You’ve Installed Wordpress, So What’s Next?

wordpress-next

You’ve heard how good Wordpress is in terms of expandability, customization and you decided to give it a try. Installing a basic copy of Wordpress won’t take too long; but if you are looking for more stability, traffics, search engine optimization, etc, here’s few of my recommendation - The things you should do after installing Wordpress.

Get WordPress.com API Key, Activate Akismet

Where: Settings -> Akismet Configuration

In short, Akismet is a plugin (comes with Wordpress) that will intelligently get rid of all the unnecessary comment and trackback spams. In order for Akismet to work, you’ll need a Wordpress.com API Key. The key is free, but you’ll need to request for one and apply it on the Akismet plugin.

Sign up with Wordpress, get Akismet Key.
Implement Permalinks

Where: Settings -> Permalinks

Referring to the image above, ‘Default’ is each how your blog post URL will look like. The ‘?=’ and numeric blog post ID does not make any sense to the search engine, so it’s better to change them to something more readable. Personally I’ll suggest Custom Structure and insert ‘/%postname%/‘. Here’s how your blog post URL will look like:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/2008/06/25/sample-post/
Burn your feed with Feedburner

Feedburner combines all different type of feeds into one, so your subscribers can subscribe to one regardless of it’s type. Feedburner also comes with a chiklet, allowing you to show off subscribers figures as well as promote subscription.

Sign up with Feedburner
Read/Subscribe to WLTC

weblogtoolscollection.com (WLTC) is where you should keep an eye on if you are particular about your Wordpress blog. These guys have the latest updates in terms of themes, plugins, tips and Wordpress News. There’s perhaps no where better to get everything about Wordpress on one website.

Visit WLTC | Subscribe WLTC
Plugin - Related Content

Related content plugin plays important role in helping you as the blogger, recommending what your readers should also be reading apart of the article they are on. You probably don’t need it now, but it’ll comes in handy when there’s more blog post. A plugin worth mention.

Download Wordpress Related Content plugin
Plugin - Google XML Sitemap

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Download Google XML Sitemap
Add blog to Google Webmasters Tool

Google Webmasters is a free Google service that allows you to:
- Manage, view site statistics
- Bot crawling activity
- Diagnose site
- Submit Sitemap
- Monitor Google indexing
In short, it allows you to manage the ‘health’ of your blog.

Go to Google Webmaster Tool
Add About/Contact Page

This allow your readers to understand more about who’s behind the writing. It helps increase trust worthy of a site.

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Comments

BoltClock June 25th, 2008

Thanks for the list. When I first set up my blog I did most of the above except a couple of them. But now I’ve done all.

This will definitely come in handy for newcomers to WordPress.
Reply
Mark June 25th, 2008

Thanks for the positive feedback on weblogtoolscollection.com!
Reply
keemanxp June 25th, 2008

Nice one again. Should include all-in-one-SEO-tools plugin as well i suppose.
Reply
scamboy June 26th, 2008

Thanks for the guide….

Its kinda useful….:=)
Reply
ahbing June 26th, 2008

Thank you HK, that’s very useful. :D
Reply
alisabki June 26th, 2008

i think u forgot about .htaccess. This file must be ch-mod to writable when implements the custom permalinks structure. am i right?
Reply
IndoProTech.com June 26th, 2008

And don’t forget about WP-Super-Cache too…
Reply
maverick June 27th, 2008

keke.. also add in Google Adsense to earn some money online thru bloging :P
Reply
hongkiat June 27th, 2008

@keemanxp Yes, thanks. I’ll include that in later.

@alisabki Not all the time I think. If the default permission set by server is 755 then you don’t have to. Unless it’s different, then you’ll have to add a .htaccess to make permalinks work..
Reply
hongkiat June 27th, 2008

@IndoProTech.com With someone just started a blog, I don’t think Super Cache will play any important role. Unless they are migrating from a heavy duty traffic blogger site to Wordpress :-)

@maverick After install Wordpress, so fast already wanna earn from AdSense? Haha.
Reply
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şarkı dinle June 28th, 2008

good list, thanks for sharing
Reply
PaPu June 28th, 2008

Thank you for these useful tips.:)
Reply
ThemeLib June 29th, 2008

Thank HK, very useful.

Btw, How about ALL-in-ONE SEO pack ?
Reply
mayooresan June 29th, 2008

Wow.. thanks alto nice tips!!!!
Reply
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backlinks August 17th, 2008

First of all congratulation for such a great site. I learned a lot reading article here today. I will make sure i visit this site once a day so i can learn more.
Reply
Business Budget Web Hosting October 6th, 2008

Hi,

Thanks for this, we’re setting up our blog using wordpress..

and your article really comes handy while setting up things…

Thanks

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Reply