5 Essential Tweaks for All New WordPress Blogs
November 15, 2007 by 1Cat.biz
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WordPress is without a doubt one of the most powerful, yet easy to use blogging systems available. Here are a few tweaks I make to all of my new blogs to make WordPress even more powerful.
1. Permalinks: Not only are the WordPress default permalinks ugly and hard to remember, they don’t help you much with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Therefore, I like to change mine to the following: /%category%/%postname%
Here’s How:
- First make sure your .htaccess file permissions are set to minimum of “644″ (Note: Changing the .htaccess file permissions may affect the way some of your other plugins behave. That’s why we recommend a minimum of 644. If it is already set higher then there is no need to change it.)
- Login to your WordPress Admin and choose “OPTIONS | PERMALINKS”
- Click on “Custom, specify below”
- Enter “/%category%/%postname%” (without the quotes)
- Click Update Options
- Now your URL’s will look like this: http://bestfriendscatering.com/blog/custom-cakes/wedding-cakes
- Instead of this: http://bestfriendscatering.com/blog/?p=123
- NOTE: Be sure to use your main keywords / phrases in your categories and titles.
- Click here for a comprehensive list of other Permalink tags you can use.
2. Update Services: Everytime you write and publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies a list of update services. By default that list is very small. Actually, there’s only 1 item in the list. I like to add more.Here’s How:
- Login to your WordPress Admin and choose “OPTIONS | WRITING”
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and type, or better yet, paste your list into the window.
- Click Update Options
- Click here for a list of update / ping services I like to use.
3. Title and Tagline: I know it may sound obvious but make sure your Title and Tagline contain your main keywords / phrasesHere’s How:
- Login to your WordPress Admin and choose “OPTIONS | GENERAL”
- Change your Weblog Title and Tagline to include your keywords.
- Click Update Options
4. Membership and Role: While you’re setting General Options make sure your blog Membership and New User Roles are set correctly. Depending upon the purpose of your blog you may or may not want to allow people to register. If you do allow visitors to register make sure you give them the right privileges.Here’s How:
- Login to your WordPress Admin and choose “OPTIONS | GENERAL”
- Select whether or not “Anyone can register” and if they must be “registered and logged in to comment”
- Next assign the “New User Default Role” (I usually like to leave it set to Subscriber. You can always go back later and change a users role if you need to.)
- Click here for a list of User Roles and Capabilities.
5. Handling Comments: One of the most powerful features of blogging is the ability to comment on posts. But, you want to make sure that comments are handled appropriately both for your sake and your viewers. And there are some instances where you may not want to allow commenting at all.Here’s How:
- Login to your WordPress Admin and choose “OPTIONS | DISCUSSION”
- Usual settings for an article: I usually check all 3
- E-mail me whenever: I usually check both of these especially, on new blogs so, I can see when there is any action.
- Before a comment appears: I usually just check the middle option. If I start to get a lot of undesireable comments, which never really happens, then I may tighten it up a little by requiring that all comments be approved. But remember the idea is to get interaction and build community so the easier the communication the better.
- Comment Moderation: This feature is mainly used to help control comment Spam. While it is helpful there are better ways to deal with comment Spam. I’ll discuss those later when I post about my 5 Essential Plug-ins for All New WordPress Blogs.
- Comment Blacklist: This one’s pretty self explanatory. Just think of all the bad words you don’t want showing up on your blog and start typing them in. (You know, dirty words like… Amway, MLM, free money,etc…)
As I’m sure you know the list could go on and on in great detail. This is just a very basic starting place. And since we get a lot of questions about these things from newbies I wanted to address them in this post.
Please leave your comments below and tell me what you think.
Barry O.
[...] So in the meantime, can I suggest you check out Barry O’s 5 Essential Tweaks for All New WordPress Blogs. [...]
Cool, BarryO, thanks! btw, maybe I’m blind, but isn’t your permalink structure actually: site.com/year/postslugname ?
Hello Rick / Barryo,
This is a very interesting post and generally do all of them but never thought about point no 4.
Also i liked the ping list which you provided and i have copied it for my use.
I am eagerly looking forward to your 5 essential plugin post.
Thanx
Hey Curly Girl,
You make a good observation. This blog does use /%year%/%postname%/ However, I recently stopped using the %year% tag when setting up blogs because I didn’t want my content to seem dated later on.
The “Post Slug” will automatically be the same as the “Post Name” unless you change it, which I do sometimes if the post title is too long. In that case your URL would display the Post Slug but the permalink would still look like %postname%.
Hi Barry,
– love everything you do dude!
A great post about the most funky blog platform ever. I’ve been making web sites since 1998 but now I don’t do any! Just blogs…
I liked your ping list, there was some there I’d never seen before, so I copied it put it into Excel added my pinglist, removed the duplicates and came up with this one: http://www.ricklomas.com/2007/11/15/wordpress-ping-list/
I’m guessing it works as I was almost instantly in the Google top 10 for the phrase ‘wordpress ping list’.
Regards to Rick B
Rick Lomas
Hey Barry,
Nice post! Thanks for sharing your ideas. As someone who’s fairly new to using WordPress, I found your post to be easy to follow and the instructions were easy too! So thanks again for a great post.
-Mark
Rick,
Thanks for the comment. I went and grabbed your list.
I too have been designing websites since 1995. This summer I finally decided that, except on a rare occasion, I would do all my work in either WordPress or Joomla.
From a management and marketing stand point it just doesn’t make sense to build static sites anymore.
Maybe the occasional name squeeze or sales page but that’s it.
Barry O.
[...] 5 Essential Tweaks for All New WordPress Blogs [...]
[...] BTW: I usually install these right after I apply my Top 5 Essential WordPress Tweaks. [...]
Isn’t it dangerous to leave your .htaccess file chmod 777 which is wide open to anyone?
Opps. I should have said "644". Thanks for catching that one.
[...] a recent blog post, 5 Essential Tweaks For All New Wordpress Blogs , I talked about using the All-In-One SEO WordPress plugin along with custom header graphics to [...]
[...] 5 Essential Tweaks for All New WordPress Blogs [...]
[...] 5 Essential Tweaks for all New WordPress Blogs [...]
Hi Barry, How do I only show a snippet of my posts on my blog, with a link to the full posting?
Ive read its best to have a small portion of the full posting to avoid duplicate content on the site.
I have WP version 2.5.
Thx!
Bret’s last blog post..How to buy a digital camera
Put your cursor in your blog post where you want the “snippet” to end then click on the “More” button in the tool bar.
This will display only the snippet on the Home Page of your blog. Depending on your WordPress theme it will automatically place a link that says “Read More”, or something similar to the rest of the post. The title is also linked to the full post.
Barry O.
I wanted to show the subcategories for a given category on it’s category page in the sidebar but i need to know if there is a plug in readily available or do I have to manually through in some code. If so what is the code; how and where do I place it. Thanks!!
Ryan Gs last blog post..sub shopping test
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
thanks! btw, maybe I’m blind, but isn’t your permalink structure actually: site.com/year/postslugname ?
Actually, it’s /%postname%/