The WordPress 5-minute install is great, nothing complicated about getting your blog up and running (most of the time). But once you install WordPress there are a number of other steps that you need to take in order to get the most from your blog.
Use the following as a to-do checklist for your future installations and you’ll keep yourself right.
1. Change the Admin Password and Manage Your Authors
Wordpress gives you some random concoction of a password that you’re *never* going to remember so the first thing you need to do is change this to something memorable.
Manage your user settings via the Users panel, and you can add any additional blog authors here.
2. Edit Permalinks
By default your articles’ urls will look something like www.leemunroe.com/?p=396. This url structure is poor for SEO and poor for usability (makes no sense to your users).
By changing your url structure to something like www.leemunroe.com/25-hot-female-web-designers you can include the post’s keywords in the url and it makes more sense to your users.
- Go to Settings > Permalinks
- Under ‘Common settings’ choose ‘Custom Structure’
- Enter %postname%/ in the field
- Or if you prefer to have the category in the url as well, enter %category%/%postname%/
3. Upload Your Theme and Activate It
- Download a theme or design your own
- Unzip and upload it to wp-content > themes
- Activate it via Appearance > Themes (then just click on your theme)
4. Add Your Categories and Change the Default
When you install Wordpress the default category is ‘Uncategorized’ and this just looks ugly. Assume at some point you’re going to post an article and forget to select a category – what would you want that post to come under by default? I tend to use News or something general like that.
- Go to Posts > Categories
- Click on ‘Uncategorized’ to edit it – change it to ‘News‘ or similar
- Add your other blog categories
5. Activate Akismet
Akismet is a plugin that blocks comment spam and if your blog allows comments then trust me, you’re going to get spammed.
Fortunately Akismet comes with Wordpress, you just need to activate it.
- Go to the Plugins page in the admin area and activate Akismet
- To complete Akismet activation, Wordpress requires an API key. You can get this by registering on Wordpress.com then viewing your profile.
- Now go to Plugins > Akismet Configuration, and paste in your key.
6. Install Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps generates a compliant XML-Sitemap for your site, allowing the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN) to easily index your site. Every time you edit or add a post, the sitemap will modify itself.
Click here for Google XML Sitemaps plugin.
Now go to Google Webmaster Central and log in with your Google Account. On the first page, there will be a link to “Verify” your site. Follow the instructions there.
Once that’s done, you can then click the “Add Sitemap” link from the first page and put in the URL to your sitemap, which will be http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
7. Install Wordpress Database Backup
Always good to have a backup in place. Things may go wrong with your server, or you could even make a mistake yourself.
WordPress Database Backup will backup your WordPress blog, and you can even set it so it will email you a backup on a weekly basis, so you don’t have to do anything yourself but activate it.
Click here for WordPress Database Backup plugin, or read a complete guide to automatic backups on Pro Blog Design.
8. Test Your Blog With Dummy Content
You’ll not know what your blog will truly look like until you have thoroughly tested it with multiple posts and all types of formatting applied.
Save yourself some time by using this sample post collection from WP Candy.
Import the sample post collection (Tools > Import > WordPress) and your blog will compile with sample posts including comments, parent/child categories and formatting, allowing you to thoroughly test it and make any theme alterations.
9. Add your RSS feed to Feedburner
First edit your RSS settings. Settings > Reading and you can edit how many posts you want to show in your RSS feed and whether they should show the full post or not.
Now you want to burn your feed with Feedburner. Feedburner will provide you with stats on your feeds and automatically ping services so your new content is updated immediately along with a whole host of other services.
Once you have signed up to Feedburner, change your feed subscription link in your theme. Place the following code between the head tags.
1 | <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Feed Title" href="YOUR FEEDBURNER URL" /> |
10. Activate your Analytics
Keep track of your users and traffic. I recommend Google Analytics. Other good analytic services available include Mint and StatCounter.
