You just installed WordPress and started your website, but have no idea what to do or which plugins to install? In this article I will share all the steps I take as soon as I install a WordPress site. A complete guide on the first steps for beginners and even experienced WordPress users.
As the article is very long, I will leave a list of steps to facilitate navigation. Perhaps you are already aware of some steps you want to skip. Not to mention that some are entirely optional and not recommended for all types of websites.
In this article we will not teach you step by step to install WordPress on your hosting because each hosting is different. Most hosts have ways to install WordPress in just one click.
I can only summarize that as soon as you download wordpress and move the files to your hosting, you will be redirected to a configuration page of the databases of your server and the wordpress account.
The tips in this article will begin after you have installed WordPress and logged in to “/wp-admin/”.
Glossary of terms mentioned in the article
This article is full of technical terms, so we’ll leave a glossary of terms mentioned in the article to help laypeople and newbies who don’t know much about computers.
Plugins - Extensions that add some functionality to WordPress. With plugins you can turn WordPress into an online store, forum, member area and thousands of other things.
Open Source - It means that it is open to modifications, anyone can use and modify the way they want. WordPress is a script in PHP Open Source;
CSS - Code language that allows you to customize the appearance, colors, fonts and layout of your website.
SSL or HTTPS - Security protocol currently mandatory on all sites that want to grow. There are many ways to enable https on your website, one of which is using the Runcloud or Let'sEncrypt.
CMS - Content Management System are content management systems. Scripts that you install on your hosting server and you can manage it through an administrative panel. WordPress is one of the largest CMS of all time.
KNOWING WORDPRESS
I want to avoid talking about the basics of WordPress, in this article I just want to present the settings I make in my WordPress installation and share with others. Still, we will summarize the functions of wordpress.
Basically WordPress is divided into Pages, Posts (which are articles), Categories, Media and Comments. You yourself need to decide how your site will work and create your pages and categories according to your needs.
WordPress also offers plugins and themes to transform its main functionality (blog) into a rich website with infinite possibilities. You can create stores, forums, social networks or basically anything with WordPress.
It is open source, allowing people to develop additional functions to make WordPress one of the best tools on the web. I really don't know any other platform or CMS as good as WordPress.
If you want to learn how to create articles, upload images or other basic WordPress functions, that is not the point of the article. The purpose of this article is just to teach you what steps to take to make your WordPress installation better.
Configuring WordPress Permalinks and Thumbnails
The first thing you need to do after installing WordPress is to configure the Permalinks. By default, WordPress displays the date and name of the post, but we recommend keeping only the post name to improve SEO.
Just access settings & gt; Permanent Links and then check the Post Name option.
If your WordPress is not in Portuguese, take the opportunity to go to Settings > General and then choose the language you want in your WordPress. Don't forget to save the changes…
Taking advantage that you are in the settings, try accessing the Settings > Media menu to configure the images that WordPress generates when uploading to the gallery. The Media settings generate 3 image sizes: thumbnail, medium, and large.
We recommend placing 0 in medium and large sizes to prevent WordPress from creating unnecessary images by filling your image server. In the thumbnail I usually put 375x175 and & nbsp; marco & nbsp; the & nbsp; option cut out!
INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING JETPACK
Jetpack is a plugin created by WordPress developers and offers many things in a single plugin. Widgets, editor blocks, article review, own CDN, comment system, facebook post and many others.
Many WordPress installations already come with the plugin activated or installed; if not, simply go to Plugins > Add New and search for Jetpack. After installing and activating the plugin, you will be invited to a screen to configure and activate it.
Jetpack offers premium options that in my opinion are not worth it. Choose the option to continue using Jetpack for free as it already offers everything needed for your website. Once activated, just access the settings to continue.
In Performance and speed activate both options in activate the website accelerator. So the site will load images and CSS and JS files on a CDN, speeding up the loading of your site and avoiding queries on your server.
There are other options like lazy loading for images or image carousels, but I prefer to keep these options disabled to avoid incompatibility with themes or cache plugins.
In the flap Writing of Jetpack I usually activate only the option: Check spelling, style and grammar
On the Sharing tab, I usually use the option to share on social networks, but I leave the work of the sharing buttons to another plugin called AddToAny.
In discussions, I activate comments and subscriptions, but some prefer to use the DISQUS comment system, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately, DISQUS became paid for my site, so I am forced to use the WordPress + Jetpack standard.
