In WordPress settings, there are absolute essentials you need to do after installing WordPress. These WordPress settings are very crucial as they determine the functionality of your WordPress website. Therefore, perform this exercise with due diligence. You can profoundly enhance your WordPress website with the help of it. Installing WordPress
Now, let’s go straight to the central business here. What are these 17 essentials you should install in your WordPress setting?
1. Set up your website title & tagline:
Your website’s title and tagline are very significant elements as they are the first section your web viewers will see. Therefore, it is highly recommended to optimize your web title and tagline in your WordPress setting to give an excellent impression to your website visitors. It will put your website best foot forward and give your site a competitive advantage in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
To set up your WordPress site title and tagline follow the following simple steps as recommended. Head to your WordPress dashboard > Setting > General setting. Change your site identities, i.e. Title and tagline. Lastly, click publish to save your changes.
2. Set WordPress and Site Address URLs for Your Website:
In case you are using WordPress from a different directorate other than your website root (such as WordPress in a bog directorate), you will be required to let WordPress know that. Well, how is that possible? You need to modify these two options in WordPress settings.
Go to Settings >General
A page similar to this page will be displayed.
Add a www prefix and click on save button. WordPress will automatically log you out and force you to log in again. Now you will be able to log in using the www prefix.
Ideally, you can use www prefix with your website domain.
Now, on to the next essential in WordPress settings.
3. Remove Dummy Content:
I bet you will agree with me on this. Damn sure. After installing your WordPress, you will see dummy page (sample page) a dummy post like (Hello World!) and dummy comments. These are demo content that does not bear any significance to your website visitors. It’s therefore highly recommended to get rid of such non-essential material in your WordPress settings.
To remove the dummy post in your WordPress settings, Navigate to ‘Post’ and hover to the dummy post (Hello World!). So, click on the trash link. And, make surely to delete the post permanently through the trash box.
For the dummy page, go to pages and hover to the dummy page. Again click the trash link in it. Repeat the above step you used to delete the dummy page permanently.
Congratulation for your success in this.
4. Configure your WordPress Permalink Structure:
Permalinks are essential elements in WordPress settings as search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing uses them to index your site. Besides, webpage visitors use these permanent static URLs to visit your website.
By default, WordPress uses a permalink structure that looks like – http://yourwebsite.com/?p=127
The numeric you see is the in the permalink is the ID WordPress chose, which means the article is on number 127 of your website database. As you can see, it’s ugly and unprofessionally looking; it’s not SEO friendly neither.
Now let’s turn those ugly looking permalinks to pretty permalinks. Everyone loves beauty.
Go to Settings >> Permalink
Several structures will be displayed. Select the fabric that suits your website the most. You can build a structure of your own if the provided ones do not impress you. But there is one thing that is highly recommended, make sure you include post name for better SEO results.
5. Configure Reading structure.
In case you have a high appeal to use a static page as your front page for your website, or maybe you want to increase or decrease posts per page, you will agree with me that reading structure configuration is very paramount in your WordPress settings.
The reading structure determines how your website display will be to the most crucial asset of your website-your web visitors. You MUST create a good impression of your website to your most valuable asset. Here is how to go about it.
Go to Settings >> Reading
To set a static page as your WordPress home page (front page), select the static page option followed by your most preferred page from the list of your pages.
In case you haven’t created any page yet, navigate through to Pages >> Add new and create a page.
To decrease or increase the number of posts per page, change if from Blog pages show at most option. You can choose any value of your choice or leave by default, which its ten posts.
6. Enable or Disable User Registration:
This section enables web visitors to register on your website. It is most appropriate if you want to allow guest blogging. This section is critical in WordPress Settings. You can set the lists of permissions and roles your guest bloggers will have to determine whether to enable user registration or not. In case you want not to complicate things, the default role is your best option.
By default, WordPress website administrator can access all the administrative feature of the website.
The editor can create and manage the web post. They can as well manage the webwork of others within the WordPress website.
- Author– unlike editors, authors can only publish and manage their posts.
- Contributor– contributors are mandated to write and manage their posts. However, they can’t publish them on the website.
- Subscriber– subscribers can only manage their profile.
Nonetheless, there is a likelihood that you will receive spam registrations. Fortunately, there are specific plugins that will help you get rid of the spamming issue. We highly recommend Akismet Anti-Spam or Disable Comments plugin as it gives effective results in spam user registration prevention. They work very well in WordPress settings.
7. Add a Favicon:
First, let define what favicon is. Favicon is the icon that will represent your website across the web and devices. So, it helps web visitors to identify and recognize your site quickly.
To add favicon in WordPress 4.3 and above fashions head to your site dashboard.
Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Site Identity tab. Navigate through the select file button and select your most appealing image to use as your website icon.
Click here to see some fantastic icon layout
NOTE: All icons in the WordPress setting must be square in shape and at least 512 pixels in width and length.
8. Install your WordPress Theme:
Now it’s time to install an enormous theme in WordPress setting for your WordPress website. A theme is the overall impression of your website. WordPress settings provide free eye-catching ideas which will beautify your website. So, to install new items, you need to follow these two simple steps.
