WordPress Setup and Maintenance Guide: What to Do After Installing WordPress

You’ve bought hosting and installed your WordPress website and now what? It’s time to log into your dashboard and begin the real setup.

Now that you’ve started a blog, you’re eager to write and grow your site.

However, before you write and publish your first blog post there are several steps you need to take. You’ll need to attend to key settings, add useful tools and set up maintenance systems to ensure your blog runs smoothly and is secure.

This guide to WordPress setup and maintenance will help you get started properly. Get insights into important WordPress blog security, and a WordPress setup checklist to guide your next steps.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.

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Step 1. Configure Your Core WordPress Settings

Your focus at this point of your WordPress setup should be going through the settings. These steps are important as they affect everything from your SEO to your user experience.

This is a core blog foundation activity. Here are the key sections in your WordPress settings that you should be looking at:

Set Your Site Title And Tagline

In your Dashboard, head to Settings/General

• Site Title: This is your blog’s name.
• Tagline: Briefly explain what your blog is about (usually 5 to 7 words maximum)

Change the default tagline as soon as possible. This content appears in browser tabs, search engine results, and various theme settings.

NOTE: Do not touch the settings under WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) as you can cause issues in accessing your website.

Set Your Time Zone And Date Settings

While still in Settings/General, scroll down to Time Zone and Date Format and Time Format.

You want to ensure your time zone is correct because it:

• Ensures your scheduled posts get published at an accurate time
• Makes it easier to get accurate analytics

Set Your Permalink Structure

Permalinks are your blog’s URLs. Most of the time WordPress will default to a messy URL structure. You want a clean one that’s also good for SEO.

In your dashboard, under Settings, head to Permalink Settings.

Make sure your permalink structure settings are set for “Postname.” You want to set this now before you start published blog posts. If you hold off until later, you will have redirection issues.

Review Your Discussion Settings

If you’re planning to allow site visitors to leave comments on your blog posts, set your moderation rules.

You want to reduce your spam and keep your comments section manageable. Review the following sections in discussion settings:

• Default post settings. Best to keep it to only “Allow people to to submit comments on new posts”
• Other comment settings. Recommended you click on:
  • “Comment author must fill out name and email”
  • “Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set”;
  • “Enable threaded (nested) comments” — to reduce how much space comments take up at the bottom of your post
• Before a comment appears. Select “Comment must be manually approved”

Under Comment moderation add any rules or keywords you would like to manage to put comments into queues or to place it automatically into Trash.

When you scroll down, you’ll also see a few more options. You can select if comments include Avatars.

WordPress Dashboard Walkthrough

Check out this walkthrough of what the WordPress dashboard looks like and key things you need to set up:

Step 2: Choose A Theme That Supports Growth

The WordPress theme that you’re automatically provided is most likely not going to work for your blog niche and blog goals. Choosing a WordPress theme that works for long-term growth is perfect at this point.

But your WordPress theme is more than design. It should also focus on:

• Speed
• Mobile usability
• Flexibility
• Overall user experience

Focus On Your WordPress Theme’s Function Before Style

What should you look for in a WordPress theme? While your first inclination is to find one that appeals to you stylistically, determine these key functions first:

• Mobile responsive
• Lightweight build
• Regularly updated
• Compatible with major plugins
• Easy to customize

Look carefully at the documentation, reviews and what options the website designer offers support-wise.

NOTE: I love the lightweight Kadence theme for which you can get child themes from reputable designers such as Restored 316, 17th Avenue Designs, and Studio Mommy.

Customize Your Blog Branding

Once you’ve chosen your blog theme and set it up, your next step in your WordPress setup is your blog’s branding.

For this, update your:

• Logo
• Brand colours
• Typography (fonts)
• Homepage layout
• Navigation menu

You’re a beginner blogger, so you don’t need to have everything looking perfect at this point. Keep it simple!

I recommend you focus most of your effort on making your blog easy to navigate for site visitors. They’ll be impressed you’re making it easy to find information on your site.

PRO TIP: Learn how to set up your navigation menu in WordPress by clicking the Appearance section in the dashboard.

Step 3: Install the Essential Plugins

Your next step of the WordPress setup checklist focuses on what makes this platform so unique and flexible. WordPress plugins have many functions, but for now focus on those for backup, security, performance and SEO.

