I’ve Installed WordPress, Now What?

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Once you’ve finally decided to take the leap, install WordPress and pursue Internet domination, a funny thing might happen: you’ll be at a loss for what to do next. Creating a WordPress site that will drive traffic and engage readers will take a lot of work, but it begins with the following simple steps.

Change Your Title and Tagline

There are three key changes you have to make immediately, all of which are all going to be made through the WordPress Admin Dashboard. Choose “General” on the dashboard’s Settings tab. Go in there and give your site a title. Then right below that prompt, enter in your site’s tagline. Take your time coming up with these, but don’t start publishing content, or at least expecting results, until you do.

Set the Time Zone

Then, you need to change the time zone for your site. The ability to do this can be found about halfway down the page in the middle. Either find your time zone or a city you know is in your time zone and WordPress will do the rest.

Pick a Favicon

Save those changes and then address your favicon. This is the tiny icon that shows up next to the title of your site in the browser tab. It plays an essential role in your website’s identity. If you don’t change it, a default image is used, which is no help at all. Pick an image that is relevant and easy to make out.

Change Your Link

Unless you change it, the link for your WordPress site is not very SEO-friendly. In fact, it’s pretty bad.

Go to Settings again and find the Permalink option in the menu. It will provide you with at least a couple new options for your changing the actual link. Generally, your best option will be to choose either the “Post Name” or “Day and Name” options though.

Select Your Reading Settings

In its early days, WordPress focused solely on blogs. These days, though, it can be used to create a conventional website. Of course, you can still add a website to it if you like as well.

In the dashboard menu, you should be able to find the Reading option for your site. If you want to keep things the way they are, like a blog, leave “latest posts” checked. Obviously, this means that when visitors show up, they’ll see whatever you last posted and then older posts in chronological order. However, you can also choose a static page. This will give your readers the same page no matter what day they show up and despite whatever you last posted. Although this will have a huge effect on your website, it’s nothing you can’t undo later, so don’t worry about it too much.

Find a Theme

Finally, add a theme to your WordPress page before taking another step toward drawing attention to it. Without a theme, your site will look just like all the others. All you have to do is visit their free directory to see all your options.

There are countless ways to leverage WordPress toward your dreams of online success. Before you get ahead of yourself though, start with the above.

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