Essential WordPress settings- 47+ Things to do after Installing WordPress

Essential Settings After Installing WordPress- Free Checklist

Looks like you you have just installed WordPress and are thinking about what to do next.

WordPress is the most popular and user friendly CMS that powers 40% of the web.

And because of what it has to offer, many users think that after the installation is complete, the site is ready for publishing content and promoting products.

However, that is not the case.

It is important to know that there is a huge difference between just starting a site and starting it the right way.

The right way includes configuring various settings in WordPress so that you have a strong foundation to build on from DAY 1.

On top of that it will ensure that you will have more time to focus on the important tasks rather than finding solutions to every little problem you face on your way.

Keeping this is mind, in this article we have prepared a list of 47+ most important settings that you need to configure after installing WordPress.

And if you follow this tutorial till the end then you will have a site that will be ready for you to publish content.

Also, just to make things a bit more easier, we have created a PDF checklist of all the settings in this tutorial. This document will ensure that you are on the right track and do not miss out on any of the important settings.

Things to do after installing WordPress

First things first, every WordPress install comes with a default post, page, comment, themes, plugins and other stock settings.

While some of these are useful, the others are not so useful and you need to remove them.

But before you start removing anything, it is important that you install the SSL certificate first. Most web hosting companies these days offer free SSL certificates with their plans and you can configure them with just a click of a button.

See- How to install SSL on SiteGround

Also, some of the settings of this list are easy to configure while others are a bit technical. We have tried our level best to explain each step in detail and in case you are still facing difficulty then you can check our Blog Set Up Service.

Having said that, lets start the tutorial. Below are all the settings we have covered you can jump to the once you like by clicking the links

Check for Updates

Before you start deleting or configuring anything, the first thing you have to do is check for updates.

When you install WordPress, there are chances that a plugin, theme or even core might have received an update and before you start making any changes, it is important that you update every element.

In case you are wondering what is included in thee updates and why is doing this necessary then let me tell you, these updates at times include bug fixes, security patches, new or improved features and more.

It is very important that you keep all the components updated or else it can lead to a security or a compatibility issues.

Having said that,

To check for updates you will have to visit the updates section which is under Dashboard in your WordPress admin.

When you click updates, it will you show you all the components of your site that needs to be updated and you just have to select them and then click Update.

Remove dummy blog post

As mentioned above , every WordPress fresh install comes with a dummy blog post titled “Hello World” and a comment.

The reason behind including this dummy blog post and comment is to ensure that some is visible on your site after you install WordPress.

This way you will get an idea about the design and at the same time the site will not appear broken or blank.

To delete this demo blog post and comment, you need to navigate to Posts in your WordPress dashboard and it will show you the dummy post.

Now, you need to hover your mouse pointer on it and it will show you the Trash button under the title of the post.

Click Trash and it will remove the demo post along with the comment.

Delete Demo Page

Unlike the demo blog post, every WordPress installation comes with 2 pages

• Privacy policy
• Sample page

As you can see the Privacy Policy page is not published and is listed under Drafts.

Also, there is another page titled “Sample page” in the listing which is published and this is the dummy page that we will be deleting.

This means we will not be removing the Privacy Policy page as we will need it later. However, we do not need the Sample Page and we will be deleting it.

To delete the Sample Page you need to click Pages in your WordPress dashboard.

Doing this will show you all the pages that you have created. Now, you have to hover your mouse pointer on the Sample Page and it will show you the Trash button.

You need to click Trash to delete the Sample Page.

Change the default username

Hosting companies have made the WordPress installation process super easy. However, this comes at a price where your site is not fully secure.

What I mean by fully secure is when you install using the one click install, what it does is it uses your email’s user name as your default username in WordPress.

To understand this lets say you have used [email protected] to purchase the hosting and then later on you went ahead and installed WordPress.

What happens here is, it picks up “Joe” as the default username for the admin user in WordPress.

This can be a real threat to the security as anyone can easily guess Joe as the username and you need to change this asap.

