Little tweaks with a big impact, first and foremost, are Page Design Hub. Those little annoying tweaks that are left undone now can have repercussions later. These are presented in no particular order since I ensure all are done before installing plugins or posting.

things

  1. Update Your User Profile: I say this one is first because some of the other steps below will require you to log back in, and who can remember that crazy randomly generated bit of garbage they call a password? Dashboard | Users | Your Profile Change the password to something you stand a chance of remembering before doing anything else. Then, when you get kicked off (and you will need some of these settings), you can get back in without referring to the email they sent you.
  2. Change Your Blog Tagline: Yes, it is true. If you leave it as WordPress creates it, you are branded as a noobie from the word *go*. By default, WordPress inserts *Just another WordPress Blog* as the tagline. Change it. You should be stating your purpose, provoking thought, and asking anything but *Just another WordPress Blog*. Dashboard | Settings | General Be creative; this is one of the first things your visitors see.
  3. Permalink Structure: Right out of the box, WordPress will display a link structure like this for your posts: YourDomain.com/?p=101, which means absolutely nothing to you, your visitors, or Google. Could you get rid of it? Dashboard | Settings | Permalinks There are five different options there, and while this post isn’t about the best SEO practice, I will mention that using either Day and Name or Month and Name does nothing for you from an SEO standpoint. I hope I don’t have to say that the Numeric option doesn’t either. I use a custom structure that benefits me from the category name (as a part of the URL) and the Post Name. It looks like this: /%category%/%postname%/
  4. Decide on WWW or not: Again, by default, WordPress includes your blog’s domain name here. If you plan to give out your link as MyDomain.com, you should change it now on your blog. Since this affects your tracking analytics, it’s best to do it upfront. Dashboard | Settings | General Please note that doing this will log you out and log back in with your handy new password.
  5. Discussion Settings: Boy, we could write a whole book on this topic, but let me just hit the highlights. You want folks to comment on your blog. You don’t want the pill pushers and porn queens to have the run of the place. I set up comment moderation with three or more links (I use CommenLuv, which inserts one link; their web URL is the second link, so three would be if they included a link to their comment. If you don’t plan to use CommentLuv, change this to 2). You can also have a list of words *iffy* in the box below this setting. Any comment with that word would *trigger* moderation. (Moderation holds the comments until you stop by and approve or trash the comments). The Comment Blocklist box is where I spend my time. I include a list of words that I don’t want on my site, such as Viagra, penis, enlarge, and the names of several popular drugs. I have nothing against the 60-something-year-old man who wants to improve performance; my site is not the place to promote that. I also include words of a sexual nature, including rape, porn, xxx, sex, virgin, lesbian, gay, etc. Trust me, this helps.
  6. Activate (Turn On) Akismet: This often overlooked step can mean the difference between 384 spam messages a day or not. Akismet is one of the very best *anti-spam* plugins and comes preinstalled with WordPress.Use it. One note, though: WordPress requires an API key, something you can only get by registering on the WordPress.com site (profile only, no blogs required). Once you register, they will send an email with your API key. Insert that in the appropriate place in your Dashboard.
  7. Turn Off Post Revisions: Post revisions are a great idea that WordPress takes to an extreme (in my mind, you might disagree). The basic premise is this. Every X seconds, WordPress will create a backup of your post. Great, right? Here’s the rub. Each *revision* it saves creates a new record in your database (making it bigger), and WordPress has the annoying habit of displaying a complete list of every revision you ever made when you go in to edit a post. If you are like me and blog via a Desktop Client, you already have a post backup. So, to turn off this annoying feature, open your wp-config.php file in Notepad or something similar and add this line somewhere near the other definition you find there. define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);
  8. Setup Categories: At least one. You don’t have to know the entire category structure, but it is helpful to have at least an idea of the categories you will use most often. Once you have created your most often used category, change the default category to this. Dashboard | Settings | Writing Change the default post category to your newly created category. While you are on this page, here’s a Bonus Tweak: Change the Size of the post box from 10 to 20. By default, WordPress will create the “post body” box to be ten rows high. I don’t know about you, but this feels a little crowded to me.
  9. Setup Ping Services: This one isn’t strictly a *do-it-before-you-do-anything-else* kind of tweak but will go a long way to getting you that coveted traffic. By default, WordPress added one ping server to the list of possible servers you can use. (Just one?) So, I went out and found some of the best servers. I just copied the list into the area for other update services. Rather than include them all within the body of this post, I am attaching a text file you can download and copy from. Dashboard | Settings | Writing Copy the list (or select the ones you want) from the List of Ping Servers that can be found on my blog
  10. Install Google XML Sitemaps Google XML Sitemaps generates a compliant XML-Sitemap for your site, allowing the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN) to index your site easily. Every time you edit or add a post, the sitemap will modify itself unless you tell it differently (see below). This part is optional but highly recommended! Go to Google Webmaster Central and log in with your Google Account (you have a Google Account, right?). On the first page, there will be a link to “Verify” your site. Follow the instructions there. Once that’s done, you can then click the *Add Sitemap* link from the first page and put in the URL to your sitemap, which will be something like this (non-working) link: YouDomain.com/sitemap.xml.

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