20 Things Need to be Done when Starting a Wordpress blog

[Eoon]

Once you've installed WordPress I tell you that you are owning a great cms for blogging. Now start the optimization and management of the blog to prepare for first visitors or readers from search engines. First of all there is a set of settings that you need to do immediately after installation.

Here the list of the most important settings WordPress which I used to do:

20 things need to be done when you start a WordPress blog

1/ Create a new user as an administrator, that is not your first name (a variation of it is good). Choose a password reasonable - lowercase / large numbers, punctuation mark and at least 8 characters.
2/ Remove user admin. It is one of the first steps to secure the blog, since the default user admin attacks occur on a blog. From now on you will use only the user created in point 1.
3/ Disable and remove from the list of plugins Hello Dolly plugin. It's nice, but useless.
4/ Enable each comment moderation. It's a matter of time before you'll be spam, so consider and activate Akismet .
5/ Enables the display of avatars to comment. Also, choose Blank default avatar for those who have created Gravatar.
6/ Update the list of keywords for moderation comantariilor. As for moderation and for the blacklist.
7/ Installs and configures Tiny MCE Advanced to optimize the edit box of articles. From the multitude of options Tiny MCE choose only those who actually use them.
8/ Clear all links created by WordPress Blogroll default.
9/ Remove Sample Post and Page from Wordpress.
10/ Choose a theme that looks good and activates it.
11/ Go to general settings and completes the title and subtitle of the blog.
12/ Disable user registration if you have only one author.
13/ Ping update services with a list to help indexing articles.
14/ Enables visibility blog in search engines.
15/ Change the default permalink named in the posts (post name).
16/ Install the SEO plugin and activate XML Sitemap.
17/ Add blog in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics .
18/ Displays icons to profile some social media networks.
19/ Enable Login Lock Down to block any attacks on the blog.
20/ Enable RSS service.

These are the first settings you used to do once I started a new blog on WordPress. Some things are missing, would you like to add to my list, please share me in posts below!

 

[ericplotz1]

Couple things to ad

Use Ewww Image Optimizer plugin

And definitely the Stop Spammers plugin. YOu're gonna need it with wordpress.
I always setup some type of security like Wordfence security (what I use)
I also setup W3 Total Cache and link it up to cloud flare.

Make sure the Meta Description is set.
Need sharing buttons and "Like" buttons for SEO purposes.
HQ images with proper use of alt tags, description, title, and captions
Make sure you always include a contact page.
I never set a static home page for a blog but always feed posts

That's it for now

 

[heatherIDD]

These are great tips, especially for beginners! A lot of non-programmers now are starting to learn Wordpress to create their own blog. Without having the enough knowledge on creating a website from scratch, Wordpress is a breath of fresh air for them.

 

[elcidofaguy]

OP - Nice post! Not much I can add to but will give it ago ;-)

1) I always create a child theme. That way you can amend the php such as the footer, header and stylesheet etc - and when it comes to updating the theme you dont need to worry about the customized changes being effected...

2) Use canonicalization tag on all pages/posts. You can set that with seo plugin amongst many others.

3) Make sure to include disclaimer, privacy and terms pages etc. There are some good free templates out there that you can use.

4) Have a backup solution in place... I like to use Duplicator plugin as well as setting up a cron job with php script (which can output the database file to dropbox).

5) If you use a large number of image files then its probably worth creating a sub domain and using that as your image repository.

6) I've experienced a number of hacking attempts via xmlrpc file and as such I now disable it via .htaccess. This type of brute force attack has become quite common as it bypasses calling your wp login page - so this is an additional measure to above mentioned ones to secure wp logon etc ..

7) Install "Edit Autor Slug" plugin - you think wp would give you the ability to hide your logon name but they dont... Even if you change your display name to nickname you can still get access to the actual logon name - hence use this plugin to hide it from the world!

 

[SK57]

Great lists. looks like I have a lot to do so will refer to this again and again.

Steve