Blog Settings

Once you have your blog uploaded, you need to work on your theme and blog settings.

You can dowload and select a variety of themes for your blog from your wordpress dashboard. They are free and the choice is up to you on how you want your blog to look. This can be changed later if you find a theme you like better, and is simple and doesn't change any of your blog settings or content.

Then you should turn your interest to implimenting your blog settings. To begin click on settings in your blog dashboard. This will bring up general settings and they are self-explanatory. Once you have set these, you will see the other blog setting categories listed below. Begin with permalinks...

1.set up your blog permalinks

One major blog setting you want to attend to is your permalinks. This referrs to how your posts are named. If you leave it at the default, it will give that page or post a number. This is of no benefit to you with the search engines. It also creates problems in linking to individual posts.

You can click on permalinks on the dashboard of your blog where it says custom structure enter one of two options.

/%postname%
/%category%/%postname%/

They must be entered just as seen above, with slashes included. The first will just give the blog post name after the url in the address bar, and the second will give you the category/post name in the address bar. There is some SEO advantage to using both category and postname, and having it to do over this would be my choice. The next paragraph will reveal why I don't change the permalinks structure in my blog now.

You can also put in such things as the date and year prior to the category and post name if you want. But the essential thing is to decide before you begin posting. Once a post gets indexed or you have links to it you don't want to lose that advantage by starting over.

2. Set up discussion settings. You should allow blog comments to your posts. This is beneficial to your blog and will stimulate fresh content and bring visitors.

I personally require a name and email. I also set mine to require moderation. I have found that if I don't I am beseiged with spam comments sent out by automatic generators. This is useless junk that can devalue a site.

Determine how many links they are allowed. I have added a captcha by plugin that is user-friendly. Although I encourage comments, and I have set them to 'dofollow', I don't want to bring on comments through generation software.

3. Choose some initial blog plugins. 

See my plugin recommendations here. The first and foremost is your backup plugin. You can always download wordpress again and get a free theme, but if you have no content in your blog what do you have? I know this from personal and painful experience.

Download your backup plugin and activate it. Set up a free gmail emal account, and designate this as one of the emails to send your backup to. This will make it easy for you to check and make sure it is working before you spend a lot of time and effort posting to your blog.

4. Set privacy settings for your blog.

Of course if you are using this blog for business you will want it visible to everyone.

5. Write settings 

Make posting easier by going to writing and setting the size of the post box to a minimul of 25 lines.

6. Set up some initial blog categories

Your categories will depend on the subject of your blog. Your keyword research should tell you much about how to name your categories.

7. Begin posting to your blog

Make each blog post count. Each web page stands on it's own as to how you rank in the search engines. Provide good, well written content on your topic. Proofread for grammar and spelling. Good content is what the web is about today, and what all the search engines are grading on.

See suggestions for blog plugins.