Initial WordPress Setup

WordPress is a great CMS, and blogging platform, but there are a few things you should change or consider adding out of the box. I’ve listed a few of these things below.

Permalinks: The most commonly used, and recommended  permalink structure for SEO is http://yourdomain/category/post-title. This Can be achieved in your WordPress admin area by clicking on Settings > Premalinks then selecting the Custom Structure option and placing /%category%/%postname%/ in the area provided.

XML Site Maps are used by many search engines to help index pages on web sites. Google XML Sitemaps is a popular plugin which helps generate a site map for your blog and keep it updated. Once you have your site map created it’d be a good Idea to set up a Google Web Master Tools account and submit your XML site map. Web master tools can be used to give you good information about your site and alert you to any potential problems.

Feed Settings: Many people subscribe to their favorite blogs via feeds. You can manage your feed settings in WordPress by going to Settings > Reading.  “Syndication feeds show the most recent” lets you chose how many post to keep in your feed, most people leave this at the default of 10.  The next option is one that many people differ on, it’s the option to display a Full Text or Summery feed. The full text option will allow readers to view your entire post in what ever software they use to subscribe to you blog feed without having to click through to visit your blog, the summary option displays the first paragraph of text and requires readers to click through to your site to read the entire post. There are advantages and disadvantages for each, Full Text feeds give sploggers an easy way to steal your content. Summary feeds may discourage some users from subscribing to your blog. If you choose to use Summary feeds there is a WordPress plugin called Thumb Nails for Excerpts which allows you to add an image to your Summary feed.

Site Statics: Google Analytics is probably the best free analytical tool for keeping track of the number of visitors to your site, and useful details about them which can help you to improve your site. A good plugin for helping integrate your blog with Google Analytics is Google Analyticator.

Social Diffusion: Once you have your content written it’s a good idea to tell people about it so they can read it and hopefully tell others about it. A great plugin for WordPress that will automatically alert your Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook networks when you publish a new blog post is Socialite. It’s also a good idea to give your readers an easy way to share your content as well, for this I recommend using a social bookmarking plugin like Digg Digg, Sexy Bookmarks, or Socialble.

If you host your own WordPress blog what actions would you recommend taking after installing WordPress?

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