Optional
Here’s a few optional to-dos. Not as major as the above but you still might need to check them.
Change your Media image sizes
Change your image sizes depending on the size of your content area.
Settings > Media
Change your blog tagline
Your tagline may or may not be included in your theme but it’s most likely included in your RSS feed.
Settings > General
What else?
Is there anything else you do after a fresh WordPress install? Please share.
Further Reading
- Wordpress 5-minute install
- The very first steps after a fresh Wordpress install
- Automating my Wordpress workflow
- Sample post collection
About the author: Lee Munroe is a freelance web designer from Belfast. You can see his other writings on web design and WordPress at his blog, or follow him on Twitter.
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Jeriko (1 comments)19 January 09
In terms of security, I even would advice to create a new admin account with a different user name and delete the old “admin” account. This way, possible intruders don’t have the advantage of knowing the name of the admin account.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
Hendry Lee wrote a guest post here not long ago where he recommended doing the exact same thing. Definitely a worthwhile tip!
John (6 comments)22 January 09
I completely agree with this as well, first thing I always do is add a new administrative account and delete the one with a username of ‘admin’.
Shane Eubanks - Internet Marketing Specialist (1 comments)19 January 09
Great job on this list as it looks a lot like my personal list when creating a new website. One plugin that I install on every Wordpress site I create is the SEO Title Tag plugin: http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/ . It has done an awesome job for me with being able to customize my titles and rank well in search engines. I’m not affiliated with them in any way…just have grown to trust it on my projects.
Also, I update the “ping” list with about 50 websites that gets automatically pinged when I publish a new post. I do that before ever creating the first article. The combo of that and using the XML sitemaps to ping Google has done an awesome job of getting my pages indexed extremely fast.
Great article!!
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
I used to use the SEO Title Tag plugin on this blog as well, until a few weeks ago even. The only problem I’ve ever had with it is that it doesn’t do anything more than Title Tags. All In One SEO covers title tags in exactly the same way, but has a good few other options as well.
Adrian Eden (1 comments)19 January 09
Nice post for the newbs, I know people will find great value in this, thanks for taking the time to write this out! All the best in 2009 my friend !
Paddy (1 comments)19 January 09
Brilliant stuff as always! Some fantastic tips there for both old and new WP users
Kevin (19 comments)19 January 09
Great post Lee.
Re:Tip #2
I had to do a site on a windows server recently and found this tutorial really useful for getting pretty permalinks
http://tech.einaregilsson.com/.....ks-on-iis/
Vincent Chow (5 comments)19 January 09
@Jeriko: Good point, never thought of that.
Anyways, other things to do:
11. Edit “About” page.
12. Set up “Contact” page.
And ugly permalink is not totally useless, at least it’s good for Tweeting: http://www.sheeptech.com/wordp.....or-twitter
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
lol – That’s an interesting use for the ugly permalinks! Though I suppose it needs a shorter domain name than the 13 letter one I’m using!
Contact page is a good point, it’s crucial to get that set up right! I use the cforms2 plugin. How about you?
Vincent Chow (5 comments)20 January 09
Twitter limits the number of character of an URL to 30, else it will be automatically be converted to TinyURL. But my ugly permalink is of 31 characters, including the http:// and www, but Twitter still let it pass.
I use cformsII on my humor blog (link), while Contact Form 7 on SheepTech.
Prefer Contact Form 7 because it uses the sender’s email address to send mails to my inbox, instead of using my own email address. Flexibility wise, it’s as good as cformsII.
Donace (3 comments)19 January 09
I would throw in ‘wordpress backup’ plugin, recently trialling it and it works well…back up all of the site periodically.
Also throw in a SEO plugin and supercache…and bad behaviour, broken links and subscribe to comments plugin…..all the ‘basics’ i my opinion.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
A broken links plugin is a good idea! That could definitely help finding little mistakes you’ve left behind whilst editing theme files. I use Google Webmaster Tools to do this now, though I suppose that wouldn’t work too well for a new blog that isn’t indexed yet.
