Thirty Three Things Every Blogger Should Do After Installing WordPress

After installing WordPress, most new users ask “What Next?”. Creating and maintaining a WordPress powered blog is simple. However, many new users are often confused by the sheer number of options available. On top of that there are thousands of plugins for further enhancing WordPress. Making the correct choices may appear to be a daunting task. Here are 33 tips to help you get started with WordPress.

Essential

1. Configure WordPress

After installing WordPress go through all the settings and familiarise yourself with all the options. I will discuss critical aspects like Permalink Structure later on. But here are a few other important stuff you should not miss:

RSS Feed Settings: You have the option to choose between offering full feeds and partial feeds. I strongly believe that everyone should offer full feeds, because excerpts as feeds simply defeat the purpose of RSS. You can find this setting under Reading Settings.

Threaded Comments: Threaded comments actually increases user interaction by making it possible to directly reply to a post. Don’t forget to enable this option under Discussion Settings.

Chose your default Gravatar: Recent builds of WordPress also integrate Gravatars by default. If a commenter doesn’t have a gravatar then a default display picture is used. You can specify this from Discussion Settings.

2. Take Care of Your Database with WP-DBManager

Wp-DBManager is one of the few plugins that I truly consider as essential. It takes care of almost all database related tasks. Some if its main features are:

Backup DB: Backup your database without having to venture into your webhost’s backend (phpMyAdmin). You can store your database backups online, have them emailed to your account or save them offline.

Scheduled Backups: Undoubtedly the best feature of WP-DBManager is the ability to schedule backups at regular intervals. You can have these backup files automatically emailed to you.

Optimise DB: DBManager also includes a built in database optimiser which you should use once in awhile.

Sql Query: You can run SQL Queries directly from your WordPress backend.

3. Create a Contact Page

Contact Page is a must have for any blog. A Contact Page is more useful than you may think. I have had people contact me for private ad sales as well as readers contacting me with their problems (which is a good source of ideas for articles) and offering feedback. I have also had readers who were kind enough to contact me about bugs they encountered on my blog.

If you are using Wp-Spamfree then you don’t need to use any additional plugin since it comes built-in with a simple Contact Form. Otherwise you can try cForms II, which is possibly the most powerful contact forms plugin available.

4. License Your Content

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) covers all intellectual property and protects your blog against copyright violation. Don’t forget to put insert the licensing information in your blog’s footer. By default most themes include the “All Rights Reserved” clause. However, you may also want to look at the Creative Commons Licensing System as a valid alternative.

5. Create an About Me Page

An About Me page helps build trust and lets your readers know a little bit more about you. However, don’t fill your About Me page with mundane details. Writing a good About Me page can be tough. I found it writing anything in first person to be maddeningly difficult. In case you are stumped check out How to Write a Fantastic About Page.

6. Disable Post Revisions

By default Post Revisions in enabled in WordPress. Every time you save your post a new row is created in the wp_posts table. This allows you to revert to an older copy in case you mess up. However, this I have never felt the need for post revisions. Instead it’s an annoyance since WordPress doesn’t provide any option to turn it off. Over time post revisions can significantly bloat your database. Disabling it is relatively simple. You simply need to add the following line to you wp-config file:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

If you want to delete all post revisions run the following query from phpmyAdmin.

DELETE a,b,c
 FROM wp_posts a
 LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
 LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
 WHERE a.post_type = 'revision'

If you are uncomfortable doing all this manually you can use the No Revisions plugin to disable post revisions and Cleanup WordPress to delete all past post revisions.

7. Deal With Spam

WordPress comes built-in with a pretty decent anti-spam plugin: Akismet. Don’t forget to activate it (you will need a WordPress.com API key). However, one of the main problem with Akismet is that often it flags legitimate comments as spam. Hence, it is always a good idea to go through your spam queue. If find that your spam queue is getting to large to tackle you may add another layer of defence before akismet. I use Wp-Spamfree which eliminates almost all comment spam. Most bots can’t handle javascript and/or cookies. Wp-Spamfree utilises a dynamic combo of JavaScript and cookies to weed out the humans from spambots. Another anti-spam plugin with similar methodology is Raven’s Antispam plugin.
In case you would like to use something other than Akismet you can pick any of the alternatives suggested here.

8. Install a Caching Plugin

WordPress caching plugins were initially developed to withstand sudden traffic spikes. However, I consider them to be essential even for new blogs as they reduce page load times. Although WP SuperCache is the most popular solution there are plenty of other equally worthy alternatives like DB Cache, Hyper Cache and W3 Total Cache.

