Learning how to setup your website using wordpress correctly is a very essential key element in getting your business going in the right direction. The first thing you will want to do after your website is live is login to the back end of it by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin (Replace the yourdomain.com with your domain) of course.
Settings
Go to the settings, and then click on general settings, fill in the site title as whatever your keyword is, for the domain you just bought. So for example if your domain is howtotrainyourdog.com you would want your site title to be how to train your dog.
Next thing you do is fill in your tagline, your tagline is basically what your site is about and it will show up in the top left of your screen. The wordpress address URL, and the site address URL should already be filled in so there is no need to change it.
Put the new user registration on subscriber unless you want to allow guest blogging on your site, if you don’t know anything about guest blogging, then don’t worry about it for now. Set the time zone to match the one where you live so wordpress can display the correct time and date of your posts.
Set your correct time and date format and also what day of the week your week starts on, after you do all those, click on save changes. Everything in the writing settings is fine, so leave it as is, I am going to skip over the reading settings until we get the pages setup and then I will come back to them.
Discussion Settings
Next go to discussion settings, and check whether or not you want to be notified when another blog or website links to your article.Next thing you need to check is whether or not you want to allow pingbacks and trackbacks. After that check if you would like people to be able to leave comments on blog posts or pages that you add to your site.
Next option down is whether or not the user has to fill out their name and email, and if they need to register to your site to leave a comment. You can check these however you want to, the rest of the options you don’t need to worry about just leave them the way they are. Save your changes and move on to the next area. Nothing should be changed in the media settings, so move on to the privacy settings.
Privacy Settings
Click on the privacy settings and make sure the option of allow search engines to index this site is checked, if it’s not then everything you build on your site won’t be able to get ranked in the search engines.
Save it and move on to the permalink section, go down to where it says post name and check it then in the option below that put the following in there /%postname%/ Save it .
Plug-ins
The next section is plug-ins I am going to list what plug-ins I add to my sites and what I recommend, you can add whatever ones you want. I would just not go too crazy on them because the more you have the longer it takes your site to load.
- All in one SEO Pack– This is probably the No1 plug-in out there that I would recommend. What it does is it takes care of all the SEO on your blog posts and pages you create on your site. All you do is fill in the details of what the post is about, and the title, it takes care of the rest.
- Akismet– This plug-in protects your website from spam comments and trackback spam. This plug-in is at the top of my list
- Cbnet Ping optimizer- Every time you write a new blog post or edit your site your website will ping the search engines causing Google to think you are spamming. What this plug-in does is it stops that from happening by only sending out 1 ping to the search engines. This saves you from being red flagged as a spammer by Google.
- Jetpack- I absolutely love this plug-in, it has a variety of features, it keeps track of all the traffic your website gets and it will display exactly what they typed in, where they came from, and what page they were on the longest. It also tells you what posts or pages are the most visited and what links your visitors clicked on. This plug-in is a must for anyone running a website.
- All in one webmaster- This plug-in is pretty awesome; it simplifies the whole process of verifying your website in Google webmaster tools, along with many more sites that you have the option to verify your site too.
- Add This Social bookmarking- Every site needs to have some kind of social bookmarking plug-in and I thing this one does a great job. You can add any social widget that you want, but you do need to have one.
- Google XML sitemaps- This plug-in generates a Google sitemap for you, which is needed in order for your site to get indexed into the search engines.
Installing a Theme
There are thousands of different themes you can install to enhance the look of your website, anywhere from free themes to a paid theme. There are even theme subscriptions that you can subscribe to, each month to get the latest ones out. I personally don’t think there is that much of a difference in a paid vs. a free theme, except for the fact that a paid theme has a few extra options and they do make your site look more professional.
Whatever theme you choose though is fine, click on appearance, then themes, then install themes, wordpress already has a few themes pre-installed for you but you would still need to activate them. If you want to upload your own theme, click on upload and you can search for your theme and upload it from your computer.
After you get the theme you want, it will ask you to activate it, after you activate it you can check out your site to see how it looks.
Setting up your Pages and building your site structure!!
Now you want to click on Pages, then add new page, make the page title whatever your keyword is, so in our example we used earlier, if your keyword is how to train your dog, then you would use that as your page title. Write a little something in there like coming soon or something, and then publish it.
Now you are going to make another page and call it Blog, leave it blank and publish it, next page is going to be an about me or about us page. Basically what this page does is it lets your readers find out a little more about who you are and why you decided to start a website.
You’re about me or about us page should include the following:
- A good picture of yourself at the top right of your page
- A little bit of background history about you and why you have decided to start a website
- Tell people how passionate you are about the niche that you have chosen to pursue
- Let them know that you are here to help them, the better your about me page is, the more likely they will be to follow your advice and trust you.
The next page should be a privacy policy, this page is required to be displayed somewhere, it’s more like a terms and conditions page. The last page you are going to need for right now is a contact us page, you always want to make it easy for your visitors to be able to contact you in case they have questions.
This page should include your email address that you got with your hosting company, not your personal email. It makes it look more professional to see an email address from your domain hosting company.
Put your name on the page and if you want to, depending on what kind of business you are running you can even include your phone number if you want.
Reading settings (That we skipped over earlier)
Now that we have all our pages setup, I am going to go back to the reading setting that we skipped over earlier. Click on settings, reading settings, and pick a static page then select the first page that you made that had your keyword in it.
This is how you should have your settings for your front page setup.
Make that your front page or your home page, below that where it says posts, select the blog page that you made. Everything else should stay the same, click on save changes and your done.
Now that you have got your site all setup, added some pages, and you have built the site structure, you are good to go. Now you can start writing some content for your website. The wealthy affiliate university is teaching people everyday about how to do stuff like this and so much more.
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I hope this article has gave you some basic knowledge about how to setup your website using wordpress. If you should have any questions about this or you need some help I would love to help you out. Leave your questions or comments below and I will get back to you A.S.A.P Your friend Scott
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