WordPress is an open source and so far the best blogging tool, but with correct settings, you are already one step ahead to make your first blog or website FANTASTIC ! If you don’t know how to Install WordPress Automatically using Cpanel read my guide with video tutorial.

What to do after Installing WordPress

However, if you are already done with the WordPress Installation, then you might be confused what settings to do and how to give your blog a good professional kick start. Don’t be in rush, if your base is not strong then how you will build a better blog.

This article is covered in a Series of articles called “WordPress Beginner Guides” – A perfect guide for all newbie bloggers to help starting their professional blogging careers or just as passion.

Essential Settings after Fresh WordPress Installation

Table of Contents

1.1 Change your Login Credentials

1.2 Delete the Sample Post and Comment

1.3 Changing the Permalink Structure

1.4 General Settings

1.5 Update your Ping List

1.6 Make RSS Feeds as Summary

1.7 Comment Blacklist Words

1.8 Changing Avatar to Gravatar

1.9 Rename Default Category

1.10  Decide your Preferred Site Version – WWW vs Non WWW

1.11 Update your Contact and About us Page

1.1 Change your Login Credentials

If you have installed WordPress using the web tool like fantastico deluxe, softaculous or simple scripts, the first most important thing is to change your WordPress Login credentials. Though WordPress is very safe and secure but an easier username like admin or your own name is simple for hackers and some people even uses the worst passwords like their mobile numbers or QWERTYUIOP or even the worst 1234567890 combinations. You are not alone in this world, and hackers are always looking for sql injections or other approaches to steal your blog data.

1.2 Delete the Sample Post and Comment

This step is not mandatory, but you can either remove the sample post and comment or simply edit it to write your first blog article.

1.3 Changing the Permalink Structure

This is very important. A permalink represents a URL address what it looks like. Always go for a user friendly URL structure that is both machine readable as well as reader friendly.
For example :-

http://www.webliska.com/essentail-wordpress-settings-after-fresh-wordpress-installation

is always better than a URL structure like this

http://www.webliska.com/11343/php?id=534052/blogosd.html

How to Change Permalink Structure in WordPress

Go to this path : Settings > Permalinks and you will see a screen like this :-

Change WordPress Permalink

Just choose the “Best Permalink Structure” and you are done to get pretty URL structure like we have in our site.

1.4 General Settings

This section includes several settings Tab like General, Reading and Writing but they are user friendly and even a layman can understand them just by reading it.Go change your website title and tagline, your time zone and your email settings.

1.5 Update your Ping List

Now this is a little bit handy and important. This is a nice way to ping the major traffic sources that your site or content is updated so that search engines like Google or Yahoo or Bing can send some traffic on your pages related to your article keywords.

To update your ping list, go to this path : Settings > Writing  and look for the section Update Services as shown below :-

WordPress Ping List

Copy all these listings and paste as shown above in the image.

http://bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx 
http://blog.with2.net/ping.php 
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://news2paper.com/ping 
http://ping.bitacoras.com/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/ 
http://ping.fc2.com 
http://ping.pubsub.com/ping
http://ping.rss.drecom.jp 
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php 
http://ping.wordblog.de 
http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/ 
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ 
http://rpc.twingly.com/ 
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx 
http://wasalive.com/ping/ 
http://xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php 
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/ 
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com 
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php 
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

1.6 Make RSS Feeds as Summary

There are a lot of content scrapper sites that finds your RSS feeds and use automatic robots to copy your entire posts to make duplicate copies of your articles. My changing this simple settings, those bots will not be able to benefit from your article as this small action will only allow them to get an excerpt of the copy of your article which also includes a link back to your original article.

Go to this Path : Settings > Readings  and find option as shown below :-

RSS Feeds Summary

1.7 Comment Blacklist Words

Internet is full of people who promotes their businesses illegally or by black hat SEO means like bad link building techniques. You might not want your blog with full of porn and sex comments. Therefore its better to make a comment words blacklist to avoid those types of comments.

1.8Changing Avatar to Gravatar

Every reader likes to see who is the author of this article. If you are a blogger, chances are many people and authors wants to connect with you. Also, its a good chance for you as well to gain popularity and start building a network from day one to connect with other bloggers around the world and let people know you.

1.9 Rename Default Category

The default category is named as “uncategorized”. Sounds ugly, right !! then you should change it to your site’s main category.

1.10  Decide your Preferred Site Version – WWW vs Non WWW

This has a lot to do with SEO. Search engines like Google counts the two versions of a site totally different. If you don’t decide to choose the www or non www version of your site, then you are encouraging Google to flag your site as duplicate links as well as you are also passing the page rank juice to both versions. People who wants to link to your site will also have problems on which version to link.
In simple words, just choose one entry point for your site. For example,

http://www.webliska.com and http://webliska.com  must be pointed to only either of the version and if you open any of the version of your webpage, only one entry point should be there.

Here’s how to do : Choosing the www or non www version of your website {Guide}

1.11 Update your Contact and About us Page

When bloggers or readers finds some interesting article, they want to know what this website offers and who is the author/webmaster and they are usually curious reading the about us and contact page. Moreover, its always important to add a way to let people contact you for tips, suggestions, legal things, advertising needs, supports or other types of inquiries.