Now, if you visit your admin profile then you will notice that the username can’t be changed.

And for this there is a workaround which is you need to create a new administration account with a username that can’t be guessed easily.

After creating, you need to login using the new credentials and delete the old one.

In case your website has content attributed to the default admin then you will have to transfer it to the new user.

Add a new Editor user

Editor is a role in WordPress that has access to editing, publishing and deleting content (Posts and pages).

And on top of that it can moderate and reply to comments as well. On the other hand, a user with this role does not have access to any administrative powers.

Keeping this in mind, you can create a new user with Editorial Level access using which you only post content and interact with the readers.

It adds an additional level of security as no one easily guess the user with the administrative access.

To add another user in WordPress, you need to head over to Users in your WordPress dashboard and then click Add New.

Doing this will show you a user registration form and here you need to add all the required details.

Once you are done filling the form, the last setting that you will see is the Role.

Here you need to select the role as Editor (if its you) or author (for more security) using the drop down and click Add New User.

After this you will receive an email from WordPress regarding the registration and all you have to do is click the confirmation link.

And that’s it you have successfully create a user with Editorial level access.

Reset your Password

Before we dive into this section, let me tell you a lot of people log into their websites via the hosting provider rather than the WordPress login page.

And there are a couple of the reasons behind this they don’t

• remember the password they have selected during installation process.
• know about the WordPress login page.

We completely understand that if you are starting out and have no experience then things can get a little overwhelming and you can miss out on a few details.

Also, many a times users select a very simple and easy to remember passwords and this can compromise the security of the website.

Keeping this is mind, the password has to be strong and must be a mix of alphabets, numbers and special characters.

To change the password and make your site more secure you need to visit Profile under Users in your WordPress dashboard.

Doing this will take to your profile and there you need to scroll to the bottom where you will find Account Management with an option to Set New Password.

On clicking this, it will show you a strong password generated by WordPress.

Either you can use this password or enter your own in the box and click Update Profile to save the changes.

Complete user profile

While browsing the internet, you may have seen a box at the end of the posts containing information about the author such as

• Bio
• Profile picture
• Socials

Once your site starts getting traffic you will notice that people would like to connect with you on a personal level and this information will give them an opportunity to know you a bit better.

Also, it is important to know if you do not update your profile in WordPress then it automatically displays your username instead of your name.

And you don’t want that.

Updating a profile is very simple and for this your need to visit Profile under Users in your WordPress dashboard.

On clicking Profile it will take you to your profile page where you can enter information about yourself such as

• First Name
• Last Name
• Nickname
• Display Name
• Website
• Socials
• Bio

And more.

Provide as much information as you can and then Update the Profile.

Upload Gravatar

While completing your profile, you might have seen an option just below Biographical info known as profile picture.

The weird part about this image is that the space is empty and it does not let you upload a picture.

And this is where Gravatar comes to your rescue.

Gravatar is a free online avatar hosting service by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

For you to use this service, you will have to create an account then add your email associated with your WordPress user profile and upload an image.

WordPress uses this image everywhere on its network when you comment or publish articles using this email address.

This means the profile pics that you see in the Author box and comment section is from this service.

To create an account on Gravatar, you need to visit Gravatar.com and click Sign in on the top right.

When you click Sign In, it will take you to the login page where you can Sign in to your existing WordPress.com account using the services listed.

In case you do not have a WordPress account then you need to click “Create an Account” and doing this will take you to a new page where you can create a new account using

• Any email service
• Google Account
• Apple account

Once the account is created, you need to Sign In to Gravatar and there you will see an option to upload an image at the bottom.

After you are done uploading this image will appear in Profile Picture in your User Profile.

Change Site Title

After deleting the demo post and sample page, the next step in the process is to change the Site Title.

As the name suggests, Site Title is the title of your site and can be seen at prominent places on your website or blog such as

• The browser tab if you are using your recent posts page as the home page.

• On the WordPress dashboard admin panel

• Main Navigation and footer if enabled

Apart from this Site Title being one half of the Title tag, plays an important role in letting the search engines and people know about your brand

Keeping this is mind, the Site Title can be something descriptive and must include the name of your brand.

