Introduction
WordPress is the most popular open source website builder. It is a Content Management System (CMS) for hosting and developing websites. You may modify any website with WordPress’s plugin architecture and template system to match your business, blog, portfolio, or online store.
In the last blog, we told you about What are the different hosting websites and How to Install WordPress.
Now that you have already installed WordPress, next comes what to do after installing WordPress. Here’s a checklist of the 11 Important things to do after Installing WordPress for the first time. Take control of your WordPress site with our beginner’s guide.
11 Important things to do after Installing WordPress
- Modify the title, tagline, and timezone of your website
The title and tagline are two important elements that help consumers and search engines recognise your website and understand what it’s all about. They can be found in your WP dashboard under Settings » General.
Title: The Site Title serves as your website’s name. It will appear in the browser’s title bar and, depending on the theme, in the header of your website. It will also display in many locations, such as your WP dashboard’s admin bar etc.
The Site Title does not have to be the same as the URL of your website. Keep it short and to the point.
Tagline: The tagline is a brief explanation of what your website is all about. Consider it a phrase that ties the Site Title together. In the browser’s title bar, it displays next to the Title, and in certain themes, it also shows in the site’s header or footer.
Timezone: In the General section, scroll down to change the date and time format, as well as the time zone in which your website works.
- User Registration (Setup your Profile)
To tell people who you are, go to Users » Your Profile. You may fill in your information and choose how to display it. Choose a “Display name publicly as…” option after entering your first and last name. This applies to any area on your site where your name appears, such as the author name in posts, user name in forums, and so on.
You may also include your contact information and a brief biographical sketch. Depending on the theme, they might appear in different ways.
- Set WordPress Discussion/Comment settings
Will you allow anyone to leave a comment on your website? Will you need commentators to provide their names and email addresses? Do you like to approve each new comment on your site manually?
On most blogs, comments are quite significant. They may help you establish a community around your blog and are an excellent sign of user involvement.
To enable comments, go to Settings » Discussion to change your site’s comment policies or turn off comments.
- Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a website traffic tracking and reporting service provided by Google. It’s a free programme that will show you everything you need to know about the activity on your WordPress site, including engagement rates, demographics, active users and many more. It can help you in improving and achieving greater results.
The easiest way to install Google Analytics is by using MonsterInsights. It’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and it displays stunning analytics reports from within WordPress.
This will take around 15-20 minutes to set up, but it is one of the most important things to do after installing WordPress.
- Remove Sample Content
When you first come to your website after installing WordPress, you’ll notice that it’s already filled with content. This is only filler material intended to illustrate what your website can perform, and it should be removed.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to the Posts and Pages section.
- Hover your mouse over the existing content.
- To remove the content, select the Trash option and then “Delete Permanently”.
- Disable/Delete Unused Plugins
WordPress plugins are small software programs that can be installed on your website to enhance and expand its functionality. As WordPress comes pre-installed with everything you need to start blogging, adding features like product and service listings etc. you need to delete the unused plugins because they are just wasting space.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Go to Appearance » Plugins
- Hover your mouse over a theme or plugin you aren’t using
- Select Delete
- Design Pages
WordPress pages are the standard built-in post type for publishing content to your WordPress website.Once you have deleted all the default pages, you can start designing your own.
You can create a New Page by:
- Select the Pages option in the WordPress Dashboard to begin creating a new page for your WordPress site.
- Select ‘Add New’ from the drop-down menu.
- The WordPress page editor will appear.
Pages can be linked to your website so that when a user clicks on it, it opens up the details about the same. Some common pages are About us, Contact, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions Page, Home and Shop Page etc.
- Create a Custom Menu
Most themes will, by default, take the existing pages on your site and insert their links in the navigation bar. You can create your own menu too by going to Appearance » Menu. It will enable you to design unique navigation menus and position them across the site in various areas. You can use a Custom Menu to drag, arrange, reorder, and rename menu items.
Many themes provide many menu locations, but most of them include at least one, which is your site’s header.
- Install an automatic Backup System
When you’re almost ready to launch your website, make sure you have an automatic backup policy. This is the only method to ensure that you can easily recover your website in a situation of failure. Everything can be restored to the most recent backup file if your website has a backup mechanism in place. Various Hosting companies include limited backup services. These backups, however, are not guaranteed, and you are responsible for backing up your website on your own.
Keep in mind that WordPress does not come with a built-in backup system, so you’ll need to find a plugin that handles it for you.
We recommend using Updraft Plus. It’s the finest WordPress backup plugin, and it lets you plan automatic backups. Backups may also be safely stored on cloud storage services like Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, and others.
- Change Permalink Structure
The permalink is the complete URL for every particular article, page, or other piece of content on your site that you see and use. The word permalink refers to the fact that it is a permanent connection. It might contain your domain name (www.yoursitename.com) as well as a slug, which is the part of the URL that follows after the domain name.
‘http://yourdomain.com/p=123’ is the default WordPress permalink. Although this URL is short, it is not search engine friendly.
You can use the keywords in your permalinks to give essential information about the content of a post, it’s an important consideration for both user experience and search engine optimization (SEO).
You can change permalink by:
- Go to Settings » Permalink
- Select “Post name”
- Click the “Save” button
- Add categories and change the default one
At least one category must be assigned to each WordPress post. WordPress chooses the ‘Uncategorized’ category as the default category i.e. when you write a blog post and if you don’t alter the category, it will be put in the default category. You can also change this by going to Posts » Categories, hover over Uncategorized, and click Edit to modify the default category name. Remember to update the slug as well.
To change the default category, you have to go to Posts » Categories and add the custom categories here. You may give each one a description if you like. Some themes will include that description in the archive page, which is beneficial for SEO.
Conclusion
Follow these ’11 Important things to do after Installing WordPress’ and you’ll be well on your way to running a well-managed website.
Though each website has its own set of installations and techniques for achieving its objectives, regardless of the kind, each of these eleven steps are important.
How many of these WordPress options are you familiar with? What additional options would you advise all WordPress users to use? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
HAPPY VOOTPOOLING…