In Traffic, I enable the related posts and sitemaps. In the Security tab, I enable protection against brute force attacks. These are the basic settings I enable on all my sites that use WordPress.
Installing an SEO Plugin and CREATING SITEMAPS
Now it's time to install one of the most important things for your site, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin, the system that will optimize your site for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
One of the most popular is SEO by Yoast which is completely free; just install it and configure it as you wish. There aren’t many things to configure in the plugin, I practically enable all the options in the resources tab in the SEO by Yoast settings.
Sorry to interrupt this article, but I discovered an SEO Plugin All-in-One Better than Seo by Yoast, I wrote an article talking about it, read about the Rank Math SEO plugin by clicking here.
IF THE is one of the most important things for the success of your website. You may need a larger article than this to explain everything about SEO and how it helps people find your site through Google.
In addition to SEO by Yoast you also need to install other plugins that can improve your website's SEO, such as:
- SEO Friendly Images - To create an XML of images;
- Google Video Sitemap Feed - To create an XML of videos;
It's not enough to just install the mentioned SEO plugins and that's it; you also need to add your site to the Google Search Console and submit all the Sitemaps and RSS Feeds to help Google locate your site and make it relevant.
We do not need to teach step by step how to register on the Search Console because Google already does that when setting up your site. Once you have set up and verified your site, go to the Sitemaps menu to submit your site's XML and RSS links.
If you have installed SEO by Yoast and activated the Jetpack sitemaps, you will find the following links:
- feed /
- sitemap_index.xml
- sitemap.xml
- sitemap-1.xml
- image-sitemap-index-1.xml
- news-sitemap.xml
- image-sitemap-1.xml
- sitemap-video.xml
Just add all of that in the SiteMaps section of Google Search Console and your site will be 100% ready to rank on Google. Now you can focus on creating quality content, thinking entirely about SEO.
CHOOSING AND CONFIGURING YOUR THEME
It's complicated for me to help all readers in this part, as each one must have chosen a different theme (layout) for the WordPress site. If you haven't made this choice yet, we strongly recommend Generate Press.
Many who start a WordPress site look for a free theme, but unfortunately, most free themes are completely limited and always shove ads in your face to buy a premium version of the theme.
You also need to be careful when choosing a paid theme, as some end up defective or limit you to something you want to do. We strongly recommend starting with a paid topic, but you should choose it wisely.
That's why I recommend Generate Press, because it is 100% customizable, ultra-lightweight, allows you to disable modules, and also offers a license for an unlimited number of sites. After buying and spending hours customizing about 10 premium themes, I finally found Generate Press and became quiet and worry-free.
If you decide to use Generate Press, our article about it also teaches tips and settings that I use when utilizing it. I hope you choose your theme wisely, because dealing with themes in WordPress is one of the most stressful things there is.
We always recommend using the CHILD of the theme you choose. This version depends on the original theme, but allows you to add CSS and PHP code without affecting the original theme, allowing you to update the theme without losing your changes.
Always choose a responsive theme that adapts to cell phones, in the future we also recommend researching and implementing an AMP (Accelerate mobile page) theme on your website.
EDITING AND CUSTOMIZING YOUR CSS
I will assume that you already have your WordPress theme in the child version activated. Now I will share some CSS and PHP codes for you to add to your WordPress in order to solve many issues that site owners often face.
To add code to your child theme, you need to access "Appearance > Editor" where by default it will open the activated theme on the CSS editing page. On the screen below, you add your CSS and PHP customizations directly in the Child theme.
One of the most important codes in my opinion is the one that makes the WordPress table responsive. With the code below, the tables on your site can be manipulated by dragging with your finger on mobile devices. Allowing the creation of tables with many columns without the need to worry.
@media only screen and (max-width: 840px) {
table {
margin-bottom: 0;
overflow: hidden;
overflow-x: scroll;
display: block;
white-space: nowrap;
}
}The code below borders the tables:
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
}
tr:last-child td, tr:last-child th {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
}The code below corrects problems with Bold which does not appear in some themes due to the lack of the .strong or .b tag:
.bold
{
font-weight:bold;
}
strong { font-weight: bold;}These were just a few examples, you can make changes to the layout through your browser console and implement the CSS codes you want on that page.
EDITING AND CUSTOMIZING YOUR FUNCTIONS.PHP
In the same theme editor that you used to edit the CSS, you will add codes that perform a specific function in WordPress or in the theme within the file called functions.php, which is located in your child theme.
