Are you wondering what to do after installing WordPress on your website?
After installing WordPress on your site, you need to do important things to set up your website properly before launching.
In this article, you will learn the most important things that you need to do after installing wordpress.
After setting up a WordPress blog, there are essential WordPress settings you should ensure are enabled on your website.
We’ve put together a list of settings. You can click on the links below to get to your preferred sections:
- Add a Contact Form
- Change Site Title, Tagline, and Timezone
- Setup WordPress SEO
- Install Google Analytics
- Install Caching
- Setup Backups
- Setup WordPress Security
- Setup Spam Protection
- Delete Unused WordPress Themes
- Setup WordPress Comments
- Delete Default Content
- Setup a Default Category
- Setup Front and Blog Pages
- Upload Your Gravata
- Complete Your User Profile
- Upload Favicon and Site Icon
- Change WordPress Email Address
- Setup Your WordPress Theme
1. Add a Contact Form
After installing wordpress on yoru website, first thing that is most important to do is to add a contact form to your website.
It is extremely important to add a contact form because it allows your site visitor to contact you rsuing the contact form. also you can get feedback from your audience and resolve their queries related to your site.
When you install wordpress, you dont get contact form be default on your website. you need to install a plugin to add a contact form. There are plenty of wordpress contact form plugins available in the market that allow you toa dd contact form to your site.
The best wordpress plugin for contact form is WPForm. it is simple and easy to add on your site. There are two version of this wpform plugin: free and paid. for just starting out your website, you can use free version that is more than enough at start.
See our step-by-step guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.
2. Change Site Title, Tagline, and Timezone
Next, you need to change the site title, tagline, and timezone of your WordPress website. To do that, click on the Setting tab and then General to change these settings.
3. Setup WordPress SEO
SEO means search engine optimzation. Once you install wordpress, you need to set up SEO for your website to get more traffic from google and other search engines.
The best time to set up your site’s SEO is right after installing wordpress. you can do so by installing an SEO plugin. There are several plugins that can help you do that. You just need one SEO plugin for you website.
I will recommend Rank Math plugin that can take your SEO opimitaztion to next level. In addition, you can also check AISEO and Yoast SEO plugins that are also good plugins.
For complete step-by-step instructions, see our ultimate WordPress SEOE guide for beginners.
4. Install Google Analytics
Next, you need to install Google Analytics on your site to understand your audience better. Google Analytics gives complete insight into your audience. Such as how they find your website, their demographic, and what they seek. Based on the queries, you can create more content to help solve their questions,
5. Install a Caching Plugin
Next, you need to install a caching plugin that can help you to improve your site speed.
There are plenty of caching plugin available in the market that you can choose from. However, the best cache plugin is the WP Rocket, where you increase your site speed amazingly.
6. Setup Backups
A backup plugin helps you to restore your website in case the website is broken or something else happens.
The backup plugin is crucial for your site so that you can restore it in case anything happens to your site.
There are plenty of plugins available in the market that you can choose from.
7. Setup WordPress Security
WordPress is quite secure out of the box. However, you still need to follow security best practices to keep your website secure.
Some of these best practices are quite easy to do on your own, like using strong passwords, securing the WordPress admin area, and installing updates.
For other things, you will need a plugin. There are some great WordPress security plugins that you can use.
We recommend using Sucuri. They are the industry leader in website security, vulnerability scanning, and malware protection.
The best part about using Sucuri is that if offers the best WordPress firewall plugin. A website firewall blocks suspicious traffic from ever reaching your website.
8. Setup Spam Protection
Spam comments can be quite problematic. Most of them contain links to malicious websites known for distributing malware. Spam comments can affect your search rankings and your website’s reputation.
You can enable comment moderation in WordPress to prevent any comment from appearing without approval. However, as the quantity of spam grows, you will be spending considerable time moderating comments.
To fix this, you need to install and activate the aksimet plugin. It is a WordPress anti-spam plugin and one of the only two plugins that come pre-installed on every WordPress website.
9. Delete Unused WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme is the visual appearance of your website or blog. You may need to test several themes before choosing the one you like best.
Once you are done with the theme selection, delete the unused extra themes because there is no reason to keep them installed on your website.
Another thing is that if you keep them, they will require you to upload them again, so you need to delete them if you do not use them in the future.
You can keep one extra theme in case you want to switch back to another theme.
10. Setup WordPress Comments
Once you publish some content, user can share their thoughts in the comment section of your posts. Comments are most important to engage with your audience and grow a community around your blog. Therefore, you must set up a comments section for your blog posts. to that, go to Settings and Discussion and enable or disable the comments section. You can also customize the options.
11. Delete Default Content
When you install WordPress, your website shows default content, which is installed by default when you install WordPress. Delete the default content from the website and start adding your content.
12. Setup a Default Category
Categories help you organize your site’s content into related groups. Once you add content to your site, you can assign that piece of content to a category. As your blog grows, you can add more categories.
For now, create a default category to your wordpress so that whenever you publish content, it can be added to that category.
13. Setup Front and Blog Pages
By default, WordPress displays your blog posts on the homepage. However, if you are making a small business website, then you would want to use a static page as your homepage.
Even most blogs want to use a static front page as their homepage. This allows them to create custom layouts for their homepage.
To se up these pages, ou can simply go to Settings > Reading from you WordPress dashboard and select the pages you want to use a syour front page and blog page.
14. Upload Your Gravatar
15. Complete Your User Profile
16. Upload Favicon and Site Icon
Next, you need to upload a favicon, which is a small image that appears next to the URL of your website in the search bar. Adding a favicon to your site helps users to identify your site.
17. Change the WordPress Email Address
Most users add thier own email addresses when installing WordPress. This means their first user profile and their website’s email address are the same.
To chang this you can go to the Settings > General page and enter the new email address you would like to use for the website.
Make sure that the new email address is active, as WordPress will end a confirmation email to that address.
You can use any email address here. However, it would be best to use an email address that shows that this address is for automated emails sent from your website.
If you want to use email accounts using your own domain name, then please see our guide on how to create a free business email address for your WordPress website.
18. Setup Your WordPress Theme
Next, you can customize and set up your WordPress. First, set up the main menu that appears in the header section of your website. this navigational menu help user to browser through your site easily.
I hope this article helped you to learn the most important things that you need to do immediately after installing WordPress.
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