During the WordPress installation process you might have already selected the Site Title which in most cases is the name of the brand.

And to change it, you need to visit General under Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

There you will see the first option lets you add or change the site title of your website.

Here all you have to do is enter the desired title and Save the changes.

See- How to change Site Title in WordPress

Change Tagline

As mentioned above, Site Title is one half of the title tag of your website if you are using blog posts page as home page and the second half is Tagline.

This means when you combine the Site Title and Tagline, it collectively makes the title of your website or blog.

Keeping this in mind, the tagline needs to be something short and descriptive that lets both the people and search know about your website.

Just like the Site Title, Tagline can be seen at a few places on your site such as

• Browser’s tab in which the website is opened

• Main navigation and footer if placed

It is important to know on most sites you might be easily able to locate the Tagline as it can be both hidden and missing.

Having said that,

If during the WordPress installation process you haven’t configured the Tagline then WordPress adds a default tagline which is “Just Another WordPress Site”.

And to change this, you need to navigate to Settings in your WordPress dashboard and then click General.

Doing this will show you the option to add or change the Tagline which is just below the Site Title.

Here you will just have to enter the Tagline that you like and save the changes.

Set up Preferred URL

Once you have changed the Site Title and Tagline, the next setting that you will come across is

• WordPress address (URL)
• Site Address (URL)

As the name suggests, WordPress address is the location where all the WordPress related files of your website are stored such as core files, themes , plugins and more.

And Site Address is the URL that people type in the browser address bar to visit your website.

For example, if you type in https://bloggingunplugged.com in the address bar it will take you to the home page of this blog.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that in most cases both of these URL’s will be the same.

However, if some parts of your site are not using WordPress then these URL’s will be different.

In simple words, if WordPress is installed in some other directory then these URL’s won’t be the same.

Now that you understand the difference between these URL’s, its time you select a preferred URL.

While browsing the internet you may have come across 2 types of links

• With www

• Without www

Technically speaking both of these structures are different from each other yet they serve the same purpose.

It is up to you to decide which URL structure you want to go with. Personally speaking, without www looks much cleaner and that’s why we are using that.

However, here the decision is entirely yours.

Once you have decided, the next step is to change it and for that you need to navigate to Settings and then select General.

In General WordPress settings below the Site Title and Tagline you will find the WordPress and Site Address.

Here all you have to do is enter the preferred URL and then save the changes.

It is important to know both these URL’s must include https:// in the beginning.

Change Administration Email Address

First things first, Site administration email is the one where WordPress will send you all the important notification emails such as

• Comment moderation
• User registration
• Auto-updates
• Security alerts

and more.

This email is very different from an admin user email. However, when you use the infamous 1 click or automatic install, WordPress will use the same email address that you have used to buy hosting as both Site admin and admin user.

In case you are think why you should change this then below we have listed a few reasons.

• In most cases, the email address used are from free service like Gmail or Yahoo and you might want to change that to something branded.
• As mentioned above site administration email serves a very different purpose than an admin user email and hence has to be different.

Keeping this in mind, to change the Site administration email you need to visit General settings in your WordPress dashboard.

And there you will see the option to change the administration email address.

Once you have located the option, you will have to add the desired email and save the changes.

WordPress will send you an email regarding the change and after a successful confirmation, the new address will become active.

Configure Membership options

Membership option in WordPress often gets directly related to multi-author blogs or a blog that accepts guest posts.

However, there is a lot more that can do using this setting such as

• Creating members only resource page
• Sell exclusive products to existing members
• Sell/ host free digital products such as ebooks, courses, videos, webinars and more.

Keeping this in mind, you can easily turn your website into a full blown online business or a community using this.

If your plans are to create such a site then you can enable this option and select a default role using the drop down.

However, if that is not the case then you will have to disable this option.

To disable the membership option, the first step is to visit the General settings in WordPress dashboard and uncheck “Anyone can register” option.