Aman@BullsBattleBears (11 comments)19 January 09
excellent points and tips!
James-DigitalKeyToInfo (1 comments)19 January 09
I’ll second the SEO plugin if you’re not using an already optimized theme. Also, the ping list is something that should be checked.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
A well optimized theme is a good start, but I’d still use the plugins to give you control over the wording in your title. Sometimes it can be helpful to give the search engines a different title to the one you give to humans (Though I’ve slacking off with this a bit since I stopped using the WordPress editor…
)
Jon (9 comments)19 January 09
Great article Lee, will definitely be keeping it for reference.
Oh yes, and well done for reminding me I haven’t loaded the database plugin yet! I’m off to do it now.
Mark (13 comments)19 January 09
Great post. I wish I had seen this before I started my site, would of saved me alot of trial and error. I can’t recommend anything else to do, it all seems to be covered.
David Hellmann (1 comments)19 January 09
good overview. standards
Bill (3 comments)19 January 09
I personally add the All-In-One SEO Pack to allow editing titles, keywords and descriptions on a post-by-post basis….has helped quite a bit in getting better search placement.
Andy Brudtkuhl (1 comments)22 January 09
The All-In-One SEO pack is an essential plugin for all our installations…
I’d also like to add using Clicky analytics – they have a great WordPress plugin
Kerry Quinlan-Potter (1 comments)19 January 09
I have Wordpress on a website that is hosted by a faceless entity. I just activated it last week and proceeded to accidentally delete the background theme and borders. Thankfully my Theme has been reinstalled, and I am now in the process of learning a little at a time.
Thank you for your post, some of us need more help than others!
Kel (1 comments)19 January 09
Pretty decent list however, I’d reconsider #9 Feedburner – there’s a bit of talk about Google’s switchover and how feeds are working in the last few days. http://www.feedburner.com/google Make sure you’ve got the most recent codes.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)19 January 09
That’s true Kel. I have a post going up here about that all tomorrow, it’s been quite chaotic for everyone in the past few days I think!
Dot Com Dud (2 comments)19 January 09
Nice list. I do most of these things already (can’t stress the importance of backing up enough) but I didn’t realise how many things I was actually doing until reading this list.
Came here from Twitter BTW
Cassie (4 comments)19 January 09
I haven’t done this for my own blogs because I’m super lazy, but for a client’s blog, one of the things I make sure I do before it goes live is create a favicon. It’s not essential, but it adds a nice touch. It makes your blog more visible if the user has multiple tabs open, and it’s easier to find in a list of bookmarks. I create mine in Fireworks but there are some free programs specifically for creating favicons.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)20 January 09
That’s a good point Cassie. I’ve forgotten about them sometimes. They’re a small thing that it can be hard to remember, but I agree completely that they’re important. Especially with tabbed browsing as the standard now, favicons are probably the easiest way to know which tab is which!
Evan (4 comments)19 January 09
nice post. Really good summary, believe me I needed it! I have a bunch of WP sites but I always leave out some things.
ceseco (1 comments)19 January 09
Great write up looking at migrating some from Blogger to WP but do use FeedBurner and migrated to google over the weekend and lost all of my site stats. I think this could be an issue for some users that depend on those services FeedBurner use to offer Pro and Fan there is a write up on this on my site with a couple of screen shots of what to expect.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)20 January 09
Yeah, it’s been a little bumpy the past few days! There’s a post going up on this site tomorrow about it all. Still doesn’t solve everything (One of my own feeds was broken in the transfer, and still is!)
For what it’s worth though, I’ve seen comments from people with the same problem you have and they all said it sorted itself out automatically a few hours later so you should be back soon!
Nina Whidden (1 comments)19 January 09
Very helpful. I made a lot of mistakes with my first WP blog. I was recently considering starting fresh and am very happy to have come across this page before I did. Great information for a WP neophyte like me
krissy knox (1 comments)19 January 09
Thanks for the great info. It’s invaluable.
krissy knox
http://www.twitter.com.