Plugins provide functionality without needing to code. However, remember not to add too many as you don’t want to slow down your website.

Here are the top WordPress to install:

• SEO. Rank Math SEO (free version) to help with meta titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, redirections, and on-page SEO guidance.
• Updraft Plus. This is a free backup plugin that makes a backup copy of your website content. Very important in case something goes wrong – like your website breaking. Get Updraft Plus and set up your backup schedule today.
• WordPress Blog Security. Wordfence has a good free plugin option that covers things like firewall, malware scanning and login security. This is important for WordPress blog security.
• Performance. You want your website to load fast. This requires an investment into WP Rocket – the easiest caching plugin setup-wise. It speeds up page loading, making for a better site visitor experience. It improves your website for technical SEO.

These are the absolute essentials as you start blogging. Other plugins can come later as you begin publishing and promoting your content.

Step 4: Create Your Core Pages Before Publishing

Before publishing your first blog post, your next step in your WordPress setup is all about your essential pages.

These are your:

• About Page
• Contact Page
• Legal Pages

These pages help your readers understand who you are, how to connect with you, how their information is used on your website, your disclosures and how they can use your content.

Let’s start with your key page that includes your brand positioning.

Setup Your About Page

Your About page should introduce to your readers your niche focus, how you help them and what kind of insights you’ll share with them. It’s also an opportunity to talk about yourself as the blogger and your expertise in the subject matter.

Balance it between professional and personal. Learn more about how to write your About Me page.

Setup Your Contact Page

Make it easy for readers to contact you.

It’s best to include a form on your contact page rather than share your email address. This is so that somebody doesn’t add your main email to a spam list.

As an alternative, you may want to set up a general “info” email, however you may miss out on important emails.

You may also want to include your social media links.

PRO TIP: You may want to set the rules as to what kind of emails you’ll respond to (alert spammers their emails will be deleted and blocked).

Add 3 Key Legal Pages

Adding your legal pages is an important step in your WordPress setup process. Well-written, thorough and up-to-date legal pages protect you from potential, costly lawsuits and fines.

For this, you will need the following pages:

1. Privacy Policy

The privacy policy tells site visitors how you collect their data and what you do with it.

If you’re using email marketing, analytics (e.g. Google Analytics tracking) and affiliate links, you will need to have a Privacy Policy.

2. Disclaimer Page

A disclaimer page shares with your reader about how your blog operates. It protects you legally.

The Disclaimer page is necessary when you’re sharing:

• Recommendations
• Opinions
• Educational content
• Affiliate links
• Sponsored content

This page tells readers that some content may include paid relationships or personal opinions and that their decisions are ultimately their own.

PRO TIP: You can link to your Disclaimer page from other resources you create. For example, I use it in my free lead magnets and any eBooks and courses that I create.

3. Terms & Conditions Page

The Terms and Conditions page tells your site visitors what they can do with the information on your website. These are the rules of your website.

The Terms and Conditions page includes information about:

• Copyright and content ownership
• Rules around comments and user behaviour
• Limitations of liability
• Affiliate disclosures
• General website usage terms

For example, at one point I had somebody illegally copy my blog content and key coaching pages and translate it into Italian. It was still my content, even if it was translated. I made sure to include “no translation” as part of my Terms & Conditions.

Adding the Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions pages may seem like unnecessary in the beginning. However, if you plan to grow your blog into a business, these two additional pages make your website professional. This builds credibility and a positive perception of your blog.

Protect Your Blog Legally

Step 5: Set Up Your Categories and Navigation

Setting up your categories and navigation menu in the beginning helps build your website structure.

This is an important WordPress setup step as it works to improve your site visitor experience as they explore your website.

A good website structure with defined categories and a menu are good for SEO as well. They help search engines understand your niche, topic expertise and content focus.

Setting Up Categories

Your categories should work to support your long-term growth. They are broad topics under your niche.

Aim for 3 to 5 categories to start. Think of them as your core content pillars. You should be able to write more than 10 blog posts per category.

Setting Up Your Navigation Menu

Think like a site visitor and make your navigation menu easy to find your core content.

As a beginner blogger, you can set it up simply with this progression:

• Home
• About
• Blog
• Contact

NOTE: Your legal pages should appear in the footer of your website. In most cases, WordPress themes will have a footer menu. Use this to add links to your legal pages.

