Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

After WP installation you need to start your site or blog for some point, here are the essential things to do after creating a WordPress site

By Claudio Pires
Updated on October 6, 2022
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

When you install WordPress you need to start your site or blog for some point, here are the essential things to do after creating a WordPress site guide When you install WordPress, you get a stock installation with a few things like a dummy post, a dummy page, and a dummy comment So the first thing to do on your WordPress site is:

Essential Things To Do on WordPress Site #1

Delete Default Post, Page, and Comment

delete-default-WordPress-post or pages
delete-default-WordPress-post or pages

Log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to Posts > All Posts and delete the default “Hello world” post.

Similarly, go to Pages > All Pages and delete the default “Sample Page”.

And finally, click on “Comments” and delete the default comment.

Essential Things To Do on WordPress Site #2

Set Up WordPress Permalinks

Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

The default WordPress permalink is – http://yourdomain.com/p=123.

This permalink is short, but not friendly for search engines.

Go to Settings > Permalink and select “Post name”.

Finally, Click “Save”.

Now, when your URLs appear in search engines, some of the keywords will be visible. Moreover, this will help you rank higher and get more traffic.

Here is an example from SML:

SEO friendly permalink
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

Essential Things To Do on WordPress Site #3

Set Your Timezone

Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

The next two settings are found in Settings > General.

Make sure to set your timezone to your local time so that when you schedule posts, they will go live according to your time.

Also note:

When you installed WordPress, you added a “Site Title” & “Tagline”. You can change those anytime from this settings page. So, these two things are very important because this is what shows up in Google Search.

You can also set your admin email address (where you’ll receive all admin correspondence) from this settings page.

Essential Things To Do on WordPress Site #4

Enable/Disable User Registration

Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

You need to decide if you are going to have a multi-author blog (like Visualmodo), or if you are going to be the sole author.

If you are going to allow guest posting (like SML does). So, be prepared to get a lot of spam registrations. In addition, you can fix that with the help of a plugin.

To allow this, tick off the “Anyone can register” box, and set the “New User Default Role”as “Contributor”.

If you don’t want people to register, don’t tick the “Anyone can register” box.

Part #5

Set WordPress Discussion/Comments Settings

Discussion settings
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

Now, go to Settings > Discussion.

This can get confusing if you don’t know what to do here. But just follow the above screenshot and you’ll be good.

Part #6

Populate WordPress Ping List

Populate Ping List
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

By default, WordPress only pings one service. But you can notify many more services by extending the ping list.

Go to Settings > Writing and add more services to the ping list.

You can get a big ping list over here: WordPress ping list.

Part #7

WordPress Media Settings

This setting will greatly improve the way WordPress handles images.

By default, WordPress creates multiple sizes for every uploaded image. So, this is not a good practice. This will load up your blog with unnecessary files and your blog will quickly become bloated.

Go to Settings > Media, and use the below screenshot to configure the proper settings:

Media settings dashboard
Essential Things To Do After Creating A WordPress Site

I would also highly recommend that you add a plugin that compresses images as they’re uploaded.

You can read all about WordPress image compression plugins here.

Essential Things To Do on WordPress Site #8

Disable Directory Browsing

For this setting, you will need to edit your WordPress .htaccess file. Don’t panic; it’s actually pretty easy.

  • You can follow this guide to learn about editing your WordPress .htaccess file.

Add this line of code to your .htaccess file (at the bottom):

Options All -Indexes

This will disable directory browsing which is a very important step for maintaining the security of your blog.

Quick Recap

  1. Firstly, Delete defaults.
  2. Secondly, Set up WordPress permalink structure.
  3. Set time zone.
  4. Set user registration.
  5. Thread comments.
  6. Populate the WordPress ping list.
  7. Set WordPress media settings.
  8. Finally, Disable directory browsing.

If you just installed WordPress, make sure that these 8 essential settings are properly configured. Anytime you install WordPress, you should make sure to do these 8 things before doing anything else. I’d recommend you bookmark this post so you can refer back every time you make a WordPress installation.

Important Things To Do After Installing WordPress

You can see more plugins and important things to do in our blog under https://visualmodo.com/blog/

And don’t forget to share this post!

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.