5+ Things To Do After Installing WordPress

The WordPress 5-minute install is great, nothing difficult about it, but after installing WordPress there are still some things we have to do. In this list I want to share the steps I take after installing WordPress. You can use this list as a check list for your own future installations.

1. Configure the Permalinks

Configuring your permalinks is a very important step. This option changes your unreadable page url in a readable page url:

• Before configuration of page url’s: www.myhomepage.com/?p=1
• After configuration of page url’s: www.myhomepage.com/home/

This is both very important for your visitors and for search engines.

How to do this?

• Go to “Settings” > “Permalinks”
• Under “Common settings”, you can choose how that your url should look like. Choose an option and click the “Save changes button”.

2. Install some essential plugins

There are some essential WordPress plugins that you should install after installing WordPress. This is my list of essential plugins:

• Askimet
• All In One SEO Pack
• Google Analyticator
• Google XML Sitemaps
• pageMash
• W3 Total Cache
• WordPress Database Backup

For more information about these plugins, and also some ideas for additional interesting plugins, read my previous post “My 20+ Favourite WordPress Plugins“.

3. Choose your theme and activate it

After installing WordPress, the standard theme is active. But lets be honest, a blog with that standard theme isn’t very attractive. The good news is that there are a lot of theming options:

• buy a commercial theme, most of theme are not that expensive (less then $100)
• make use of software like Artisteer, to create you own themes
• create your own theme (or get it created for you)
• just download  and activate a free theme (yes, there are plenty of great free WordPress themes!)

The most simple way is to install a free theme:

• Go to “Appearance” > “Themes” (in the left menu)
• Click on the “Install themes” tab on the top of the page
• Search for a theme (click on the “Search” button)
• Select a theme from the search result list , click the “install” link
• Activate this new theme

4. Add your categories

After installing WordPress, there is just 1 category. So before you can write posts in certain categories, you have to create your own categories:

• Go to “Posts” > “Categories”
• Add a new category by filling in the fields
• Click the “Add new category” button

You’ll see your new category in the list on the right. You can create as much categories as you need.

To change the default category:

• Go to “Settings” > “Writing”
• Select another category next to “Default post category”
• Click the “Save changes” button

5. Add your RSS feed to Google Feedburner

Out of the box, WordPress can create RSS feeds. But because Feedburner has a lot more features, we will take advantage of Feedburner to take care of our feeds. All you need is a Google account (you can sign up for free). You can simply add your feed to Google Feedburner in 3 simple steps:

• Go to http://feedburner.google.com
• sign in
• Add your feed, this feeds starts with “http://”, followed by your domain name, and followed by “feed/” (for example http://www.wordpressninja.com/feed/)

Okay, now we have a Feedburner RSS Feed, but when we click the RSS icon on our blog, we will still see our standard RSS Feed. All we have to do now is change the feed that will appear when people click on the RSS icon on our blog. You can change this by installing this Feedburner plugin or to fill in the Feedburner feed in the options screen of your theme (IF available, because not every theme offers this option).

6. Claim your blog at Technorati.com

Technorati.com is one of the most important blog directories, so it’s important to add your blog in their directory.

How to do this? Just sign up and claim your blog. This process can take a while, but you’ll just have to publish an extra post with a code in to prove you’re the owner of the blog.

Conclusion on things to do after installing WordPress

Making a successful blog is an easy job thanks to WordPress. Installation is very easy and can be done in 5 steps. But as you can see, there are still a couple of tasks that have to be done. I hope you enjoyed this list and that it can be a useful guide for you after installing WordPress!

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