Security

9. Disable Directory Index

This is an absolute must. Don’t allow people to just browse through your directories. It’s a huge security risk. Disabling directory index is quite simply. Open your .htaccess file and add the following line:

Options All -Indexes

10. Hide version number

Most themes add the WordPress version number to the page header. It’s generally a good idea to hide your WordPress version number as it only makes it easier for the hacker to figure out if there are any unpatched vulnerabilities in your blog which he can exploit.

This tag is automatically added to the header as well as RSS Feeds by the WordPress engine and removing it isn’t easy. You can find a manual way out over here (refer to the solution provided in the comments section).

If you prefer not to do this manually, you can use bs-wp-noversion plugin which simply returns a blank string whenever the version number is requested. The Secure WordPress plugin also takes care of this (along with a number of other potential security issues).
And finally, don’t forget to remove the /readme.html file. It’s the quickest and easiest way to determine which version of WordPress a blog is using.

11. Specify WordPress Security Keys

WordPress Security keys are random strings which are used to ensure better encryption of information stored in the user’s cookies. Open you wp-config.php file and locate the the following section:

define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
 define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
 define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
 define('NONCE_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');

Replace the above lines with the random key generated by WordPress Security Key Generator. You can also use any random string of your choice instead of the one specified by the generator. Use complex strings since you don’t need to remember it.

Appearence

12. Choose Your Theme Carefully

This is a very important step. Depending upon your niche carefully chose a theme. With WordPress you will be spoiled for choice. If you are confused and can’t settle upon a theme don’t fret. Thankfully a lot of other bloggers have already done the hard work. There are dozens of top themes compilations available. Just use Google Search (or Blog search) and appropriate keywords (e.g. premium WordPress themes, top WordPress themes, best free WordPress themes etc) to locate them. If you want to monetise your blog, I would recommend going for a 3-coloumn theme with professional looks (you can even opt for a magazine styled theme).

13. Get a Favicon

This is a very important aspect that is often overlooked. I discussed how to create and install favicon in the past. I would highly recommend going through that article. Anyways, in short you can use any icon (16×16 px) as a favicon. Just upload the icon and enter the following tag in the file header.php before the </head> tag.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://whatever.com/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />
Replace http://whatever.com/favicon.ico with the actual path to the favicon file.

14. Separate Trackbacks from Comments

This can be a bit daunting, especially if you are not comfortable with editing php files. But, Matt has a posted detailed step by step guide to help you through the process. It is quite big so I won’t repost it here. Head over to Sivel.net to read it.

15. Enhance Default Navigation

By default WordPress only allows you to go to the next page (Older Post) and previous page (Newer Post). This can be really annoying for your visitors. If you want to provide a better navigation system (similar to Google’s Search Engine Results Page) there are a couple of plug-in you can try out. The first one is WP-PageNavi and it is the plug-in I am using for this blog. Another option that you can go for is Pagebar V2.

16. Make Better Use of the 404 Page

The 404 Error Page is displayed whenever a user enters an invalid URL. Don’t let these hits go to waste. I have seen different techniques being used by different pro bloggers. You can automatically redirect the reader to a list of your best posts or you can present him you entire post archives. My favourite technique is to automatically display relevant posts based on the keywords in his URL. You can do this easily with the 404 SEO Plug-in. For more options check out DailySEOBlog’s “8 WordPress Plugins to make your 404 error pages user friendly & efficient“. WP-Hacks has a couple of nice articles on Customising and Exploiting 404 error pages.

Search Engine Optimisation

17. Change the Permalink Structure

By default WordPress would generate URLs like http://www.pallab.net/?p=110 for your posts. It is highly recommend that you change this behaviour since it is always better to have your keywords present in the URL. In order to change the permalink settings go to Settings–>Permalinks. You can enter a custom structure like ‘/%postname%/’ or ‘ %category%/%postname%/’ or select any one of the options which includes ‘name’. I would recommend using either postname only or postname and category in your permalink. If you are using category name in your permalink structure then don’t select multiple categories while publishing an article.
If you have already published posts using the old permalink structure use Redirection plug-in to make sure that the old links still work.

18. Trim the Permalink

Get rid of all unnecessary words from your URL using SEO Slugs plug-in. For example, when you publish a post with a title like “What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings”, WordPress automatically assigns a long filename to your post (“/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings”), called a post slug. SEO Slugs plug-in strips common words like “what”, “you” or “can” out of your post slug to make it more search engine friendly. With SEO Slugs plug-in activated, the slug for our example blog post would look like “/immediately-higher-rankings”. Thus SEO Slugs allows you to generate keyword rich compact URLs.

