Your WordPress blog is installed and you are all ready to start posting to it. But wait before you do that why not do a little post install configuring to make sure everything is setup correctly from the very beginning. Before I begin I want to make clear that these instructions are specific to a WordPress install that you are hosting on your own hosting account. But thats not to say that most of these items can also be configured on a different blogging platform. They just may be located in different places.
Most of the configuring is done from the Blog admin panel so login with your Admin account or an account with Admin privileges.
1. Change the permalink structure - The default value for your permalinks is something that looks like this http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=21 but this doesn’t tell the search engines anything about the article so a link structure like this http://www.yourdomain.com/the_next_great_article will be a bit more SEO friendly and thus get you a little more Search engine juice.To do this go to options then permalinks. Select the custom field and type /%postname% in the custom structure field.
2. Change the default Theme – Again this is just putting a little work into it from the beginning so people know you serious. There are tons of free themes to choose from. You can search and download one from http://themes.wordpress.net/ Once you have a theme you like you simply upload it to the wp-content/themes directory in your wordpress installation. Then just go to your WordPress admin panel and go to Presentation and select the new theme your want to use.
3. Update your ping services – XMLRPC services let people know when you update your blog. The more people we tell the better. Here is a list of ping services http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services Again go to your WordPress control panel click on options > then writing and copy and paste the list of ping services in update services field. Make sure you click the save settings button before navigating away from the page.
4. Activate the akismet plugin – This plugin is included in the core WordPress install so to activate it you will need to click on Plug-ins tab in WordPress control Panel and click Activate link. This plugin requires a WordPress API number so follow the link to sign up and get the API number. This is the must have plug-in to stop SPAM comments.
5. Burn your Feed with Feed Burner – Go to http://www.feedburner.com and have them burn your feed. We people signup for your RSS Feed this will take care of pushing updates to subscribers. Its also nice because they keep track of stats for you. You will need to change the links to your RSS Feed in your WordPress theme or you could get the plugin Feed Smith to redirect all links to your FeedBurner feed.
OK Now I would say its ok to start blogging to your new WordPress Blog. But there are still many things you’ll want to tweak as you go. I’ll cover some of them in my next article.
Great post. I just wanted to suggest a plug-in that I use to handle the pinging. One downfall of the built-in WordPress service is that it will ping when you submit an article and then ping again if you go in to edit a post for whatever reason. Every time you hit "save" or "save and continue editing", it will also ping. It's possible that you are unknowingly sending pings 10 times per day. After a while the ping services may stop listening. Check out this plug-in from MaxBlogPress.
It will make sure that your blog doesn't get banned from the ping services for excessive pinging.
This post was featured in today's Daily Blog Summary–a daily summary of the top 50 Make Money Blogging blogs.
Thanks for the plug-in random thinker. I'm gonna try it out.
Thanks for the link Aaron
I know what you mean Yuwanda. When your used to something its just easier to stick with what you know. I think thats part of the fun for me. I add a pug in every once in a while and it gives me trouble and I just give up. Aaron is right though its not to bad switching over just time consuming.
Gosh I want to switch to WordPress so bad. The cool features rock! Blogger (where I blog) doesn’t even come close. I tried WordPress, but got frustrated at some of the technical stuff (I hate figuring out new technology and I’m no techie).
BUT, sometime, some day when I have more time, I’m gonna do it!
Yuwanda
If I can help you Yuwanda, let me know. Moving to WordPress seems more intimidating that it really is…even from Blogger.
I have a contact form at my site:
http://www.fulltiltblogging.com/blog/contact-aaron-abber/
Or you can email me – just replace the AT in my name above with @.
Just wanted to back up Aaron's comment. The switch from Blogger to WP is very easy.
If you don't want to go self-hosted initially then consider wordpress.com. You can import direct from blogger and then export from wp.com to self-hosted later on. There's excellent support on the wp.com forum for the newbie to the application too.
As for the topic, I left a comment on WLTC but feel it's worth repeating here:
What about Defensio for example. It's caught 15,000 spam comments for me since 10 January with very few false positives. Much better than my previous track record with Akismet.
The problem with copy-pasting all the ping services as you mentioned in #3 above is that it will make your publishing and updating very slow.
Thank you Jason,
It's a nice article.
I just want to ask one thing, do you think that using Feed burner, instead of WordPresses own ATOM/RSS/RSS2 feed makes difference?
Good set of instructions to get WordPress users started!
In permalinks, I'm using the structure /%postname%.html. This is a good one, too?
In suggestion #3, copying and pasting all of the ping services into WordPress (thanks to the tip that it will make publishing slow), isn't that what pingomatic is for? The one listed service, rpc.pingomatic… will update all of those listed ping services for you without having to add the to the list? Isn't that right? Or am I not thinking of this correctly?
When you are editing a post as a draft, it won't send a ping every time you save and continue will it? That is only after you publish a post, correct?
Thanks for your great advice. As a newbie to blogging, however, I can only follow part of it. I'd love to see someone give us more detail about installing themes than "simply upload it to the wp-content/themes directory in your WP installation". I've gone into the selection of other themes just fine & found what I wanted, but then I have NO idea how to find that directory or do an upload. Help!
OMG I have no idea what you are talking about. I will have to learn a whole lot of everything before I leave blogger
There isn't a single comma in this article. Is this some form of deliberate policy? It's almost unreadable.
@Jeff,
That's my understanding as well, i.e., pingomatic already includes all the services listed at the codex.
Is %postname% better than "Date and Name Based"?
I've been using "Date and Name Based" for a few months. If %postname% is better, will the switch be near impossible to make now?
1. secure WP install, its absolutely necessary ( Google : secure wordpress )
2. forward pings & trackbacks to separate page ( no one wants to see them )
3. forward all comments above 10 to separate page ( speed up pageload time )
4. disable all avatar & smiley use in comments, it's childish
5. think very carefully about the 5 ( max ! ) plugins you cannot live without
Peter – care to share how to do 2 & 3?
4 – a matter of opinion. On a pro or corporate blog, fair enough. On a personal blog it surely is the blogger's Choice?
5 – Apart from speed issues, why only 5 plugins?
I have 6 running, but 4 of those I could do without if they were core functionality: wp-contact form, Subscribe to comments, WordPress DB Backup and WP Lightbox 2.
@No Debt plan – Your probably fine leaving your post titles with date and time included. Both are better than the default permalink.
Ok, I just started my blog & I'm new to all this! To change the permalink I choose "custom" now do I just type /%postname% in that field??? Do I have to add my domain or just /%postname% ? Sorry I'm obviously not a techie. If someone would please clarify I'd appreciate it tons! This article is very helpful BTW!
All you need to type is /%postname%/
Thank you so much!
Thank you for the tip regarding permalinks. I just updated mine.
I don't think that's enough
Hiya! great post. I’ll definitely share this one around. I’d like to reiterate the previous comments about themes – it’d be great to read a more detailed post about this. Either as a comment link from this article would be great:
“Thanks for your great advice. As a newbie to blogging, however, I can only follow part of it. I’d love to see someone give us more detail about installing themes than “simply upload it to the wp-content/themes directory in your WP installation”. I’ve gone into the selection of other themes just fine & found what I wanted, but then I have NO idea how to find that directory or do an upload. Help!”