WordPress installation is done! What’s next?
Well, the next thing is some essential settings you need to do after WordPress installation.
In this post, we will tell you how to configure essential WordPress settings to keep your website secure and SEO optimized right from the beginning.
Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
1. Remove WordPress Dummy Content – Page, Post, and Comment
WordPress generates dummy content while installation –
- A post (Hello World)
- A page (Sample Page)
- A comment in the generated post.
The very first thing you should do is to remove this default content.
And you can do this by following the below steps –
(a) Delete WordPress Dummy “Hello World!” Post
Go to Dashboard > Posts > Hello World > Trash
(b) Delete WordPress Dummy “Sample Page”
Go to Dashboard > Pages > Sample Page > Trash
(c) Delete WordPress Dummy Comment
Go to Dashboard > Comments > A WordPress Commenter > Trash
2. Set Language Preference & Your Timezone
You can find these settings under General Settings in the WordPress Dashboard.
Go to Dashboard > Settings > General.
Change timezone to your local timezone to make you publish or schedule posts according to your time.
Similarly, switch to your local language from site language settings.
3. Change Site Title & Description
Changing site title and description is very important as they will appear on Google search results.
To change the site title and description, Go to WordPress Dashboard > Settings > General Settings.
You can also do the same from the customizer settings – Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Blog Info.
4. Change Permalinks Structure
WordPress default permalink structure is not considered to be SEO-friendly.
So, if you want to rank higher on Google, you need to change your permalink settings to make it search engine friendly.
Go to Dashboard > Settings > Permalink.
Select “Post name” from the options and save the settings.
5. Change the WordPress Address and Site Address (www or non-www)
From this setting, you can decide whether to keep the www version or non-www version of your website.
You can keep any of the above versions as it won’t affect your website SEO.
6. Enable/Disable User Registration
If you’re going to have a multi-author website, then you should enable this setting.
Otherwise, we will recommend you to disable the user registration option.
7. WordPress Discussion/Comments Settings
Comment settings are important because people are going to interact with your website via comments.
Go to Dashboard > Settings > Discussion.
You can change settings according to your website requirements and goals.
Check out how we kept our website settings for a reference.
8. WordPress Media Settings
WordPress automatically generates thumbnails of each uploaded image in different sizes.
This will unnecessarily occupy space on your web hosting server.
So to avoid this, Go to Dashboard > Settings > Media.
Set these numbers to zero to avoid unnecessary images.
On the other hand, if you’re aware of the exact thumbnail sizes for your theme, you can add them here for thumbnail, medium, and large images.
9. Setup Primary User Profile
It’s a good practice to set up your profile because these are the details that will get displayed in the author box after each post.
Go to Dashboard > Users > Edit User > Your Profile.
Fill in the details like the first name, last name, email address, website, social profile links, bio, etc.
Over To You
So, this is the complete list of WordPress essential settings that we came up with.
How many of them you already know about?
What other settings would you like to suggest to other WordPress users who are just starting?
Let us know if you have any queries related to the post.
