I love WordPress but it has taken me a while to figure out what not do to when setting up WordPress. Here is my list of things not to do or not to forget to do.

11. Forget to Share - Install plugins to share your content with others. This will help to drive traffic to your site. Also take time to visit other sites and post comments where you have information that helps out. This have driven a lot of traffic to my site. But, make sure it adds value and doesn’t become comment spam.

10. Forget to Change the Generated Admin password. They are definitely randomly generated and there is no way you can remember them without writing them down. So I change them after I finish the install. Also, consider making a backup admin account just in case something happens to your original account.

9. Forget to Change Permalinks - With the need for Search Engine Optimization and Search Ranking in Google, Yahoo, MSN you have to change the permalinks to something that has some keyword value. Go to Options -> Permalinks and switch from the “default” to “Date and name based” or “custom” and use %postname%

8. Forget to Dress Up with Themes - the default themes are nice but everyone should have their own twist. Go download a new theme with widget support and start moving things around.

7. Forget to Use Post Slugs - When posting messages make sure and take a look at the postslug option. Think about the title you have and how the search engines will index it. Does it have the keywords you want. If not add a post slug with the ones you do want.

6. Post your email Address on Your Pages - I did this on some of my early blogs. Now I have an email account full of offers for more companions, larger parts of my anatomy, prescription drugs, and fortunes from dictators in other countries. Please don’t post your email on your pages like this - Steve@some-domain-name.com. The search bots will suck that up and feed it to the great Spam Devils and your time will be spent cleaning up emails all day long. Some people use this method - Steve at some-domain-name.com and I’m not sure how much this will help. I personally use contact forms to ward off some of the spam.

5. Turn off Commenting - If you have a blog and you want to have a dialog with your users then leave commenting turned on. Otherwise your site looks “lifeless” to your readers. For those of you worried about comment spam we will cover this on item 1.

4. Forget to Install a Weblog program - I use Firestats for my weblog to see who is visiting, what pages they like, and what countries they are coming from. This tells me who my readers are, what they like, and where they are from. I use this data to produce new articles they will like. Without this date how do you know who is visiting your site.

3. Forget Every Page is a Landing Page - You don’t know how people are going to get to your site so make use you have your most important information on each page. I like to include Most Popular Posts, Recent Posts, Comments and Subscription options as widget. I also have a menu with Contact Us, About, and Products. This will cover most of the items people are looking for. Lastly, make sure and include a Search option otherwise people will not be able to dig deeper.

2. Forget to Backup Your Database - It is so easy to backup your site with plugins that there is no excuse to not do it. Trust me once the data is gone it will take a lot of time put back in the post that you can find in some of your files. Take a minute install the plugin and save yourself a lot of wasted time.

1. Allow Comment Spam - Turn on Akismet otherwise you will spend a lot of time clean up ad leaches from your site. I have made this in the past with other blogs and my email still shows it.

We All Make Mistakes: Top 11 WordPress Don’ts » Chimp-Simple Publishing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.