19. Optimise Page and Post Titles

By default WordPress displays Blog name >> Category >> Article name in the page title. It is generally preferable to have the Article Name precede the Blog Title and Category name. There are plenty of plug-in available for doing this task. However, I would suggest Platinum SEO Pack, HeadSpace 2 and All in One SEO Pack. The features supported by these plug-in are too many to list here. But you can save a lot of work if you install any of these plug-in, as I am going to refer to them on multiple occasions in this post.

If you choose not to use any plug-in you can follow this simple guide from ProBlogDesign. You need to open header.php file and look for . Replace the content between these tags with the following code

<?php if ( is_home() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | <?php bloginfo('description'); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_search() ) { ?>Search Results for <?php /* Search Count */ $allsearch = &new WP_Query("s=$s&showposts=-1"); $key = wp_specialchars($s, 1); $count = $allsearch->post_count; _e(''); echo $key; _e(' — '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_404() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | 404 Nothing Found<?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_author() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Author Archives<?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?><?php wp_title(''); ?> | <?php
 $category = get_the_category();
 echo $category[0]->cat_name;
 ?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_page() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | <?php
 $category = get_the_category();
 echo $category[0]->cat_name;  ?>|<?php wp_title(''); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_category() ) { ?><?php single_cat_title(); ?> | <?php $category = get_the_category();
 echo $category[0]->category_description; ?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_month() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Archive | <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if ( is_day() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Archive | <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?><?php } ?>
 <?php if (function_exists('is_tag')) { if ( is_tag() ) { ?><?php single_tag_title("", true); } } ?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?>

20. Create a Sitemap and Submit it to Search Engines

A sitemap lets a search engine easily navigate your website and ensures that all the content is indexed. There are plenty of WordPress plug-in available to generate Sitemaps. The one that I use is Google XML Sitemap Generator. Once you have created the sitemap submit it to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site explorer and Bing Webmaster Center.

21. Fix Canonicalization Problem

Your website can normally be accessed with or without the leading www and the trailing /. That is http://www.pallab.net will work as well as http://pallab.net. In a similar manner http://www.pallab.net/ and http://www.pallab.net will also work). Search Engines don’t like ambiguity. Google allows you to specify your preference in the Google Webmaster Tools. However, it is always better to fix things at your end. The simplest solution is to use the WWW-Redirect plug-in. Alternatively you can manually fix deal with the issue by adding the following lines to your .htaccess file.

Options +Indexes
 Options +FollowSymLinks
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^pallab.net
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.pallab.net/$1 [R=permanent,L]
 RewriteBase /
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.pallab.net/$1/ [L,R=301]

This will redirect all requests to the www version of the page. Credit for this solution goes to Jim Westergren.

22. Use Robots.txt Effectively to Deal with Duplicate Content Problem

Search Engines dislike duplicate content. Hence it is commonly believed that it’s better from SEO point of view to ensure that any content can be accessed by the search engines only through one path. In WordPress the posts are available via archives, tags, categories etc. Hence it makes sense to prevent search engines from indexing some of these pages to avoid duplication of content. This can be done by using the robots.txt file or by using the no-index tag. If you have already installed HeadSpace 2 or All in One SEO Pack then you will find the option to disable indexing of archive pages or category pages in the plug-in. However, I would recommend using the excellent Meta Robots WordPress plug-in or Platinum SEO Pack as they provide a greater degree of control. Check out this page for a sample robots.txt file. Do remember while creating your robots.txt that you must leave at least one path for the search engines to index your content.

23. Use Descriptive and Suitable Meta Tags

Due to great abuse the importance of Meta tags has dwindled over the years. But it is still recommended that you use them. Many search engines often use the description provided by you to describe your website in SERP and thus influence the number of hits from organic sources. There are numerous plug-in available to do this. All the afore mentioned plug-ins (Head Space 2, Platinum SEO Pack and All in One SEO Pack) allow you to easily specify meta-keywords and meta-description.

Analytics

24. Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the best free metrics service available in the market. It’s immensely powerful and incredibly detailed. Once you have your blog up and running head over to Google Analytics page and create an account. After creating an account you can use Ultimate Google Analytics or any other WordPress plugin available to insert the tracking code. If you are using Headspace 2 you won’t need any additional plugin since it already supports Google Analytics. Alternatively, you can open up footer.php and insert the supplied JavaScript before the </body>.

