5 Things you must do right after installing WordPress

The installation of WordPress is as easy as can be. When you know the name, the user name and the password of the database and have a name for the website, you will be up and running in 10 minutes!

The first adjustments

Did you manage to install WordPress within the famous 5 minutes? Congratulations! Now you can start working on your online presence!

After installing WordPress, you must start with some configuration. Especially because a few options will have an effect on how your pages and posts will show on the internet. It won’t be easy to change those settings later.

Step 1: Delete the example content

Some example content was imported during the installation of WordPress. The “Hello world” post, for example, and a few comments. It is best to delete them right away. Unless you want to use them to test your theme before you start writing posts.

Step 2: General settings

Under the option Settings – General you find the general options for your website. This is how you use them:

Site Title: The title of your website.

Tagline: A short explanation what your site is about.

WordPress Adress (URL): The full URL to the installation directory of WordPress.

Site Adress: The address you want people to type in their browser to reach your WordPress site.

Email Adress: The email adress WordPress sends mail about maintenance, comments, updates. This is the email adress you entered during the installation of WordPress.

Membership: Check this box if you want anyone to be able to register to your site.

New User Default Role: The default role users get when they register.

Timezone: Choose the timezone you live in from the pull down menu.

Date Format: The format in which the date displays on your site. This will only affect the front end display of dates.

Time Format: The format in which the time displays on your site. This will only affect the front end display of time.

Week starts on: Select the preferred day the calender week starts on.

Site Language: Select the WordPress admin section language .

Step 3: Permalinks

The permalink is the permanent link to your posts. This is not the same as the title! The permalink is by default set to http://yourdomain.com/?p=123. This doesn’t look nice and gives nothing away about the content. Luckily you can set them as you wish!

You can find the permalink settings page under “Settings – Permalinks”.

In most cases it’s preferable to set the permalink structure to Post name. You can add a standard category or tag to the base URL.

Make sure you set the permalink structure as soon as possible. If you decide to change the permalink structure after publishing posts, you will have to redirect all of the old permalinks to the new permalinks. And that is a lot of work!

Permalink settings

Step 4: Discussion

WordPress has several settings for comments and answers. If you want visitors to be able to comment on posts, you have to turn that option on. You can set the other options to your liking. For example: you can force visitors to register to your site before they can comment.

Under “Settings – Discussion” you can find the general settings page for discussion. You can also set the commenting on or off on individual posts.

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Step 5: Remove the Admin user

The first and one of the most important security measures: removing the admin user! Al lot of brute force attacks take place on the username Admin, also usually user number 1. There is a very easy way to prevent unauthorized persons or bots to log in to your site.

Go to “Users – Add new”. Add a new user (that would be you) and give this user the role Administrator. Log out of WordPress and log in with the new user. Go to “Users – All users” and delete the Admin user. And you’re done!

The basics are set!

The basic installation and settings are done now. You will have to install the theme and plugins you’ve chosen, and maybe even more. Don’t forget to assign categories before you start publishing. And decide whether you want your blog posts on the homepage, or use a static page as your homepage. But you can forget about the basic settings as mentions above!

Was this article useful? Please let me know in the comments section below. If you thing of any other basic settings that should be covered here, don’t hesitate to comment!

Ronald Heijnes
Ronald Heijnes

Since 2008 I keep myself busy with the functionality, management, maintenance and performance of self hosted WordPress. I like to share this knowledge. All in my spare time!

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3 Comments

    • Hi Philip,
      Thanks for your reaction!
      It is always good to delete themes you don’t use. Also the standard themes.

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