And that’s it you have successfully disabled user registration in WordPress.

Select preferred Site Language

Not everyone is a native English speaker and that is why to make WordPress more accessible, it supports various languages.

This means if you want to create a website or a blog using WordPress and you are fully comfortable with English then you can change the language of your WordPress installation in just one click.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that when you select a preferred language, it will only translate the backend and not the content.

In case you have published content in some other language and want to translate it then you will have to use a plugin for that.

Having said that,

To change the preferred site language, the first step is to visit General settings in your WordPress dashboard.

Once there you need to locate the Site Language settings.

To change the language of your WordPress install all you have to do is click the drop down and select the language of your choice.

And then save the settings.

Select Time Zone, Date and Time Format

After selecting the preferred site setting, the next 3 settings you will come across are

• Timezone
• Date Format
• Time Format

These settings are really as important as a lot of backend process in WordPress depend on the timezone you select.

For example, if you want to schedule a post or a backup in WordPress you will have to select a date and time. In case the correct timezone is not selected then it can lead to a post being published at a wrong time and this can cause confusion.

As you already know, WordPress is a widely used CMS which means anyone can download and use it, no matter which language you speak or which country or place you come from.

And because of this it supports all the timezones, date and time formats and allows you to change these with just a click of a button.

It is important to know Timezone is a setting that is often missed by many and later it causes issues.

And you don’t want that.

To change the Timezone in WordPress you need to head over to General settings in WordPress where you will find the Timezone settings.

Once here all you have to do is click the drop down menu and it will show you all the timezones. You need to choose one depending on your preference and then save the changes.

As we all come from different background, there are chances that you may not be comfortable with the default date and time formats.

Keeping this in mind, WordPress lets you easily select your preferred Date and Time format with just one click.

You will find these settings just below the timezone and one you make the changes it will show you the preview just below it.

Once you have chosen your preferred Date and Time format, click Save changes to save the changes you have made.

Tweak the Discussion settings

As you know spam is the biggest problem on the internet and it is important that you take care of it from the beginning.

Even though we will be installing an anti-spam plugin, disabling HTML in comments and removing the website field still you will notice some comments that you do not want to approve on your blog.

And for this you will have to configure the Discussion Settings in WordPress.

Using these settings you can control everything related to comments on your site ranging from moderation to its display.

Note– We will be sharing the settings that we use on all our blogs. Its up to you to change them as per your requirements.

To change the Discussion settings in WordPress, the first step is to visit Settings in the dashboard and then click Discussions.

On doing this, it will show you all the Discussion settings where the first section lets you control the Default Post Settings.

Here you need to uncheck the first 2 options as

• The first option will notify other blogs about you linking to them and mostly such notifications are either marked spam or deleted.
• The second option does just the opposite of it as it displays a notification in your comments section whenever you internally link to any other published article on your site. Also, it will display the notifications when other blogs link to you. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks.

The next section that you will see in the Discussion settings lets you control how comments appear on your site including the basic requirements for commenting.

Here you will have to uncheck “Automatically close comments on posts older than 28 days and this will allow the visitors to comment whenever they want.

After this, the next settings allows you to manage email notifications.

And we will leave this setting as it is.

The last setting that you will come across in the Discussion settings lets you control the comment moderation policy.

Personally speaking, we have selected both the options as we do not want any spammy comment to sneak out and get published.

Once you are done till here, the last step is to Save the changes and that’s it you have successfully set up discussion settings in WordPress.

Select the Permalink

While browsing the internet you might have come across different URL structures such as

• With post id / random characters in the end

https://example.com/?p=123

• Including a date

https://example.com/2021/02/1/post-name

• Including numbers

https://example.com/post-name/123

• With categories

https://example.com/category-name/post-name

• Plain and simple

https://example.com/post-name

Depending on your preference, WordPress lets you choose a permalink structure for your site.

Before we move forward, it is important to know URL’s play an important role in SEO which means the right structure has to be selected from the beginning or it can be a bit of a chore if you want to change it later.