Step 6: Set Up Backups From The Start

Website content backups are like an insurance policy. They are an important part of WordPress maintenance.

Why do you need them?

• WordPress plugin updates can conflict with your theme and can break your site.
• Updates can fail.
• Sometimes you’ll make a mistake that can affect how your site works
  

Use the free Updraft Plus plugin to set up automatic backups. With new blogs, it’s ideal to do a weekly backup.

Back it up to your cloud storage such as a Google Drive or Dropbox.

PRO TIP: While your hosting provider may provide a server backup, always have a secondary backup. Don’t procrastinate on this one key WordPress setup activity. You’ll thank me for it later.

Step 7: Secure Your WordPress Blog

Your initial WordPress setup should include a focus on your basic security. Here are the key things you should do as soon as possible when it comes to WordPress blog security:

Strengthen Your Login Security

Use the following to ensure your website’s WordPress dashboard doesn’t experience brute-force attacks:

• Strong passwords
• Two-factor authentication
• Limited login attempts

Use a plugin such as the free Login Lockdown to limit login attempts. Alternately, the Wordfence plugin has the two-factor authentication option.

Remove What You’re Not Using

To reduce vulnerabilities on your website remove:

• Unused themes
• Inactive plugins
• Default content

When you have less cluttering up your website, not only is your dashboard cleaner, it’s less vulnerable to security threats.

Keep Things Updated

Regularly update your website to fix bugs and reduce threats.

Update your:

• WordPress core
• Theme
• Plugins (best to do one at a time to determine what can potentially break your site)

Make regular updates part of your monthly WordPress maintenance.

Step 8: Optimize Your Site Speed From Day One

Ensuring your website is optimized for speed from the beginning is a gamechanger for growth.

Your site visitors don’t want to spend minutes waiting for your website to load. To improve site loading speed do the following:

• Optimize large images. Learn how to optimize them manually with smaller file sizes and formats (like JPG or WebP) or use a plugin such as Short Pixel to automatically compress and optimize them for you.
• Use caching. WP Rocket is my recommended caching plugin choice as it’s easy to setup and does speed up your website load speeds.
• Avoid bloated plugins. Some plugins such as Jetpack are “bloated” with many features which you may not need. They can slow down your site. Delete plugins you aren’t using or find alternatives that are light and fast.

Small steps like these can have a positive impact how fast your website loads.

Your Ongoing WordPress Maintenance Routine

Now we move onto the next part of the WordPress setup and maintenance guide: the ongoing upkeep of your blog.

Website maintenance keeps it healthy, reducing slow webpages, and unexpected breaks.

Weekly WordPress Maintenance Activities

Here’s a list of weekly WordPress maintenance tasks:

• Update plugins
• Update your theme (as needed)
• Ensure your site is backing up
• Moderate comments
• Check for issues

NOTE: The best way to check if your website has functional issues is to open it in an Incognito/Private version of your browser. This ensures you see a version that’s freshly loaded (uncached in your browser).

Quarterly WordPress Maintenance Tasks

Aside from weekly website checkups, make these seasonal WordPress maintenance activities a priority:

• Review themes and plugins
• Remove anything unnecessary (plugins, old themes, templates)
• Test backups (do a manual backup request)
• Review site security settings and logs

This doesn’t take much time (maximum 20 minutes) but these can greatly help keep your website running smoothly.

Your WordPress Setup Checklist

Before publishing your first blog post, make sure you have these WordPress setup completed:

• Site title updated
• Tagline updated
• Permalinks set
• Theme installed
• Core pages created
• Plugins installed
• Backups scheduled
• WordPress blog security settings configured
• Navigation menu created
• Categories organized
• Images optimized
• Caching setup
• Updates checked
• Unnecessary plugins removed

Once you’ve checked off all these activities, you’re ready to start blogging.

Have WordPress Working Well So You Can Grow Your Blog

The way you set up your blog now will have an impact on how easy it is to grow, maintain and protect it. WordPress is extremely flexible, but you have to be responsible for it’s upkeep.

This period after starting your new blog is one where you focus on building it properly. Take your time to build a content system that works long-term. Your first blog post can wait!

You’ve got a WordPress setup checklist to help guide you, and you know what you need to do for WordPress maintenance. You’re set!

Learn more about core first month activities after starting a new blog.

Researching about WordPress and ready to start your blog? Take this free course:

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