Chris (18 comments)20 January 09
Thanks for this – a checklist like this would have been very handy when I was setting up my first WP blog… will be sure to do these when I set up my next!
nicholi (2 comments)20 January 09
I always make sure to do all of these listed. I also install a contact form plugin for a contact page and super-cache.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)20 January 09
I would make sure to install those as well. What contact form do you use? I’m very biased towards cforms.
nicholi (2 comments)20 January 09
I use cforms as well. It’s the only contact form I could get to work with smtp instead of php mail.
Sarah McHarry (1 comments)20 January 09
Get traffic!
1. Get a great pinglist.
2. Say something interesting.
3. Browse other blogs and engage.
4. Twitter, Facebook, Feedburner
5. Say something even more interesting
6……. rinse & repeat
Michael Martin (1286 comments)20 January 09
lol – True! Traffic is definitely a good next step! You’ve basically made a second list here! Ya have a heck of a lot to do as a new blogger.
Lee Munroe (7 comments)20 January 09
Hey, glad to see the post was useful. There are some really good additions being mentioned. Great to see, keep them coming!
Fabryz (1 comments)20 January 09
Nice article
Tagging
Static (3 comments)20 January 09
Haha, I remember FORGETTING to change the password for some odd reason and then had to reinstall the blog all over again because I was too lazy to look up editting the password via phpmyadmin. XD
Anyways, just found out about that Settings > Media thing. I guess now I’ll be able to use images in my blog posts without having to worry about the images breaking my theme incase I decide to change the theme.
Roseli A. Bakar (3 comments)20 January 09
I would add All in one SEO pack to the list… good info though !!
Christine (2 comments)20 January 09
Add the plugin WP-SpamFree. When I started using it coupled with Akismet, my spam comments went from 30-50/day to about 1/month or less! Here’s the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
Steve Morin (1 comments)20 January 09
Great list, glad to see that I have been doing it right. What I would also suggest to some is, if you can, go a month without really going “live”.. just post away with good content… then once you have built up a healthy amount of content, really start pushing the site. You will know after a month if a blog will do the trick for you, or your client. I always install google sitemaps and All in one SEO, but I usually leave them off for a month while I let the clients build up content to release. It is sort of a trial period. Some plugins that I find extremely valuable and have added to my “must have” list is is the Share This plugin and the Sociable plugin. With the emerging importance of social media sites, getting your blog to mesh with your social media sites is also becoming a mandatory “to do” item.
Myo Kyaw Htun (1 comments)20 January 09
Instead of putting code for Feedburner manually, you can install Feedburner official plugin (formerly known as feedsmith) that will redirect to your feedburner url.
Michelle (3 comments)20 January 09
Thanks for this! I stumbled upon a few of these, but definitely need to implement all of them and make a “setting up a WordPress blog” checklist so that I remember each time.
HotForWords (1 comments)20 January 09
I have a Wordpress blog with 50,000 members and the first thing I install now is the insensitive plugin. http://www.theblog.ca/wordpres.....tive-login
It makes it so that all usernames are lowercase.
Wordpress, for some reason, has case sensitive user-names, which is crazy as people can register as john, John, jOhn, johN, JOHn and so on and it really creates confusion for my users as they have trouble logging in again the next time they come in… and people confuse one user with another that way.
Marina
http://www.hotforwords.com
LatestBuzz (1 comments)20 January 09
Exciting Money Makers is a blogspot application and i want to switch to wordpress and i had troubles installing it and found a lot of helpful guides and tips and this one put the icing on the cake! Thanks .
Hendry Lee (13 comments)20 January 09
Like it, Lee. Everyone needs such a checklist to go through and make their WordPress more friendly and “ready for business”.
