part of your blog.
Clean your Blog
- In Posts -> edit delete the ‘Hello World’ post.
- In Links -> edit delete all out of the box links.
- In Pages -> edit delete the ‘About’ page.
- In Plugin -> installed delete ‘Hello Dolly’ plugin.
Update your Profile
In Users -> Your Profile
- Set your first and last name.
- Set your name as nickname.
- Set ‘Display name publicly as’ to be your name. this name will be displayed alongside every post.
- Set ‘E-mail’.
- Set ‘New Password’ – Important.
Change Permalinks Settings
You would like your URL’s to look more something like
http://mydomain.com/great_category/my_post_catchy_namerather than
http://mydomain.com/?p=NIn placeforbloggers.com I use /%category%/%postname%/ , which is the recommended option by many Pro Bloggers. Having ‘postname’ as part of your links is what make them unique, user-friendly & keyword-search. Having ‘category’ hint your visitors you have more content on the subject.
Some bloggers add ’date’ to your link. In my opinion a visitor might consider an old post as outdated. Also it might make your URL too long. When your URL appear in a search result page it might look like http://mydomain.com/2008/10/9/great_category/my_po… you loose your catchy name.
Learn how to change your permalinks.
Set Ping Services
Many people don’t know what ping services are, and how important they are for their blog. Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. In more simple word imagine that every time you write new content someone goes to Google, Yahoo & Technocrati, notify you have new content and ask them to index it. Ping services do it for you.
In placeforbloggers.com I ping the following services:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ http://api.moreover.com/RPC2 http://bblog.com/ping.php http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php http://ping.feedburner.com http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/ http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping http://topicexchange.com/RPC2 http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates http://xping.pubsub.com/ping http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php http://blog.youdao.com/ping/RPC2 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://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://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2 http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/ http://rpc.twingly.com http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2New bloggers tend to update their post more often. Consider using MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer and save your blog from getting tagged as ping spammer.
Now you are ready to install 8 plugins I install with every WordPress Blog
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thats very good to know… thanks
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