A Checklist of Preparing A Working WordPress Blog

The work is not done yet after setting up your self-hosted WordPress blog. There are still number of things you need to configure before it actually fully works. Here is a quick short checklist of things that need your attention, most of them can be easily done through the awesome WP admin control panel.

General Settings

This is the first place you would go right after you have your blog newly installed, in where you can name your blog title, sub-title, URL, date format, and email address, etc.

You can get to that page by clicking the Settings link at the left panel when you are in the admin panel. In case you don’t know how to get into your admin panel, this is the address can get you there.

http://yourblogaddress.com/wp-admin/

Permalinks Settings

IMO, having a link with your post name embedded is more search-engine-friendly, and helps to get your page ranked better, because having the keywords embedded in URL weights more from search engine’s point of view. Option Month and Name is my preferred permalinks option.

Clicking Permalinks under Settings at the left panel in admin panel can get you there.

Remote Publishing

If you are a person like me who prefer blogging through desktop client like Windows Live Writer or iPhone App, enabling XML-RPC is a no-brainer. And most Blog This link on a lot of websites that allows you blog their content right from their own page requires you have this enabled as well.

Remote Publishing setting is also located under Settings on your admin panel.

IMO, if you are a Windows user and haven’t heard or used Live Writer I urge you doing so right away. It’s a ultimate tool you will ever need for blogging, which makes your blog life so much easier and enjoyable. And most importantly, it’s a free tool from Microsoft that gets updated constantly. The same feature from Live Writer is also included in the latest MS Word version 2007.

Theme

Picking a theme is not as easy as it sounds. You should not judge a theme only based on its looking. The feature and flexibility are also very important factor that you need to consider. A good theme should provide you a set of options to play with. For example, a convenient place where you can put static tracking codes or ad codes, either in footer or the sidebar. Ultimately, you can inject these codes right to the PHP page but it’s always good you don’t have to do that.

There are tons of good designed free themes out there you can choose.  And you can customize them to get your own unique looking one, if you know a little bit CSS and PHP.

Traffic Stats Tracking

Most of the tracking service will provide you an easy implement javascipt code that you can easily embedded into your website. If theme you choose has the static code box option ready you can simply insert these codes in. Otherwise, you will need to manually add them into one of the PHP page in the theme you pick, i.e. footer.php.

If you are using Google Analytics, this plug-in is a must-have. It saves all the hassle adding the code manually. All you need to know is your Analytics Account ID for the blog you want to track.

Feedburner Setup

You will need Feedburner to help you track your feeds subscribers. Burn your feeds first on Feedburner, if you haven’t done so. And add both Feedburner feed URL and email subscription link to your blog, either through theme option or editing directly to PHP file. You also need to make the change on the feed link on the page header section, or you won’t get all your subscriber tracked. A lot of people like to subscribe the feed directly from the address bar, right than through the link on the page self.

It used to a place in older version that allows me just simply put the FeedBurner link but I couldn’t find it in the version 2.7.1. If you know, please let me know in the comments.

And that’s it. If you read all through and get the point where you read now you are good to go.

Enjoy and happy blogging…at least, I am.