25. Migrate Your Feeds to FeedBurner

This is an absolute must and should be among the first things you do after establishing your blog. FeedBurner provides detailed stats for your RSS Feeds along with multiple options for optimising and publicising your feed. Once you have created a FeedBurner feed you need to replace your current feeds with it. If you use Headspace, once again you can easily integrate FeedBurner into your blog using it. Otherwise you can use plugins like Feedsmith. The manual technique is also rather simple. You would need to edit your .htaccess file (present in your blog’s root directory). See Ajay D’Souza’s blog for further details.

Optimisations for Increasing Visitor Loyalty and Decreasing Bounce Rate

26. Install Subscribe to comments

Allow your readers to keep track of conversations by enabling email subscription to comments. If there is an interesting discussion going on, the automated email updates will encourage your readers to return to the website and contribute to the discussion. I use the Subscribe To Comments plug-in for this purpose.

27. Reward Top Commentators

Display a list of Top Commentators (preferably do-follow list) and encourage your readers to comment. You can use the convenient Top Commentators plug-in or the Top Commentators widget.

28. Show Some More Love to your Commentators

You may get thousands of visitors per day and yet end up with very few comments per post. Very few people take the time and pain to leave comments. Commentators are an asset. They make your blog look lively and increase value. CommentLuv is just another way of thanking your commentators. This plug-in displays the recent post from the commenter’s own blog, allowing him to get some free publicity. In order to set this up, head over to http://comluv.com and register your blog. After this just download and install the Comluv WordPress plugin.

29. Promote Your RSS Feed

Make sure you flaunt your RSS Feed option. Put it in the sidebar, in the header, after each post and anywhere you think it would be suitable. There are plenty of free RSS Icons available. Just use Google BlogSearch to locate them. And while we are on the topic of feeds don’t forget to subscribe to this blog.

30. Provide EMail Subscription Options

Not everyone uses a Feed reader. Many people still rely on good ol’ email, so it is a good idea to allow your readers to subscribe to RSS feed via email. FeedBurner already provides this option. All you need to do is insert the code they provide or the link to their signup page in your blog.

31. Make Social Bookmarking Easy

Make it easy for your readers to bookmark your website on Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, There are numerous ways to achieve this. I have manually added the links by editing the file single.php
The code I am using is :

<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>"><img  src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/stumble.gif" border="0" alt="Stumble" /></a> 

 <img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/spacer.gif"  border="0" /> 

 <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>"><img  src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/digg.gif" alt="Digg" border="0" /></a> 

 <img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/spacer.gif"  border="0" /> 

 <a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>"><img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/reddit.gif" alt="Reddit" border="0" /></a>

 <img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/spacer.gif"  border="0" /> 

 <a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add=<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><img  src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/technorati.gif" alt="Technorati" border="0" /></a> 

 <img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/spacer.gif"  border="0" /> 

 <a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>"><img src="http://www.pallab.net/uploads/formatting/SocialBookmarks/delicious.gif" alt="Delicious" border="0" /></a>

Thanks to Nirmal for the code and icons.

There are plenty of other options you can go for. Feel free to use the one you like. But make sure that you don’t make the mistake of adding each and every social bookmarking website. That would only create a clutter and most readers won’t even bother to digg out the service they wish to use from the crowd. It also helps to use large and prominent icons. Once again Google is a good place to hunt down attractive looking icons. If you don’t want to take the trouble of manually doing all the tasks, use the Wp Sociable (or any of the plugins mentioned here) plugin to do them for you.

32. Promote Your Content on Twitter

Twitter has become a crucial venue for promoting your content. I am using the TweetMemme plugin to add a twitter badge to every post. This plugin displays the number of tweets your posts have received and encourages your readers to re-tweet your content. QuickOnlineTips has a nice list of tools for leveraging twitter. Do check that out. In case you are looking for some cool looking Twitter icons check out Hongkiat.com (link1 and link2).
If you appreciate the content on this blog (or even otherwise) you are most welcome to follow me on twitter.

33. Show Related Posts

Encourage your readers to explore your blog further by displaying other content he may be interested in. I use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin on my blog. There are plenty of related posts plugins, but I found YARPP to work the best for me. It works very well since it takes into consideration post titles, content, tags, and categories to determine relevance. However, its major disadvantage is that it’s completely textual. There are a few templates available to make YARPP display post thumbnails, however they have their own limitations. Best Related Posts plug-in can display related posts along with image thumbnails. However, it doesn’t support cropping of images and you can end up with extremely tall post thumbnails. Another solution is LinkWithin. While LinkWithin doesn’t suffer from afore mentioned problems, its algorithm is rather shabby.

That’s all I have for now. Although this list is mainly intended towards new WordPress users, even veteran WordPress users should find it useful. Let me know if you found this article useful. And don’t miss out on the sequel to this article, which will be published soon.