It is worth noting that Google is now migrating accounts from FeedBurner to feedburner.google.com, which uses their domain instead of feedburner.com now.
Susan (3 comments)20 January 09
I would like to add: Install WP-Super Cache!
Jenean (1 comments)20 January 09
Beyond amazingly useful! Thank you so much. A few of those steps I had already done, but the back-up plugin and the Google XML Sitemaps were two that I had not installed.
Thank you!
SOS Media Web Design (1 comments)20 January 09
Just installed Thesis on (mt) — thanks for the tips!
Jean Ghalo (1 comments)20 January 09
well to be honest I like this blog post, eventhough most of the points are done by me, but what i am thanksfull that i found something new the weekly backup pluggin.
thank you.
cheers!
Jean
Sean Delaney (2 comments)20 January 09
I would like to add to this post. Apart from what Lee and the other bloggers have listed above, I personally download and activate the following:
MobilePress
Subscribe To Comments
Redirection
WP Security Scan
MobilePress is handly plugin to have for users who blog on mobile handsets.
Subscribe To Comments which we all know allows your blog commenters to get an e-mail notification of further comments to posts.
Redirection, for me, I’ve found it good to keep track of 404 errors for example, and generally tidy up any loose ends to my blog.
Finally WP Security Scan is a neat security plugin that checks for vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions if any found.
I think this is a very good post from Lee. You have some really good plugins listed. Keep up the good work mate!
Sean
Farid Hadi (15 comments)20 January 09
Really great article! I wish I had something like this when I started using WP! =)
Scott Blogs (2 comments)20 January 09
I love the XML sitemap plug-in. I find that often, if my particular posts are niche enough, I can sometimes be ranking in Google for the particular post within a matter of hours. Sure you can generate and submit an XML sitemap manually, but with this plug-in, you don’t need to do anything. – Doesn’t get any better than that.
Scott Blogs (2 comments)20 January 09
Oh, one other thing to do, usually its the first thing I do, and that is customize the template to suit your needs. I tend to look for a template that is as close as possible to the existing site I am adding the blog to, that way it makes customizing the template to match the existing site template that much easier.
Also be sure the template you choose is updated to suit modern needs – some older templates are not compatible with all plug-in’s etc.
LisaNewton (1 comments)21 January 09
Thank you so much for these suggestions. I just started my blog and found all of them invaluable.
Ben Good (1 comments)21 January 09
Awesome post Lee!
Thanx for the list.
Blog SEO & Traffic Tips (1 comments)21 January 09
This is all great advice for any first time WP blogger. Really excellent post, I will be bookmarking it to direct newbies to
saravanakumar (1 comments)22 January 09
Traffic is definitely a good next step! You’ve basically made a second list here! Ya have a heck of a lot to do as a new blogger.thanks
Holly from mobiEnthusiast.mobi (1 comments)22 January 09
These are great tips. It’s best to change the url’s immediately or risk broken links later on google. There’s also a redirection plugin if you change your mind about a filename, too.
Great post! Thanks.
Brady (1 comments)22 January 09
This is a great article. Although I already did everything except the database backup (which I will do now), I was more importantly inspired to actually make an organized checklist for each future blog. Does anyone know a good plugin to promote user sign up to a blog?
Katy (1 comments)22 January 09
I agree with everything, especially also including the All-in-One SEO plugin. You might also want to remind people that since Feedburner was bought up by Google, all new feeds will need to be activated through Google. And any current feeds will need to be moved over to Google by 2/28 (you can do this easy enough just by clicking on the link at the top of your Feedburner account). I know you’ve already covered this, but I’ve found that many people are still unaware of the 2/28 deadline.
Dave (15 comments)23 January 09
Utterly awesome list. I had done 7 of the 10 before I read it, but the three I had overlooked were biggies. Thanks!
Sean Delaney (2 comments)23 January 09
Can I ask have you been reading other bloggers comments?
lawton chiles (2 comments)23 January 09
This really helped me out. Especially things like permalink that i didn’t really pay any attention to.
