What To Do After Installing WordPress

After Installing WordPress this is what you Should do:

0. Turn Off WordPress Image Thumbnails

When you upload an image to WordPress, it creates two additional thumbnail images in the uploads directory.

You can disable the creation of thumbnail images by uploading your images directly to the server via an FTP program like Filezilla. WordPress won’t create thumbnails anymore.

1. Install GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin

A simple, light weight (doesn’t slow your site like many others),This plugin reduces spam volume by 99%. The Majority of spam comments comes from “bots” which are nothing more than a piece of computer software. They generate 95 to 98% of the spam.This GrowMap Anti-Spambot plugin stops bots in their tracks!

Coded by the Andy Bailey from CommentLuv. GASP works by requiring those that wish to leave a comment, to check a checkbox before submitting the comment.

Akismet has major problems.

  • First, it lets a ton of bot-spam through that fills up your spam folder.
  • Second it puts some of the very highest quality commentators comments into that same spam folder.

What ends up happening is that you either waste a ton of time moderating what ends up in spam or deleting it all – the real comments along with the spam.

As soon as your comments end up being deleted regularly by Akismet, your regular commentators stop reading your blog because you deleted their comments, or you have to spend hours on end slogging through the spam folder to rescue them. you now Know why GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin is far better than Akismet for everyone.

2. Install Google XML Sitemap Plugin.

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog.

If you using Google XML Sitemaps plugin in WordPress, try changing the building mode to “manual.”

When you publish or delete a blog post, the entire XML sitemap is recreated from scratch and may increase the overall time it takes to publish a post and you will have to wait until the creation process is over.

3. Edit The Permalink Structure For Your Posts And Pages

By default, the URL of your posts will be something like www.example.com/?p=23, where 23 is the unique ID of the article. This is not at all an seo optimized permalink structure and you should change it to a more seo friendly.

There are different opinions about choosing an seo optimized permalink structure but my advise would be to choose /%postname%/. Thou is not recommended for performance reasons.

To change the permalink structure of your WordPress blog, log in to your WordPress Admin Panel area and

  1. Go to Settings > Permalinks
  2. Under Common settings choose Custom Structure
  3. Enter /%postname%/ in the field
  4. Or if you prefer to have the category in the url as well, enter /%category%/%postname%/

4. Install An Automatic Database Backup Plugin

The database stores all the settings and data about your WordPress installation, If it something ever happens to your database like, deleted from the server or it becomes corrupt and unusable, you will lose all the posts, pages, comments, settings and everything.

It is really important to make backups of your database and save a local copy of the SQL file on your computer. Just in case something goes wrong, you can use the database backup file and migrate to a separate hosting provider.

This plugin will continue to work in the background and will email you the database backup as an attachment, every single day if you like.

5. Change The Media Uploads Directory.

By default, WordPress stores all the files and images in the WP-content/uploads/ folder. However, you can upload all the media files to a subdomain or to a custom directory of your choice.

To do this, login to your WordPress admin Panel and go to Settings > Media

Enter a custom directory or subdomain in the text field “Store uploads in this folder” and Uncheck the box “Organize my uploads into month and year based folders”

Advantages: Your image URLs become shorter and the size of your WordPress folder will always remain small.

6. Create A Contact Us Page On Your Website

A contact us page is a necessity for every website, however large or small it might be. In fact, this is the only way readers, customers, advetisers or visitors of your site may contact you, in case they need your help or want to inform you something.

7. Choose A Clean WordPress Theme

Great WordPress themes are available in Themeforest. Browse through this directory and find a good themes. Don’t use the default themes that comes bundled with WordPress. You want your blog to stand out from the crowd.

8. Create a mobile friendly WordPress blog

Every other user is now viewing your website from their smart phone. It is essential that you create a mobile friendly version of your WordPress site.

If you like this article, you might be interested in some of My other articles on WordPress.

9. Get yourself a Gravatar.

A avatar image, that can help you promote your brand across the Web.

10. Disable Post Revisions.

Every time you save a new post or pages, WordPress creates a revision of that post or page. If you edit a post 6 times you might have 5 copy of that post as revisions.

To clear some space from your database and  permanently disable post revision creation from your blog then follow below steps:

  1. Go to your FTP
  2. Go in to your WordPress Blogs root directory
  3. Then Look for file wp-config.php
  4. Download it to local computer
  5. Open it with notepad or wordpad.
  6. Now add below command to your ‘wp-config.php’ file.
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

7. Upload again via FTP, So it will permanently disable post revision from your blog.

If you feel that you are not a qualified to configure the wp-config.php then download the WP-Optimize Plugin. and one in a while do a cleanup

Miguel

I started this tech blog back in 2011 as a place to write down processes I took to fix my client systems and network. Now I write some tips and tricks to help others with the tech issues that one might encounter.

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