WordPress, for those who don't know, is an open-source (read: free) content management system that is geared for bloggers.
It is awesome.
But first-timers might be unsure on how to customize it out of the box, as some default settings are quite unhelpful, to say the least.
Here are five quick things I do every time I launch a new WordPress blog.
No.
1 Give it a name First thing I do is give the blog a specific title and description.
To do this, you go to (settings-general) and put in your info.
You'd be surprised how many people forget to do this.
Having a catchy and interesting blog title is an important way for people to find your cool content.
No.
2 Delete the Generic Stuff I know it's cute to have your blog say "hello world" right as you create it, but you want to get rid of that placeholder junk on your blog ASAP.
This means deleting: * Hello World! post (In Posts) * Generic About page (In Pages)-you're going to create you ow about page.
*Generic blogroll (In Links)-this is really important.
Too many random outbound links can't hurt your Seo-ranking.
* Hello Dolly plugin (In Plugins)-not very useful.
And having too many plugins can hurt the blog's load time.
Some of these things aren't a huge big deal, but it's much easier to delete this stuff in the beginning, when you have a fresh installation.
No.
3 Change Permalink structure This is super key to people finding your blog.
The default URL structure for word press is something like "sitename.
com/page-1".
(I never keep it, so I can't remember off-hand what it does.
) This is very search engine unfriendly.
(which means people won't find you.
) Instead I go to settings-permalinks...
and choose custom.
In the field I paste /%category%/%postname%/ This automatically creates a good structure for my posts and something I never have to think about.