With the code below, you exclude one of your site's categories from appearing on the homepage. Just edit the category ID in the code below. You can get this ID (number) on the LINK when you edit a category within WordPress.
function excludeCat($query) {
if ( $query->is_home ) {
$query->set('cat', '-675');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'excludeCat');The code below causes the thumbnails of the article list of some themes to also be hosted on the Jetpack CDN or PHOTON:
add_filter( 'jetpack_photon_override_image_downsize', '__return_true' );The code below creates an option in the menu that displays all the advanced WordPress settings. It's not a completely necessary code, but you might like it.
// CUSTOM ADMIN MENU LINK FOR ALL SETTINGS
function all_settings_link() {
add_options_page(__('All Settings'), __('All Settings'), 'administrator', 'options.php');
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'all_settings_link');Just like in CSS, you can search the internet or our website for codes that do a certain function in WordPress or the site's theme. Use wisely and be careful with the wrong codes that can bug the site.
INSTALLING A CACHE PLUGIN
Another very important thing you need to do when installing WordPress is to use a Cache Plugin. There are several cache plugins, I use WP-ROCKET, which is paid, but as you are just starting out, there are many plugins you can use.
Cache plugins allow your site to be loaded by visitors quickly without using too many resources from your server or querying databases. Some plugins create a lightweight version of the page in HTML or compress the files to make them lighter.
One of the simplest and easiest to set up is WP-Fastest Cache, followed by the plugins W3 Total Cache and Wp Super Cache, these are the most popular caching plugins.
Depending on the hosting you use, you can also enable NGINX, Memcached, Redis or LiteSpeed Cache caching. In addition to the traditional page cache, some plugins offer Minify that adds or reduces the size of JS and CSS files.
If the Cache plugin you choose does not include Minify, try using plugins like Autoptimize. Be careful when configuring Minify, because some themes or plugins may end up being incompatible; you might have to include some JS in the list for the plugin to ignore.
The settings you made in Jetpack will also help your website to load quickly without using your server's resources. Some try to resort to using CDN like CloudFlare, but Jetpack is practically a CDN.
PLUGINS I RECOMMEND FOR YOUR WORDPRESS
I already recommended some plugins throughout the article, but there are more specific ones that I think are essential and mandatory in every WordPress installation I use. I will talk briefly about each of them (I will not even put links, look on your WordPress site for easy installation).
Redirection or Quick Page / Post Redirect & nbsp; - These 2 plugins are identical, you can choose what you like best, I always used Quick Page, but recently I found Redirection which is more updated. Their goal is to create links that redirect to some other page. In addition to internal links, you can create links on your own domain to redirect affiliate links or hide gigantic links from another site.
Content Egg Pro - I recommend this paid Plugin for those who wish to sell affiliate products, amazon books or products from other affiliate networks. I wrote an article about this plugin, clicking on its name you access our article.
Image Teleporter or Auto Upload Images - The purpose of these plugins is to save an image pasted from the internet directly to your server. This takes away the need for you to save the image on your computer and then upload it. The second plugin is more complete and updated, but I had some compatibility problems.
AddToAny Share Buttons - One of the best free social media sharing plugins I know. Here you can easily configure the floating side social media buttons and at the beginning and end of articles.
Health Check & amp; Troubleshooting - Plugin created by WordPress developers, it creates a trial version of the site for you to disable or change plugins and themes and I discovered what is really causing problems on your site.
Other WordPress settings
There are other personal settings to be made in WordPress. For example, you might want to add an avatar to your account through Gravatar. Just create an account using the same admin email on the Gravatar site. You can also change your default avatar by going to Settings > Discussion.
Another very important thing you should do is enable SSL HTTPS on your website. Everything will depend on the hosting or service you use. There is the famous Let’s Encrypt which is free.
Stay tuned to all settings to define other things such as discussion permissions, time zone, user registration and others. Once you've done all of that, just focus on creating content and disseminating it on social networks.
Of course, to have some feedback on your site we recommend reading our articles on email marketing, SEO and many other more specific articles on WordPress. The purpose of my website is to share my entire journey with websites and how I make a living from just that.
If you liked the article, share it with your friends and leave your opinions in the comments. My name is Kevin and see you next time! Also check out our other content sites like skdesu.com and aprenderpalavras.com to get an idea of how I work with WordPress.