image
  • 24th Nov 2016

WordPress Blog - Initial Setup for Blog

  • Total View :2546
  • Posted By-Biswajit Swain

There are a few things that weneed to do before seeting a wordpress blog.
 
1. Decide which version of webpage to offer (www?)
 
If you have browsed around the web, you would have seen two types of websites.Some will have www. in the beginning and other websites will be served directly from the root domain. A domain name without any subdomains is called a root domain. There is no rule or standards for this. 
 
You can control this in your WordPress settings.
 
In the options above you can choose the www. version or the non www. one.
If you choose the www. version as shown in the figure about, your naked domain will automatically redirect to the www. version if someone types it on the browser’s address bar.
 
There is really no difference between the two. You can choose one and stick to it. When it comes to SEO make sure that you link to only one of the domain names.
 
If your site is at www.site.com , always link to that version. If you build backlinks to site.com directly, that may not be good for SEO.
 
2. Set up Your Permalinks Structure
 
Permalinks are very important for SEO. By default the permalink structure in WordPress is not optimized for SEO. Inside WordPress settings, you will find an option for Permalinks. Go inside that option and select post name as shown below:
 
 
This is important for SEO because if someone is searching for wordpress blog setup tutorial and your site has a page on it, then when someone searches about it on Google, these words will be highlighted.
 
See the image below, see that the words in the URL are highlighted. This helps you in SEO. This is for the search keyword: “WordPress blog setup”
 
 
So permalinks are one of the most important things for wordpress. You can also choose to include the date in the URL. But once you set this up, you should never change it for the life of your blog. It needs to maintain its URL structure for good user experience and SEO.
 
3. Install a Suitable Theme
 
Your default wordpress theme is a bland vanilla type theme which is not attractive. Now it is time to bring a unique style to your wordpress blog. You need to find a suitable theme for your blog.
 
Right now, I do not recommend going for a paid / premium theme. Just go ahead and select a free theme and that should be enough to make your blog unique.
 
To install a free theme, go into Appearance -> Themes and click on Add New.
 
Inside, you can see featured and popular themes available. You can install a theme with just a few clicks.
 
If you got a free theme from somewhere else (or a pirated copy of a paid theme!) you can install it by clicking on the ‘Upload Theme’.
 
No need to go into file manager of your web hosting to upload themes, plugins or media files.
 
Everything can be done from this login.
 
4. Publish Your First Post and First Page
 
There is no life to your website unless there is some content. So it is time to create your first post and the first page. Since your permalink structure is already set-up properly you will notice that while you are publishing your first page or post, the URL looks good.
 
 
The procedure for publishing your first page is similar.
 
5. Experiment with the options inside WordPress
 
There are a lot of things to tinker around inside the wordpress login. Experiment with User profiles, Reading and Discussion settings etc. Develop a curiosity of what each button does and learn by doing.
 

 

  • Share:

Leave a Comment