First Things To Do After Installing WordPress (15 WordPress basic settings)

You recently kick-start your blogging career?

That’s the coolest thing I have heard today…Congratulations!

Starting a blog can be overwhelming; you feel like you on top of the world. That feeling is unmeasurable.

However, you shouldn’t be relieved by the joy. There are some vital WordPress basic settings you must put in place to skyrocket your blog visibility.

So you just installed WordPress now what next?. what are the first things to do after installing WordPress? A big question, Right?

I got you. I am about to unveil the important WordPress settings for new blogs. Can we dive in?

What are the First Things To Do After Installing WordPress?

#1. Upload a Logo

Your logo is your brand identity. You need a standard logo for your website. You should consider uploading a logo after installing WordPress.

However, some WordPress themes (coming to that) are designed that you don’t need a graphical logo, Reason is the theme displays the logo in text format. In this kind of situation, just type in your brand name.

Holistically, If you want to upload a logo on your blog, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Hover to Appearance >> Customize
• Step 2: Click on Site Identity
• Step 3: Upload New Logo
• Step 4: Save and Published

If you have a decent eye for design (like me), you can design a logo yourself. Else you hire a professional on Fiverr.

#2. Remove Dummy Content

Once you install WordPress, you will discover some sample contents waiting (a sample Post, Page, and Comment).

It’s usually ‘Hello World.’ Those are just sample contents; you should delete them.

Related: How to write a unique blog post fast (new tab)

#3. Change Site Title, Tagline and Time Zone

Next, Change Site Title, Tagline, and Time Zone. Those settings should be adjusted appropriately. In other to do that, Go to Settings >> General.

You shouldn’t overthink your site title and Tagline, Write what you want, and you can always change it.

Once Done, Save.

#4. Fine-tune permalinks

Permalink is your post URL. The default setting looks like - http://yourwebsite.com/?p=123. Every post must have its own permalink; you should fine-tune to something like https://yourwebsite.com/Post-title.

The default permalink setting is not SEO-friendly and can hurt your content from showing up in search results. Adjusting your permalink is one the WordPress initial setup you can’t ignore.

 To Fine-tune it, Navigate to Settings >> Permalinks, Change the settings to ‘Post Name’ and save.

#5. Add important blog pages

For every website (blog), you need some essential blog pages to increase your exposure. These pages are so relevant that they represent your website.

For instance: An about page will enable your visitors to know much about you and easily connect with you. So what are the essential blog pages? Read this guide here.

#6. Install a Nice Looking Theme

As they say, First impression lasts forever. Right?

Have you visited a poor looking site before? What do you feel? What do you do? You feel not welcomed and exit!

One of the First Things To Do After Installing WordPress is beautifying your website by installing a good looking theme. Either free or paid theme is cool; the goal is to make sure you choose a friendly and responsive theme.

To upload a theme, Navigate to Appearance >> Theme >> Add new. You can either search for a theme (free) or upload a theme you purchased (Premium).

P.S Paid (premium) themes are actually the best, and I advise you purchase a nice theme if you are serious about your blog.

#7. Install Important Plugins

Plugins are the WordPress soldiers that help you handle complex tasks. With plugins, you can add unique functionalities to your blog.

You don’t need any coding to create an awesome site, just know the right plugins you need, and everything will go smoothly.

For instance: SEO plugin will guide you optimizing your content to show up in search results. With more than 55,000 plugins, you can quickly get lost or follow the wrong path. You don’t need too much plugin. 

Read this guide: Important plugins for every website

#8. Improve Page Load Speed

Site speed is now a ranking factor. This means you need your website to be as fast as possible if you want high rankings.

A slow website is as good as a dead one. As human, Our attention span is short; nobody would wait 10 seconds for a webpage to load. The maximum is 3 sec.

So, How do you optimize your site speed to load in less than 3 secs? 

There are many reasons why a website could load slow. It could be - too heavy theme, uncompressed images, too many plugins, poor hosting, and many more. 

