Must-Have Initial Setup for Your New WordPress Blog

These are the must have initial setup you should do on your new WordPress blog.

In my yesterday’s post, I wrote about how you can install WordPress on any hosting. I mentioned that even if you come from a non-technical background, you don’t need to hire someone just to install WordPress; you can do it yourself.

Since yesterday when the post reached to my thousands of people, two of them reached out to me seeking help about starting their blog. Both of them are content writers and now want to start a blog.

They had tried to hire someone to make their blog live. They said that the developer is asking 10000-15000 for just setting up their blog. As they are beginners and will be paying that amount from their salary, they reached out to me.

I guided them that they do not need to pay anything to anyone, and they will start their blog on their own with zero cost involved other than domain and hosting.

I felt very happy after helping them. Finally after starting my content journey this new year, I am able to help a few people do something new and grow in their careers. It is very fulfilling to me.

Now coming to today’s post, once you have successfully installed WordPress on your web hosting and your website is live. Now try login into your WordPress dashboard. When you are successfully logged in, there are a few initial setups that need to be done before you start customizing the design of your site.

Check for WordPress Core Updates: Sometimes, hosting companies install an outdated version of WordPress, so when you are logged in, check for WordPress core updates.

Trash the Sample Posts, Pages, and Comments: A new WordPress install comes with a couple of sample posts, a few pages, and some demo comments. Go to the posts section to trash those demo posts; similarly, go to the pages and comments section to trash them.

Delete Pre-installed Plugins: A new WordPress install comes with a few pre-installed plugins. Not all of them are necessary, so delete these pre-installed plugins.

Change Settings: There are a few settings that you need to change on a new WordPress install.

General Settings: Go to General Settings in your dashboard and change Site Title, Tagline, Timezone, Date format, Time format, and Week Starts on settings.

Reading Settings: Under reading settings, ensure the box next to search engine visibility is not checked. If it is, search engines will not index your site.

Permalink Settings: Most important setting you should change is permalink settings. By default, it is set as custom structure which is terrible from an SEO point of view. So, go to Permalink settings and change it to post name.

Install a Security Plugin: WordPress sites are vulnerable to hacks, so it becomes mandatory to install a security plugin. There are several such plugins available in the WordPress repository. I personally use Wordfence; you can also go with it.

That’s it; these are a few initial setups that need to be done on a fresh WordPress installation.

That’s all in this post.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!