Installing your first WordPress blog can be exciting and frustrating at the same time, there are many tiny things that you must do right and one wrong step can change your blog completely.
There are a few important settings you need to get ready so that your site can operate without any issues.
In this post, I am going to share with you 10 things you must do after installing WordPress for the first time to make sure everything is working properly.
10 Things You Must Do After Installing WordPress
After installing your blog, here are the 10 things you must do after installing WordPress blog, you can do them in any order.
Delete Default Content
The first thing you need to do is to clean up your new WordPress blog, here is the thing, WordPress will install some default content on your blog, so get rid of them.
How do delete the default WordPress page?
The first thing that you are going to do is to delete the default page and default post, in order to do this, please go to pages, then click all pages, then select the pages you want to delete, and click on delete.
How do delete the default WordPress post?
Every fresh WordPress installation comes with a default blog post named Hello Word. You can edit it and make it meaningful to your blog or you can just get rid of it.
In order to delete the default WordPress post, please click on all posts, then select the post you want to delete and then click on trash.
Delete Unused WordPress Themes
Themes are great, they make your site look professional, but the problem with having too many of them on your site is that they will slow it, and no one wants a slow site.
Usually, WordPress will install three free themes on your blog, my recommendation is to delete them and just leave the one you’re going to use, do this even if you use a paid theme.
In order to delete a theme, go to Appearance, then click on themes, and then select the theme you want to delete by clicking on the Theme details.
Then you will see a delete button, just click it and the theme will be gone, do this for all the themes you want to delete.
Change the title and the tagline
Do you know how many times I have seen a blog with the default tagline? Just another WordPress site. Do not do this, please change it as soon as you can.
In order to change the title and the tagline of your blog, please click on settings then click on general.
For the site title, I usually use my domain name of the site for example blogfinesse.com
For the Tagline, I will just describe what my side is all about, I will include my main keyword, for example, I can Learn How to build a passive online income by creating blogs or learn how to make money-making blogs, something in that line.
Setup Front and Blog Pages
This is a very important part of your WordPress website setup, as it’s how it helps you organize the way your website appears to visitors.
From the homepage displays, you can choose any page on your website to become your homepage.
And you can also choose a page to become your blog page, which is super important too. I would normally make my blog page something like /blog or /news. The choice is up to you.
The blog page is super important, as it is where most of your content will appear when you post it.
You can learn how to create a home page here.
A note here, you can also have your homepage as your blog page if you run a blog.
How to Select a Custom Page to be used as a Homepage in WordPress
Before you select the home page, create a second, blank page by going once again to New → Pages → Add and call it something like “News,” “Blog,” or “Posts” — a name that will help you remember that this is the page on which your posts will appear, then same it. Then click publish.
You can make any page your front page just by following simple steps:-
- Log In to your Website DashBoard.
- Go to Settings -> Reading.
- In Reading click on “Static Page”
- Select your home page and your Post page there.
Change the permalink settings
What are permalinks?
Permalinks are the URL of your post,
It is best to change the structure of your WordPress site URLs to:
To change your permalinks do the following:
- Click on settings.
- Then click on the Permalinks.
- Then select the post name.
As you can see from the image above the best type of permalink to use for your WordPress website is the Post name,
It shows only your domain + your post name.
Create the basic pages
What are the basic pages?
The basic pages are pages that you must have on your blog, these are the about me page, contact us page, and legal pages.
For the Privacy Policy page, I use the Privacy policy generator https://www.privacypolicygenerator.info/
For the disclaimer, I use the disclaimer generator https://www.disclaimergenerator.net/
for the contact page, I use the contact form 7 plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/
For the about page, just introduce yourself, who you are, where you live and why you started the blog, people like that, explain to them what they should expect from your blog and how to contact you.
That is it.
Here is the link to my about page
https://blogfinesse.com/about/
How to and basic pages for your site
With your theme installed, you’re ready to start creating content. But before doing that there are some things that we need to do first, one of them is creating basic pages.
Adding and editing pages
Create a new page
Want a “Services” page, or an “About Me” page (like I have on my menu at the top of the site?)
- Look along the sidebar in the WordPress Dashboard for “Pages” -> “Add New”.
- Once you’ve clicked, you’ll find a screen that looks a lot like what you’ve maybe seen in Microsoft Word. Add text, images, and more to build the page you want, then save it when you’re done.
Change the image settings
WordPress will set your blog to clop the images to pre-determined sizes, this can cause images on your blog to look deformed, the way to fix this is to change the image settings.
To change the media setting do the following:
- Click on settings.
- Click on media.
- Uncheck the crop thumbnail button.
- Change all the width and height sizes to 0.
- Click on the save button.
You should have the setting page looking like this.
Setup a Default Category
WordPress will set up a default category, so all your posts will be under this category by default, you can change this also.
To change the default category
- Click on the posts
- Then click on the categories
- Finally, you can click the un edit button under Uncategorized, and change it to the name you want.
- You can add more categories by providing the name of the new category in the new category section.
Complete Your User Profile
In order to set your profile, you need to do the following.
- Click on users
- Click on Profile
Then add your first and last name and your nickname, on the display name publicly you will be given options from either your first name, last name, nickname, or a combination of them.
Note: Make sure any of these names is not the same as the username ( this is your login name, for security you should not use your name or nickname.
Conclusion
That is it, those are the 10 things you must do after installing WordPress for the first time to make sure everything is working properly.
Initially, it can be very overwhelming and confusing but with time you will get used to these settings and they will become second nature to you. If you need any help please contact me on Twitter and I should be able to help you out.