After taking a decision over choosing a platform for your next website, you would have chosen WordPress content management system as your priority as it is available with many hosting companies with a one-click simple WordPress installation procedure. Am I correct?
Once you have installed the WordPress, it would give you a sigh of relief as if you are done with it. Hold your breath right on!
Because installing is what you do nothing about while installing WordPress. There are certain things to optimize after WordPress installation.
Yes! You have to do some essential settings for your visitors and search engines after WordPress setup on your hosting space.
Let’s see what are those things one-by-one but, not necessarily in the same order, they should be.
Necessary Things To Do After WordPress Installation
What to do after installing WordPress? Check the following things!
1. Give Your Site A Title
A title for a website is imperative, as it would be the first phrase that would be talking to the visitor or a bot. Adding a site title (It would be your site name) is a must-do thing right after the WordPress installation.
To give your site a title, go to Settings > General and in the Site Title field, enter your website title and Save Changes.
Also, give the tagline and set other settings along with the site title to provide customized presets.
2. Install A Theme
Before you make any changes to your website, make sure that you have chosen a good to install. Because, some settings will only look good for some themes and it may differ for different themes.
So, if you put efforts in setting up your WordPress website based on the default theme, you would have to regret it in future.
Whether you own a personal or business site, it would be better to go with the premium WordPress themes if you cannot design your own WordPress theme.
Free WordPress themes have limited access with which you cannot get the best returns on your investment. Besides, they are not fully customizable which will obstruct your functionality of the site.
To install a theme, go to Appearance > Themes >Choose the default themes that are available > Click ‘Activate’ button.
Or Go to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme> Browse (.zip theme file) > Install Now.
3. Fill Your User Profile
Filling up the information on the admin profile is what users actually forget. Of course, content is the king, why don’t you take the credits for creating it?
Having an author profile right under the content is very helpful in building the authorship of the site. If you are writing on behalf of the company, it is necessary to show up your author bio at the end of the post instead of leaving it blank which gives the visitor a vague impression the content creator.
To fill up your user profile, go to Users > Your Profile > fill the profile information > Update Profile.
4. Setup Permalink Structure
Permalink structure is a very important setting that you should not ignore after installing the WordPress. The default permalink structure that looks like this, http://yoursite.com/?p=123 is not SEO friendly at all.
The content will get indexed in the search engines but cannot be optimized further. The most used permalink structure of WordPress is http://yoursite.com/WP/sample-post/. It can be optimized the way you want.
It is always better to change the permalink structure before you post anything on your site, because, it would be an SEO risk changing the permalink structure after posting some posts.
To change the permalink structure, go to Settings > Permalinks > Choose a structure > Save Changes.
5. Install Essential Plugins
The beauty of WordPress and one of the top most reasons why people choose over other CMS platforms is the availability of the plugins.
WordPress comes with a handful of ready-made one-click install plugins to take care of security, SEO, affiliates sales, AdSense and much more.
There exist many plugins for several purposes on WordPress. Technically, one need not to have any idea of PHP coding to design their snippets for different uses.
To add/install new plugins, go to Plugins > Add new >Search and install the necessary WordPress plugins for your site.
6. Setup Your Custom Domain
A custom domain is necessary to make your website look professional. It is better to setup your domain before you launch your site.
To setup, your custom domain to your WordPress site, go to Settings > General and in WordPress Address & Site Address fields, enter your custom domain, then, Save Changes.
7. Setup Time Zone
Time zone might seem unimportant setting after WordPress installation but, if you are working on an affiliate website or sales targeted website based on the particular event, the time zone is what plays a significant role. A right time zone only can grab the right eyeballs of your target audience.
To change the time zone, go to Settings > General > Timezone. Select the right time zone from the drop-down list and Save Changes.
8. Integrate with Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools
Google webmaster tools and analytics are the best reporting tools that are available for free. Google has recently introduced the premium version of Analytics that gives more control over the reports, helps you forecast and plan the future actions accordingly.
Whatever kind of website you are making on WordPress, it is always recommended to have Google integrations in it.
You can install the Google webmaster tools and Google Analytics scripts manually as instructed on their sites or verify your ownership by installing respective plugins.
Check – Detailed Guide To Integrate Google Analytics & Google Webmasters Tools to WordPress
9. Create Required Pages
Any website should have some basic pages that provide information to the visitor as well as search engine bots. Create pages like ‘About us’, ‘Contact us’ ‘Policies’ and ‘Disclaimer’ will help you in search engine optimization and approval of monetizing program like Google AdSense.
To create pages on your WordPress website, go to Pages > Add New and write appropriate information on them.
10. Delete Defaults
When you install WordPress for the first time, it will create some defaults like ‘Hello World’ blog post, a ‘sample page’ and default comments. Better not hurry up removing them right after installation. They will be helpful in showing the preview of the themes and styles that you apply. So, you may remove them after creating some content on your WordPress website.
It is easy to delete default posts, pages and comments on the site. You can find the delete option on hovering on the particular post, or you can multiple select and delete all of them at a time.
Other WordPress Optimization Essentials To Do
1. Change Username
If you use auto-installer provided by your hosting service to install WordPress, make sure to change the username from “Admin” to some other. You may even delete the default admin account after creating a new user account with admin privileges & secure password.
2. Add Favicon
If you wish a create a professional website for your business, it would be good to add a Favicon which is nothing but a small logo that displays in the browser tab.
3. Get Gravatar
Gravatar plays a vital role in adding credibility to your site. Get Gravatar account by providing your WordPress site details.
4. Configure Widgets
You may use the pre-made drag & drop widgets to customize the Sidebar and Footer of your WordPress site.
To configure Widgets, go to Appearance > Widgets.
Wrapping Up
WordPress is a wonderful platform for creating blogs and professional website. This CMS is very easy to manage, user-friendly and flexible. There is still a lot to optimize your site after WordPress installation.
I’ve only listed out the basic things that I think should be set up first. If I miss any important thing to do after WordPress installation, please add value to my piece of content by mentioning in the comment section.
first time visitor, came through G+ .. Blogging career is rapidly growing in india, most of the people perfect to start a home based business and my opinion is blog is the best way to start and a single blog can earn multiple ways am a new blogger a year old .. my present blog in asp.net , now want to start a affiliate blog completely with WP platform your post is really helpful thanks for sharing Sakthi! and expecting more good posts from your blog.
Hi Nirmala Ma’am and sakhti,
I love the topic and the tips that you mentioned.
Optimization is essential and you described the quick tips.
Thanks for sharing :)!
Thank you, Muhammad, for reading the post.
It is essential to optimize the WordPress for better results.
I hope that Sakthi has revealed all the points and nothing was missing.
Keep coming, have a good day ahead.
Nice article , I followed everything except the Gravatar I don’t think that helps in any kind of optimization. Will like to hear from you the best approach to do SEO on WordPress.
Thanks for the sharing.
Clear as glass tutorial. Ideal for WP beginners. I would add “akismet’ plugin because, within a few hours of publishing the first blog post, without Akismet protection, one can see nearly 100 spam comments posted by bots. Thanks to Nirmala for sharing in FB.
You are exact, Badri sir. Akismet plugin is indeed necessary to prevent the spam comments.
Thanks for getting time to read the post, my pleasure to share the helpful posts for my social followers.
Stay tuned sir to grab some awesome wp stuff.
Thanks for taking your time to put together this incredibly awesome post, that’s exactly what one should do immediately after installing WordPress. Thumbs up. 🙂
Your post is really helpful thanks for sharing Sakthi! and expecting more good posts.