You've Finished Installing WordPress, What Comes Next?

You've heard all the buzz and decided that a WordPress blog is exactly what your niche website needs. And now that you've tackled the hard part, installation, you're probably staring at the WordPress admin panel trying to figure out what to do next.

Instead of clicking on the Write button and starting your very first entry, there are some things you can do to get your blog ready for your visitors and the search engines.

Hello, Good-bye

Once the installation process is complete, WordPress will automatically insert your very first post for you along with a comment to show you what your blog will look like with content. You really don't need to keep this post, and as it suggests, you can delete it or edit it.

To delete the entry, click on Manage from the WordPress admin panel and locate the entry titled "Hello World" (it should be the only one there) and click on the Delete button next it. Confirm that you wish to delete the entry and hit the OK button. Doing this will also delete the associated comment.

Don't become "Just another WordPress blog"

WordPress allows you to create a short description of your blog that can be used by a number of templates, including the default Kubrick. The description generally appears just below the title of the blog in the header, and some themes also use it in the title tag when viewing the home page.

By default, the description that WordPress will use for your blog is "Just another WordPress blog" and I bet it's safe to say that you don't to have just another WordPress blog. If you want your blog to stand out and be remembered, create a description that will stand out from the crowd.

Update your blog's description by click on Options from the WordPress admin panel. You will be brought to the general options screen where you will see an area for updating your blog's description.

Tell The World You've Updated

You can tell the world you've updated your blog by announcing the update to what's known as update or ping services. Ping services show a list of the most recently updated blogs across the internet for people and robots to view and visit.

WordPress will automatically notify these ping services that you've updated your blog each time you publish a new entry, however, only Ping-o-matic is listed in the update services on installation.

In order to notify more ping services when you've updated the blog, you'll need to add them to the update service list by clicking on the Options button in the WordPress admin panel, and then the Writing sub menu button.

From the Options->Writing menu, scroll down to the very bottom and you'll notice a section called Update Services. Add the URL for each of the update services you want to notify each time you publish an entry to the blog, being careful to list each URL on its own line.

You can find a list of update services to use for your blog at http://www.optiniche.com/blog/113/update-services/

After you've made those few simple changes, don't forget to click on Update Options, otherwise you may lose your changes. Now, you're ready to start publishing entries to your new WordPress blog.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com