Now you have successfully installed WordPress, now what’s next? It’s time to login and make a few changes to give your website a good look and make it ready for your visitors. There are some important things need to setup soon after the installation. For example: switching to a SEO friendly permalink structure, adding your time zone, choosing a date format, filling out the empty sidebars with useful widgets etc. This tutorial covers some basic options you should setup soon after installing WordPress.
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Login To WordPress[/heading]
Likewise we have already discussed here, you get an email with your login details soon after the installation process completes. You can login by typing your domain address (yourdomain.com) followed by /wp-admin (For example: yourdomain.com/wp-admin).
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Edit/Delete Sample Page, Post & Comment[/heading]
First thing you need to do after installing WordPress is visit its admin area and delete sample post and page published automatically by WordPress.
Visit Dashboard -> Posts ->All Posts page and you will be noticing a post titled ‘Hello World!’ delete it then visit Dashboard -> Pages -> All Pages and delete the ‘Sample Page’.
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Edit Default Category[/heading]
WordPress also adds a category with name ‘Uncategorised’ you can edit it from Dashboard -> Posts -> Categories page. Also you can add more categories or simply do that while writing new posts.
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Activate Akismet, It Protects You From WordPress Spams[/heading]
Akismet is a plugin which comes installed with WordPress. It intelligently works and automatically tracks spam comments, trackbacks and pinbacks.
Visit your admin area Dashboard ->Plugins -> Installed Plugins page and activate Akismet. As soon the plugin is activated, it shows a box with button ‘Activate your Akismet account‘, click the button and follow the steps.
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Your Website Name & Tagline[/heading]
Your website name and tagline are set from Dashboard -> Settings -> General page
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Set Your Time Zone & Date Format[/heading]
Another important thing to set up on Dashboard -> Settings -> General page is timezone and date format:
[heading size=”17″ margin=”10″]Choose A Permalink Structure[/heading]
Permalinks are the URL structures, the slugs which shows up on browser’s address bar. By default WordPress uses numeric permalinks which is not good for SEO. So change the default permalink structure from Dashboard -> Settings -> Permalinks Page.