Go to Appearance >> Themes.
A list of WordPress themes installed will be displayed here. To add a new idea, click on the Add New option. You will get directed to the page below.
You can then install the displayed WordPress theme or search for your favorite theme as well. Use the provided filters, i.e. Popular, Latest, Favorites and featured to navigate through easily.
The upload option on the top left allows you to install your theme in zip file format from your computer too.
For beauty lovers, WordPress Settings for marvelous themes doesn’t end here. There is much more. In case you are still in need of more eye-catching items that will promote your site, you can purchase them from the following websites. They have pretty good WordPress themes such as
Related Read: 50+ Best Rated Multipurpose WordPress Themes From ThemeForest
9. Add a Custom Menu:
Custom menus contain a list of standard links used mainly to navigate through your site. Most WordPress themes default setting take the existing pages in your website to place the page’s link in the navigation area of your website. But, it’s not the most appropriate way to build a navigation menu for your website.
The menu screen allows you to customize navigation and place them in the location of your choice over your WordPress website. To achieve this, go to Appearance » Menus
A custom menu enables you to create submenus, drag, order, reorder, and rename menu items.
10. Add Categories:
By default, when you install your WordPress, post categories are known as Uncategorized. In case you fail to set specific types of your choice, all the Post that you create will be automatically archived under the uncategorized default category.
To change the default category, go to Posts >> Categories, hover on uncategorized to edit. Again don’t forget to change its slug as well.
For new categories head to Post >> Categories and add your best categories there. You can also add a summary of each of your classes. A good summary will boost your WordPress website SEO.
11. Optimize Your Images:
Images play a very significant role in page loading speed. Large photos will put a heavy load on the server, thus negatively affecting your webpage loading speed. It may slow down your website or even prevent your web visitors from viewing all the content in your web post.
It’s of the paramount need to optimize all images in your website. There are some plugins in WordPress settings that will significantly streamline your website images. The best two to use are WP Smush and Ewww Image Optimizer. They are all readily available in WordPress Settings.
12. Configure Ping List:
If you want to index your website posts, to search engines such as Google quickly, then you must configure your ping list services.
To perform ping configuration on your WordPress settings, go to Settings >> Writing.
This page will be displayed.
Copy and paste the ping list to your website. It will work perfectly.
13. Media Files Setting:
Anytime you upload an image to your WordPress media library, WordPress automatically generates thumbnails of that image in numerous sizes which are unnecessary. They will consume space on your WordPress server.
To get rid of these unnecessary thumbnails go to Setting >> Media
This page will display after that.
To stop the generation of these random images files, reset those numbers to zero. You can as well set image size according to your preference. It can be either default, small, medium or large from your WordPress Settings.
14. Change Default Admin User:
The default user name admin poses security vulnerability for your website if left in the default setting. Therefore, its always advisable to change it to a unique one.
And, one more thing to do here. Make sure to have a more complex password in your WordPress site setting. The best way to do this is to combine special characters letters and numbers. Wonderful.
15. Complete your WordPress Website user Profile:
It’s professional to set your WordPress profile to best display you. To achieves this, go to Users >> Your Profile. Here can able to enable or disable the Visual Editor when writing pages and posts. You can also select the admin color scheme as well as decide on whether or not to show the Toolbar when viewing your site.
And again, here there is one more important thing you should know. So, you can fill in you’re fine details in your WordPress setting and decide how you want them to look. Yes, insert your first name followed by your surname and select the key `display name publicly as…` The option you choose will apply across all the pages and posts where your name is displayed.
It’s advisable also to add your Contact Info and Biographical info.
NOTE: The location of this info will depend on the theme you installed.
16. Install Google Analytics:
Google Analytics enables you to have all the statistics of your website. These statistics include the number of visitors coming to your website, how much time they spend, the device used to visit your site, where is their location, and so forth. Installing these useful analytics is very important. You will be able to create and manage your promotional and marketing strategies accordingly.
I will guide you step by step to install Google analytics.
To perform this vital role for your website, undertake the steps below.
1. Open this URL: https://www.google.co.in/analytics/
2. Click on Google Analytics from this page
3. Log in to your Gmail account as directed. You will get redirected to this page.
4. Provide all the required information on this page.
17. Install SEO Plugin:
Search engines form a significant part in traffic creation for your WordPress. It is, therefore, imperative to install a useful SEO plugin to drive high-quality traffic from search engines for your website.
The most recommended SEO plugin for WordPress settings are:
Also Read: Top 10 WordPress Security Plugins 2019 (Keep Your Site Secure)
Wrapping Up!
And that’s it. We have covered the most essentials in installing WordPress settings. It’s highly recommended to go through each process with much keenness and urgency required. By that, your WordPress website profits will shoot up rapidly. Check it!
In case you need any help in WordPress settings for your WordPress website, please CLICK HERE to get more specialist support.
With much said, however, the needs in the world keep change and do so your WordPress settings. Keep tuned for our updates on WordPress setting. Subscribe for our email updates.
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