When you have successfully installed WordPress and now the question arises what are the things that you have to do after installing WordPress that will turn your blank website into a finished website that will be ready to receive users. Millions of people are using WordPress websites due to their special features. You need to do so some essential settings after installing WordPress that help you to set up a strong backup policy to keep your site safe.
Pro Tip: You can also read our step by step guide on How To Find Theme Of Any WordPress Website & How To Speed WordPress Website
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Essential Checklist to do After Installing WordPress
You have taken the first step towards building your website and now you need to take more steps to grow your website. You have WordPress CMS which is most used worldwide due to its popularity and ease to use. So you need to complete the most essential 14 steps just after installing WordPress whether you are creating your own website or for a client website.
Add a Contact Form
Every website on the internet used a contact form which helps the users to contact the website owner just by filling the contact form. You need to add a contact form to your website because WordPress does not have a built-in contact form. There is two best option available one is by using plugin and other is simply create a contact page and there you can provide your email address. There are various plugins available to create a contact form like Contact Form 7, WPForm, Formidable Forms, & Ninja Forms. You can read our step-by-step guide to install WordPress Plugin to add a contact form to your website.
Change Site Title, Tagline, and Time Zone
Now you have to change the site title, tagline, and timezone settings. Simply head over to Settings and then click on General, and change the required settings.
Setup WordPress SEO
SEO stands for standard engine optimization and it is used by website owners to get more traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. So after installing WordPress, first set up SEO for the website. You can use the Yoast SEO & All in One SEO plugin which is the most convenient and can easily set up the most important part of SEO.
Install Google Analytics
When you are going to start your website, you must know that what your audience is looking for and how do you help them to find your website. You can use these details from your analytics account to make a better decision to grow your website traffic which leads to boost your business. That is why there is a need for Google Analytics, which shows how many people visit, from where, and what they are doing on your website. Definitely, these details will help you to analyze the performance of your website. You can easily install Google Analytics by using MonsterInsights as it is one of the best analytics for WordPress websites that gives you a clear picture of your traffic.
Setup WordPress Security
WordPress is itself secure enough but you should know some security practices to keep your website safe. Setup your website with a strong password, change the WordPress login URL, installing updates frequently, and many more. For other settings, you need to install the All In One WP Security & Firewall plugin. It reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques.
Setup Spam Protection
Spam comments are problematic as it contains some links to unknown websites for malware. It can also affect your rankings and website reputation. You can just enable comment moderation in WordPress to prevent any comment from appearing without your approval. You can also use the Akismet Spam Protection plugin which is an anti-spam plugin to combat spam.
Setup WordPress Comments
A comment is an important part of any website and it plays an important role in the blog post. They are the indicator for traffic and helps to build a community around your blog. Simply go to the Settings and then the Discussion page to set up comments. From there you can enable or disable comments, set up comment notification, and enable comment moderation.
Delete Default Content
WordPress has a unique feature of showing some default items to be used as placeholder items. Simply go to Post> All post and then deletes any unwanted posts. Same you can do with the pages, go to Pages>All Pages and then delete the sample Page. Then at the end, visit the comment page and delete all default comments.
Setup a Default Category
It is necessary to file WordPress posts to be filed under at least one category. By default, WordPress uses the uncategorized category as the default category. If you don’t change the category while writing the blog post, it will automatically be filed under the default category. To change the default category, first, you need to visit post – Categories page to create a new category. This will be used as your new default category. After that go to the settings – writing page. You will see here the default category option and now you can go ahead and select the new category you have created earlier. Finally, now you can go to post – categories page and delete the uncategorized category.
Setup Homepage and Blog pages
WordPress by default shows your post on the homepage. When you are making a small business website, then you would want to use a static page as your homepage. Many blogs used static pages as their homepage. This allows them custom layouts for their homepage. For setting up these pages, simply you can go to the Settings – Reading page and select the page you want to use as your front page and blog page.
Upload Your Gravatar
WordPress uses Gravatar to display or show user photos in author bios and also in WordPress comments. Gravatar is mainly a profile image hosting service that allows you to use the same photo as their profile image across millions of websites. Simply go to the Gravatar website and create an account using the email address you have used in your WordPress account and later on you can also use this email address to comment on millions of websites using Gravatar including your website.
Upload Favicon and Site Icon
Favicon or site is the small image that appears next to your website title in the browser. It helps for the identification of users for your website and increases brand recognition among your most frequent visitors. Firstly, you need to create an image of 512 × 512 pixels dimension and then saved it in jpeg, png, or gif format. Then you need to visit appearance – customize and click on the site identity tab. Under the ‘Site icon’ section click on the File button to upload your favicon.
>Change WordPress Email Address
So many peoples add their email addresses while installing WordPress. This means their first user profile and their email address are the same. To change this, you can go to the Settings – General page and enter the new email address you would like to use for the website. You have to ensure that the mentioned email address is active and WordPress will send a mail to your mentioned mail address.
Setup Your WordPress Theme
It is one of the important steps for your website. So many WordPress themes come with different features and customization options. Some basic settings are the same in all WordPress themes. Let’s start with setting up navigation menus and it contains links to different areas of your website. Now you have to add widgets to your WordPress. You can also rearrange it or add other widgets. You can also include other options like color choices, layout choices, header style, and many more.
I think you have got a clear picture of the necessary things you need to do after a fresh installation of WordPress. So keep in mind the above listed 14 checklists while creating a new WordPress website for anyone.
Pro Tip: You can also read our step by step guide on How To Export Email From WordPress Comment & How To Solve Destination Folder Already Exists In WordPress
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ)
The important part of installing WordPress is making sure your hosting is sorted
With the advancement of technology, it is still worth learning WordPress and in upcoming years as well.
1. Preview themes without activating them
2. Edit images in WordPress
3. Split the single post into multiple pages
4. Markdown and keyboard shortcuts help you write faster.