I’m grateful,
Lawton
Patrick L. (1 comments)24 January 09
Hey,
very helpfully tipps! can i post a translated version of this articel in my blog? i will include a backlink to this post!
thanks for the answer.
Patrick
Yamil Gonzales (1 comments)24 January 09
Thanks for this great article Lee, it was indeed very useful, looking forward for future tips
Steve (8 comments)24 January 09
Thanks Lee, this post was super helpful.
Steve
Charles Gupton (1 comments)24 January 09
Lee,
This appears to be great info. I am a (old) newbie to all of this so it’s not as intuitive as it seems it should be. A couple of questions:
#2 – I don’t find ‘permalinks’ under ’settings’. I don’t find ‘permalinks’ anywhere.
Where do plug-ins go? I downloaded ‘Google Sitemap Generator’ &’ WP Database Backup’ but don’t know where to plug them in.
I think I’m on WP 2.7. How do I know which version I’m on?
Charles
On Twitter @ http://twitter.com/CharlesGupton
Blog: http://charlesgupton.wordpress.com
Lee Munroe (7 comments)27 January 09
Hey Charles, are you using Wordpress.com or have you installed Wordpress on your own server? These guidelines are for installing Wordpress on your own server. If you can’t find permalinks then I think you’re using the Wordpress.com version, which is slightly different.
Odzyskiwanie Danych (2 comments)26 January 09
Good list. I’d add something to optimize your blog. All-in-one-seo pack is better for me than sitemaps.
When you nofollow your categories and instead drive your traffic through tags it’s much better for me in most cases.
Andrew Rossborough (1 comments)27 January 09
Great article Lee, I’ve taken your advice on some of these…fantastic tips for someone who’s either new to wordpress or who like me hasn’t delved to deeply before.
For my permalinks I prefer to have year/month/date/postname so I can organise them by date as well as post name. Just my preference, as I’m a bit anal like that.
Web Design Preston (2 comments)29 January 09
We use wordpress on all our clients websites. Wordpress is fantasic! The only thing I might possibly suggest is not allowing your wordpress install to be found by the search engines while your building it.
I’m a little fussy like that, but again not a massive issue.
Great article.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)30 January 09
Never thought of that before, but it does make sense. The only danger there is if you forget to re-enable it? But if you do it all the time, I suppose that’s not a danger.
Freelance Website Designer (1 comments)29 January 09
This info is awesome, some really useful ideas. Thanks for sharing…
Tristan :: website designer (1 comments)30 January 09
That is a great list. I had the easy ones done, but I’ve posted the whole article to my to do list. Problem with having so many blogs… there goes the weekend
FreelanceVenue (2 comments)30 January 09
Thanks for the tip! This is definitely useful. Many of our readers setup Wordpress blogs on a regular basis and this will be a great resource!
Mark Ranovich (1 comments)1 February 09
Can anyone tell me of a plugin that will auto-enable a URL in a posting? Meaning, when I use auto post, I would like the URL on my site to be live. I found one, but it only works hit or miss.
Thanks
Santhos Webdesign (4 comments)2 February 09
As I’m about to start several wordpress based sites this is truly a great post! I did some things with Wordpress before but this is a nice list to start with. Thanks for sharing!
akhil (1 comments)5 February 09
thanks man that was really useful…
Anh dep (3 comments)6 February 09
Cool list, I’ll do this after setting up my sites. Thank you!
Djoni (1 comments)6 February 09
Thank Lee. Very important step to publish wordpress blog.
Any suggestion with web hosting is the best for wordpress blog?
ianpanrita (1 comments)7 February 09
wow its nice artikel
thanks
kampanye damai pemilu indonesia 2009
Snake (14 comments)9 February 09
Thanks for the tips, i will try the six point.
