11 Essential Things to Do After Creating a WordPress Blog (2024)

This is part of the “Learn WordPress” series. This guide will teach you how to correctly set up a WordPress after a fresh install.

Now you just need to set up your WordPress blog correctly.

What to do after installing WordPress (essentials).

When you install WordPress, you get a default installation that includes a few mock posts, pages, and comments.

So, The first thing to do…

1. Delete the default posts, pages, and comments.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, then access Posts > All Posts. Remove the default “Hello world” post.

Similarly, go to Pages > All Pages and delete the default “Sample Page”.

Finally, click on “Comments” to delete the default comment.

2. Set Your Timezone.

The next two options are located under Settings > General.

Make sure to change your timezone to your local time so that when you schedule posts, they go live at your specified time.

Also, take note of:

When you installed WordPress, you provided a “Site Title” and a “Tagline”. You may modify those at any moment from this settings page. These two factors are critical since they determine what appears in Google Search.

This settings page also allows you to specify your admin email address, which will handle any administrative contact.

3. Enable/Disable User Registration

You must choose whether to create a multi-author blog (such as BloggingInsight) or to be a sole author.

If you accept guest posting (as SML does), be prepared to receive a lot of spam registrations. However, you can correct this with the aid of a plugin.

To allow this, check the “Anyone can register” box and set the “New User Default Role” to “Contributor”.

If you do not want others to register, do not select the “Anyone can register” option.

4. Set WordPress Discussion/Comments Settings

Now, click on Settings > Discussion.

If you are confused about what to do, this can be confusing. But simply follow the screenshot above, and you’ll be fine.

5. Populate WordPress Ping List.

WordPress defaults to pinging only one service. However, you can provide many more services by expanding the ping list.

Go to Settings > Writing and add additional services to the ping list.

6. WordPress Media Settings.

This setting will greatly improve how WordPress handles photos.

By default, WordPress generates different sizes for each submitted picture. This is not an acceptable practice. This will add insufficient files to your blog, allowing it to become bloated soon.

Navigate to Settings > Media and use the screenshot below to configure the appropriate settings:

I would also highly recommend that you install the ShortPixel plugin, which compresses photos as they are submitted.

7. Configure Google Tag Manager.

In the days to come, you will be installing a variety of scripts, including Google Analytics, Facebook pixels, and others. Google Tag Manager now allows you to easily manage all of these scripts (also known as tags) from a single dashboard.

This simplifies site management and eliminates the need to update the theme to add scripts in the future. Everything will be done through the GTM dashboard.

8. Add Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free Google application that provides detailed information about your WordPress site’s traffic. This will take 10-15 minutes to set up, but it is one of the most important steps everyone should take after installing WordPress.

9. Add the Caching Plugin.

A caching plugin helps to improve the load time of your WordPress site. Without a cache plugin, every time a visitor sees your page, your server must access the database to complete the request.

A caching plugin reduces server load by storing repeated files in the cache.

Here are the top caching plugins for WordPress:

• WordPress Rocket (Paid)
• WordPress Super Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• Litespeed cache (If you are using the Litespeed web server)

10. Disable directory browsing.

To change this setting, you must edit your WordPress.htaccess file. Don’t worry; it’s fairly simple.

Follow this guide to learn how to edit your WordPress.htaccess file.

Add the following line of code to your. htaccess file (at the bottom):

Options All – Indexes

This will prevent directory browsing, which is an essential step in preserving the security of your WordPress site.

11. Set Up WordPress Permalinks

The default WordPress permalink is http://yourdomain.com/p=123.

Although this permalink is short, it is not search engine friendly.

Go to Settings > Permalinks and choose “Post name”.

Click “Save”.

When your URLs appear in search engines, some of the keywords will become visible. This will help you rank higher and increase traffic.

11 essential settings after installing WordPress

1. Delete defaults.
2. Set the time zone.
3. Set user registration.
4. Thread comments.
5. Populate WordPress ping list.
6. Set WordPress media settings.
7. Setup Google tag manager
8. Add Google analytics
9. Add Caching to WordPress
10. Disable directory browsing.
11. Set up WordPress permalink structure.

If you’ve just installed WordPress, ensure sure these 8 essential settings are correctly configured. When installing WordPress, make sure to complete these ten steps before proceeding. I recommend bookmarking this document so you may refer to it whenever you install WordPress.

• Learn How To Start A Blog in 2024.

Important Things To Do After Initial WordPress Setup

After you’ve finished installing WordPress, you may begin installing plugins.

Here are some essential plugins:

• Install and set up Yoast SEO.
• Install and set up W3 Total Cache.

How many of these essential WordPress settings did you know about? What other settings do you recommend for all WordPress users? Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Don’t forget to share this post!

FAQ about WordPress Essential Settings.