After any WordPress installation, there is a series of steps that I take in order to optimize the site, before I even think about what it will look like.

Remove or edit the Placeholder Content

There is a placeholder post titled ‘Hello World’. DELETE that, or edit it to be your actual first post.

There is a placeholder page called ‘About’. DELETE it or edit it to say what you want it to say.

Delete the user ‘admin’

If you used a one-click installation or had someone do it for you, you might have been given the default user name of ‘admin’. The problem is that hackers know that WordPress sites tend to have a user named ‘admin’ and even worse, the password is sometimes ‘admin’.

This is a huge security risk. You can not actually edit a username, so the solution is to create a new unique username and a more secure password, then DELETE the admin user.

Check your admin Email

Navigate to settings>general. Check the email address there and make sure you enter an email address you will actually check. This is the email used to notify you of comments, problems, etc.

Install and Configure Plugins

WordPress comes with two plugins already included. One should be activated and set-up and the other is a waste of time and should be deleted.

• Askimet – This is the WordPress spam protection. Activate this immediately. Once you do, you will be asked for a WordPress ‘API KEY’. You will need to go to WordPress.com to set-up an account there. Once you do, you will be able to find the ‘API KEY’ on your profile page. Copy it, return to your new site, and paste the ‘API KEY’ into the Askimet settings. You can find the Askimet settings in the admin menu under ‘Plugins>Askimet Configuration’.
• ‘Hello Dolly’ – This is a useless waste of space. Delete it. To say anything more would waste even more space.

When it comes to finding and adding more plugins, there are countless plugins available that can add a lot of capability to your site. Some are just for fun and completely optional, but others are highly recommended for any site and there is a list of plugins that I install on almost every site.

You can see my post about plugins here.

But here are two that shouldn’t be missed:

• All in one SEO Pack
• Google XML Sitemaps

Navigate to the plugins page in the admin section. At the bottom, you will see the ‘Plugin Browser/Installer’. Click on that and you can search for plugins by type or by name. You can then install them with one click right from there.

Fix Permalinks

Each post and page that you create in WordPress has a permanent home called a ‘permalink’. This is simply a permanent (sort-of) URL that you can use to link directly to that post. When you first install and set-up WordPress, it creates URLs based on the ID number that it uses in the databse to keep track of everything. If you look at the URL, it will look something like this: ‘http://mysite.com/?p=1′.

The problem (besides being ugly – hence the name ‘ugly URL’ or ‘ugly permalink’) is that search engines use the URL as one of the most important factors for deciding what a page is about. Wouldn’t it be much better if you wrote a post about an event you just photographed and the URL could be something like ‘http://mysite.com/beverly-hills-wedding/’ instead of ‘http://mysite.com/?p=1′?

This is an easy fix in WordPress.

• In the admin area, navigate to settings>permalinks.
• Under ‘Common Settings’ you will probably see that ‘default’ is checked off.
• Under that is a series of options for more SEO friendly (and reader friendly) URLS.
• ‘Month and Name’ is best for sites with one author.
• ‘Day and Name’ would be better for a multi author site where you might expect tbe publishing a large amount of content.

The difference between ‘Day and Name’ and ‘Month and Name’ is simply that you can’t have duplicate URLS, so if you want a little  more room to allow for potential duplicate titles, use ‘Day and Name’. This would make everyday start fresh, because you are using the day, month and year as part of the URL. The odds of even a big site creating duplicate titles in one day are pretty slim.

What happen if you do create duplicate post titles? WordPress simple puts a ‘-2′, then’-3′ after the title. Nothing breaks. It’s not terrible.But we went through all of this for prettypermalinks that actually mean something and don’t have meaningless numbers. Might as well try to keep it that way.

Add Ping Services

Ping services allow different blog and RSS listing services to be notified when you post new content to your site. The idea is to help get the word out and hopefully drive some traffic to your site. By default, WordPress only lists one ping service – pingomatic. You can find this by navigating to settings>writing. Towards the bottom, you will see a textarea where you can enter ping services and only one is listed – http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. But there are many more ping services out there.

There are two lines of thought:

1. Use a small list of services that in turn ping several more.
2. Directly use the list of all services so that you are not relying on a message to be passed on.

To use a small list of services that will notify others, copy this list and paste it into the ping services area under settings>writing:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

To use a longer list of services to notify directly, copy this list and paste it into the ping services area under settings>writing:

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

FURTHER READING:

• How ping services work – WordPress Ping Services. They also link to this detailed explanation of the two Ping lists.
• My post about plugins.

RECOMMENDATIONS?

I have tried to include all of the suggested steps that I have found over time. If there are any that I missed that could be added to help this be a more complete list, please leave a comment and let me know. I will try to add anything that improves the process.

This Article was written as part of the WpJumpStart System

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Through a series of grid overlays, it is possible to very quickly and easily line up page elements and make view them the way they will be seen in a browser. I personally use this on any original design I do and can not remember the time before I used it. It truly transformed the way I approach web design, sped up my design time, and improved my designs in ways that I did not predict.

Download GridStarter (.zip)

GridStarter ScreenCasts

THE BASIC CONCEPT:

The idea is to base everything on a 960px wide layout which is considered the safe maximum width in order to be visible on the majority of screens. Sure there are widescreens 1920px wide, but most people will not be viewing your site on that big of a screen.

The 960px layouts uses a 10×10 grid and 60×60 grid. The reason for using 60px, rather than 50px or 100px, is that 60px divides evenly into 960px in a number of ways making evenly laid out 2, 4, 6, 8, and 16 column layout possible.

But there are also some 1000px layout options with 50×50 and 100×100 grids.

HOW THIS CAME ABOUT:

I found several posts about using a grid based system for designing sites. Some used 1000px layouts, others 960px. Some have better ways of displaying the information and switching the overlays on and off. Some were justified to the left of the screen and others were centered.

After experimenting with them all, I found myself liking certain aspects of each and thinking that some would be more appropriate in certain situations but that none would fit every situation. Combining several ideas and modifying them to fit the way I work, I now use this ‘StarterGrid.psd’, which has both 960px options and 1000px options. Each set of grids are centered in a widescreen layout allowing us to see both small screens and big screens at once.

I also added some height to the grids I had found and tried to combine the best they each had to offer.

SOURCES / CREDITS:

This is by no means an original concept of mine and I want to give credit where it is do, to the best of my knowledge.

960 grid: Cameron Moll “Gridding the 960″
As far as I can tell, this where the original 960 grid .psd file came from. At the very least, this is where I found it.

Widescreen Approach: www.designified.com
This is where I found the idea of adding the width so we can see it centered on a widescreen monitor. They also added some nice layovers to see the grid over the design in several column options.

Further Reading:

Resources: Great list of grid turorials and resources

Great Grid Tutorial: Turning your grid design into CSS

USAGE:

Since I found my sources offered for free, I am passing it on for free as well. Please continue to share itand improve as as you see fit.

If you come up with any great improvements – please send it back my way!

For tech support or questions, please go to: My GetSatisfaction Page.

Download GridStarter

GridStarter ScreenCasts

GridStarter is now part of the WpJumpStart System

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