Kampanye Damai Pemilu Indonesia 2009 (4 comments)10 February 09
Wow thanks to remind me
Agitationist (1 comments)11 February 09
Re: #8 (Dummy content), you might want to mention that these posts should have the box UNchecked that makes them public. Just a tip…
Alberto Téllez (1 comments)25 February 09
Tnhx a million, this steps, specially the db backup plugin made me smile.
Bert
Jennifer Jacobsen (1 comments)2 March 09
Thank you very much for this article. Although I have been writing on Hubpages for awhile, this will be my first time blogging on a paid host. Thus, I need all the advice I can get. A very helpful article!
Jack Clarke (1 comments)3 March 09
I would recommend a WP backup plugin, in case anything goes wrong in the future. I have my database emailed to me automatically (you can specify how often).
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
- Jack
Malvinder (1 comments)5 March 09
Currently I am working on my new theme, as I have decided to make my own theme and upgrade the blog to some class blogger like you and many others.,
and while searching I got this blog.,
and many other tips to well format my blog.,
would take you tips for sure.,
Confronta ADSL (1 comments)7 March 09
Excellent article!
Like said by another user, I should consider adding the All-In-One-Seo-Pack Plugin to the list.
Thanks.
Ardi@Download Software (1 comments)8 March 09
Install important plugin SEO title tag, find here: http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
or use this complete plugin to optimize automatically your **titles** for search engines and Generates **META tags automatically** download here: ttp://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/all-in-one-seo-pack.zip.
Great article. Thanks.
Ardi Panondan
P@r@noid (1 comments)9 March 09
Very useful..
I was not aware of tip #8
saurabh shah (1 comments)24 March 09
awesome article… i was looking for this kind of article … thnx …
Tammy (1 comments)5 April 09
Thanks so much– this info was very helpful in getting my site ready!
AlexC (1 comments)14 April 09
Great Post. I had no idea how to get Feed Burner working and now its working great.
thanks!
ps: nice site design
FreelanceVenue (2 comments)14 April 09
Thanks for the installation tuturial for Wordpress blogs. It’s certainly useful!
website designer norwich (1 comments)18 April 09
A good essential read for a Wordpress novice
Giovani (1 comments)21 April 09
This guide really helped me getting started on my blog, I still need to do some modifications but never knew about these.
THANK YOU
meteorith (1 comments)1 May 09
Thanks a lot for your list! As I am new in wordpress blogging, it helped me a lot!!
Merci!
Alex (9 comments)8 May 09
You can also add Thumbnails for excerpts it’s very useful when blogging news or featured topics
Alex’s Latest Post: Q&A Swine Flu (55 Q&A)
Arron Davies (1 comments)16 May 09
very well covered. great info.
Arron Davies’s Latest Post: 10 Tutorials in site building I’m sure you’ll find interesting.
Dustin (1 comments)26 May 09
excellent article, very informative. thank you for sharing
Dustin’s Latest Post: You stay classy San Diego
Kawika Heftel (2 comments)8 June 09
Thank you so much for this article! I hadn’t thought of many of the things you shared, and they helped so much!
srikanth (1 comments)8 June 09
Cool WP tips.
Thanks
srikanth’s Latest Post: New awesome and funny video of Mozilla Firefox
Dmitry Chebakov (2 comments)2 July 09
Russian translation of this article posted here.
.-= Dmitry Chebakov´s last blog ..Урок №7. Контент. =-.
outsourcing (1 comments)13 July 09
Really nice article to work on blogs are like blood to web these days
Corporate Graphics (1 comments)29 July 09
Very good article. Thanks!
Mark (13 comments)9 August 09
Very useful list of tips, thanks very much.
ArtDeal (1 comments)12 August 09
I wish I would have known this before I started blogging. Do you guys think is too late to go back and fix these things? Only been blogging for less then a year.
Mujeeb Khumawala (1 comments)12 August 09
This is perfect. Thanks for sharing.