This blog loads in 1.4 secs. Much hard work was invested to achieve that.

Read Also: How to speed up your blog or website (1.4 sec)

#9. Set up user Profile

One of the important WordPress settings for new blogs is to create a User Profile for your blog. By entering your names (first name, Surname, and Nickname).

Enter an email address (will be used to log in WordPress), Fill up your social accounts, write a short bio about yourself, and generate a password.

To adjust or create a user profile, Navigate to Users >> Add new.

Note: You can add contributors to your blog by setting up their profile. Remember to add them as author or contributor, not as administrator.

#10. Configure Ping list

To allow Google index your post fast, you should configure your ping list. It will help google to detect new content on your website fast.

First, Navigate to Settings >> Writing, then scroll down until you see the space you can paste your pings.

Then copy and paste the below pings in the box, then save.

• http://rpc.twingly.com
• http://api.feedster.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
• http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
• http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://www.feedsubmitter.com
• http://blo.gs/ping.php
• http://www.pingerati.net
• http://www.pingmyblog.com
• http://geourl.org/ping
• http://ipings.com
• http://www.weblogalot.com/ping
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://ping.fc2.com/
• http://blogs.yandex.ru/
• http://rpc.bloggerei.de/
• http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2
• http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2
• http://ping.rss.drecom.jp/
• http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/
• http://rpc.odiogo.com/ping/
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
• http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
• http://ping.amagle.com/
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

#11. Setup WordPress Comments

Comments play ambiguous roles on blogs. It could be the only connector between you and your readers. Nevertheless, spammers also use comments as their destructive weapon - so you can’t ignore this setting.

Simply navigate to Settings >> Discussion, from there, you can enable or disable comments, moderate comment, enable comments notification, and so on. Value-added comments can make your blog post more interesting.

#12. Setup Front and Blog Pages

By default, your blog homepage displays the latest blog post and a few other things. Strategically, that’s not cool!

You should fine-tune your homepage to drag audiences’ attention to the most essential part of your blog. Although, this is not a necessity for new blogs. Then, it won’t hurt to set your homepage as latest post.

To do so, Navigate to Settings >> Reading, and choose what you want.

#13. Set up Gravatar Account

You’ve ever read an article and see readers picture showing beside their comments?

That’s what gravatar is all about. It allows you display your picture along with any comment you post online. If you do blog commenting strategically, a gravatar account is more than useful to you.

First, Go to Gravatar website and create an account (WordPress account). Add a prominent email address, add your preferred photo and finish up.

Now your photo will appear anytime you comment online (with your gravatar email).

#14. Add Categories

No matter how narrow your niche is, it can still be divided into various categories. It’s advisable to be niche-focus, but not too narrow.

If your blogging niche can’t be secluded into 3 categories, then it’s too narrow, you won’t be writing for long because You would probably run out of ideas.

For clarity purpose, I started this blog with 3 categories - Blogging tips, WordPress Tips & SEO tips.

Creating categories is a no-brainer, Navigate to Posts >> Categories. After that, create your unique categories and save.

#15. Create a Custom Menu

See these menus?

They are one of the few reasons this site is easy to navigate. You can elevate to your favorite kind of content easily. Do you see why you need menus on your blog?

Menus consist of categories and relevant blog pages. So how do you create menus?

First, Navigate to Appearance >> Menus

Create your menus and choose where they should appear. Some menus are better as header while some footer. If you have your categories and pages created already, you will be fine creating your menus.

Creating menus is one of the essential settings after installing WordPress since it helps readers navigate and understand your site. Search engine bots will be fast to understand the intent of your website.

Conclusion on first things to do after installing WordPress

I could vividly remember when I started this blog; I don’t know what to do after installing WordPress (poor me). It takes a few struggles to put myself in place.

For newbies, I hope this helps, and you now know the first things to do after installing WordPress? You know understand the WordPress initial setup?

Don’t get too carried away; blogging is fun. Most importantly, you need to avoid some mistakes. 

Read more: 10 newbie blogging mistakes to avoid or you lose!

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