While
some people install WordPress website more often, there are a few who
create a WP install just once or may be twice. Experienced installers
may be well-versed with the entire WordPress installation process and
remember everything that needs to be added or removed when setting-up
a new site. But that's not the case with a beginning WordPress user.
People who're new to the WP community, and installs a WordPress site
less frequently may get overwhelmed to see the amount of choices
available to build a website, but they may get confused about what
they need to do post WP installation.
This
post will throw light on some of the most essential settings that a
novice should be aware of – while installing a WordPress powered
site.
Make
Changes to the Default WP Admin Account
By
default, any WordPress website contains a username known as ‘Admin’.
So, if you're using 'Admin' as your website username, chances are
that hackers may easily track down the username, and then will try to
uncover your password. In order to avoid this security risk, make
sure to create a new username account and give administrator
privileges to it.
Changing
your site's username is not difficult, all you've to do is open your
WP Dashboard, go to “Users” and then click on “Add New” to
create a new user account. Next, log out of your WordPress site and
log back in using the new username and the password (try to pick a
strong and an obscure password). Also, remember to delete your old
admin account but before that make sure to assign existing posts to
some other user.
You can
even choose to change how your name is displayed throughout the
website, by making changes to the “Edit My Profile” section that
comes on the upper right corner once you've logged into the WordPress
admin panel.
Change
the Permalinks Structure
The
second thing that is very much important for you is that you should
do after installing your WordPress site is to adjust the permalink
settings. The URLs of your content that you publish to your WordPress
site are called as permalinks. Setting up a good URL structure
ensures good ranking of your site. But the WordPress default
permalink structure is not user-friendly and create ugly URLs, such
as, for example, www.xyz.com/?page_id=123 let's say for your
'WordPress Products' page that doesn't offer any SEO benefit. It
would have been much better if your permalink structure looked
something like www.xyz.com/wordpress-products – that's because it
contains keyword in the URL, which is good for SEO.
And
thus, it becomes essential to change the permalinks. For doing so,
log into your newly installed WP dashboard, go to
Settings>>Permalinks panel.
Now
select any predefined permalink structure or you can even create a
custom structure, and hit the “Save Changes” button to apply your
changes.
Set-up
Plugins
Once
you've changes the permalinks, you should head towards the Plugin
section to install and activate certain plugins, so as to add
additional functionality to your newly installed site (a self-hosted
WordPress site).
The
first plugin that you should enable is Akismet. It's a built-in WP
plugin that helps to eliminate spam comments. In order to activate
this plugin, it's important to have an API key from Akismet, which
you get from Akismet.com/get for free. Apart from Akismet, you should
activate the “SEO by Yoast” plugin as it helps to make your
WordPress site's page titles/descriptions search engine optimized.
Also,
it is advisable to activate the W3 Cache Plugin as it helps to boost
your site's load time. As you may know, website speed is crucial for
its success it's very important that your blog or site loads faster.
Create
the Right Categories
Categories
in WordPress helps to keep your posts organized. However, by default
WordPress sets the category name with “uncategorized”. But having
uncategorized posts added in the site is something you should avoid,
as it might send positive message to your customers and wouldn't be
of any benefit. On the other hand, keeping your posts under a
category with relevant name and description serve as important
navigation link – to help users identify what the posts represent.
You
can create a new category as your default WordPress category. For
this, navigate to Settings>>Writing>>Default Post
Category (highlighted in ovals in the below screen shot).
From
the 'Default Post Category' click on the drop down menu over there
and choose the category that you want to be your default category.
Next, click on “Save Changes.” button.
Conclusion
After
you've completed your WordPress installation process, making a
certain tweaks and changes to your site can help optimize your
website performance. Though there are a lot of settings that you need
to change to get the best out of your newly installed WordPress site,
but this post will help explore the most essential settings that you
need to work upon.
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