Axel (1 comments)12 August 09
Hi Michael, great post. I wonder why I didn’t find it earlier.
Guess it was on twitter today.
Also I would add one more paragraph: Install a simple SEO plugin (just do have a basic optimisation)
Cheers,
Axel
Ramona (1 comments)19 August 09
9. Add your RSS feed to Feedburner: Yes. And: For German language users (Germany, Austria, Swiss) there is also a special RSS search engine available: http://www.rss-suchmaschine.de/.
free download of adobe pagemaker (1 comments)6 September 09
If you need adobe reader standalone offline download it’s real for you.
playlistpk (1 comments)10 September 09
i just have installed the wordpress blog and this article helped me alot in startup .Can any one tell me about the security as well because i have security issues with wordpress
Tracy (3 comments)11 September 09
Secure Wordpress and WP security scan are good security plugins and WP Captcha Free has eliminated all of my spam.
Portugal (2 comments)20 September 09
When you choose Google Analytics for your blog stats, make sure to install the Google Analyticator plugin. It is a fantastic plugin that does not only add the tracking code to your page but also gives a very nice stats overview right in your WordPress dashboard.
I would also recommend redirecting your WP feed to the Feedburner url, so you will not lose readers if for some reason you stop using Feedburner. I think Feedburner offers a plugin that does just that.
Chris (18 comments)22 September 09
I also recommend installing the “All in One SEO Pack” and “Broken Link Checker” plugins.
Ian Mayman (1 comments)22 September 09
An important thing for a blogger is all those social media links and plugins to share blog posts to Twitter, Facebook et al, so it’s very important to get plugins and installed and customised for your site and/or social media accounts. Also other plugins to bring in content, such as photos from Flickr.
Cum Swapping Fuck Dolls (1 comments)24 September 09
You just must see that – Cum Swapping Fuck Dolls !!!
Petros (1 comments)29 September 09
Thanx! Nice post!
Hattitude (1 comments)9 October 09
Very good article for wordpress, thanks
StephanJade (1 comments)21 October 09
Great article as for me. I’d like to read a bit more concerning this theme.
iPhone Testing (3 comments)10 November 09
Nice list Michael.. thanks for the guidance…
RUJoseph (1 comments)15 November 09
How’s it going?
Mike (9 comments)18 November 09
Thanks this was definitely helpful.
aks (3 comments)11 December 09
thanks for information i know some of them but nice to know new application.
Tuffclassified (1 comments)17 December 09
Its a great list. thanks for giving such useful information to other people
wordpress'r (1 comments)18 December 09
Thanks for this post. Great tips for newbies as well as for experienced bloggers. I have five wp sites and I didn’t know for some of this things.
Yann (1 comments)23 December 09
Ok.. about step #3, here’s a good tip on how you can find quality themes to download: go to http://www.wp-mojo.com
It’ll save a lot of time to find that perfect theme
I would also add a another step: installing a social media bar so that your visitors can easily share your blogposts with their social circles.
Anyway, excellent article, thanks for sharing!
Simon Sayzzz (1 comments)27 December 09
hi….. i am currently a blogger but soon will be wordpresser he he he … i will b shifting from blogspot to wordpress …. & WHAT will be the first thing u wanna do b4 shifting … READ THIS ARTICLE…. thanks a million 4 writing this post will HIGHLY RECOMMENED to my frds…. god bless….
swift apps (1 comments)2 January 10
really like the article will put all the necessary thing in my new blog.
Games Valley (1 comments)7 January 10
Everytime I’m about to set up a blog, I always came here. Just too lazy to remember, and to lazy to make a note. But hey, what’s bookmarking for if not for something like this ^_^. Thanks every one, your thought really are insightful.
Gadgets Review (1 comments)27 January 10
Great info. I will surely try it on my wordpress blog and then see the difference. Thanks u
Trevor Davis (1 comments)31 January 10
Don’t forget to ensure your privacy settings are switched off if you want some robot action.