Keeping this in mind, we prefer simple and straight forward URL structure as it gives user the exact idea about what to expect from the page.

For example the URL of this page is

https://bloggingunplugged.com/essential-wordpress-settings

And just by looking at it gives you a very clear idea about the contents of the page.

To change / choose a Permalink structure you need to visit Settings and then click Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard.

This will show you all the Permalink templates provided by WordPress including an option to create a custom structure.

Here you need to select Post Name (this is the one we use and recommend) and then click Save Changes.

Delete Unwanted Plugins

During the installation process in some hosting companies you might have encountered a step where you are asked if you want to increase the functionality of your site using plugins.

And depending on your selection, the plugins that are generally installed are

• WPForms
• MonsterInsights
• OptinMonster

Apart from there every fresh WordPress install comes with some other pre-installed plugins such as

• Akismet Anti-spam
• Hello Dolly
• Jetpack
• Bluehost (if you are hosted on Bluehost)

Out of these plugins only a few of them are useful. And that is why it is recommended that you remove them as they take up storage space.

The plugins that you will be removing are

• Hello Dolly
• Jetpack
• Bluehost

To delete these plugins, the first step is to navigate to Plugins inside your WordPress dashboard and click installed plugins.

It will show you all the plugins that are installed on your site.

Once there you will have to deactivate the plugin first by clicking the Deactivate button below it.

After the plugin is deactivate you see a Delete button and click it will delete the plugin from your site.

You will have to delete all the unnecessary plugins mentioned above one by one. And that’s it you have successfully removed all the unused plugins from your site.

Install Anti-Spam plugin

Spam is something that you are already familiar with and it is the curse of the internet.

It follows you everywhere be it on social media, your inbox or your blog’s comment section and if you do not take care of this problem in its initial stages, it can go out of hand pretty quickly.

After publishing your first few blog posts you will notice comments on your articles that have nothing to do with your site or its content containing links to spam sites.

These comments are not from actual visitors but from bots and if not filtered from Day 1 then you can end up losing valuable comments and feedback from real users.

To help you with this you need an anti-spam plugin known as Akismet.

Akismet is one of the most popular anti-spam plugin in the WordPress ecosystem and is created and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

This plugin comes pre-installed in WordPress and is free to use.

In case the plugin is not installed or you have accidentally deleted it then you can install it by going to the built-in free WordPress plugin repository inside your WordPress dashboard.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, the next step is to visit Akismet.com and login using your WordPress.com account and generate an API key.

After generating an API key you just have to add it in the Akismet settings and the plugin will automatically take care of the spam for you.

In case you have already received a few comments and you don’t think these are from actual users then you can go to the comments and click Check Spam button on top.

When you click this button, Akismet will check all the unapproved comments for spam and will filter them out.

Aksimet is a plugin that we use on every site of ours and we recommend you used it as well.

Set up automatic backups

Improving a website is a never ending process and during your online journey your will find yourself making changes to your site for

• Improving user experience
• Better design
• Adding new functionality

And more.

It is important to know before you make any such changes you must take a backup and the reason behind this is safety and security.

When you make changes to your site, there are chances that things might not go as per plan resulting in you losing data or having a broken site in the worst case scenario.

And you don’t want that.

It is important to know several hosting companies these days offer free backup service with their plans and in case your site is hosted on any such plans. However, we will still suggest you get a backup solution for yourself just to be safe and in control.

Having said that,

For taking backups of your site we recommend you use UpdraftPlus plugin.

UpdraftPlus is one of the best backup plugin in the industry and is available in both free and premium version.

The free version is more that enough for you if you are starting out as it lets you schedule automatic backups and allows you to take manual backups with just a few clicks.

Using this plugin you can store your data in Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, S3 and more.

We use this plugin on all of our sites and highly recommend using it.

Moving forward,

To install UpdraftPlus plugin, you need to go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and then click Add New.

This will take you to the free plugin repository where you will have to search for UpdraftPlus.

Once you find the plugin, install and activate it.

To enable automatic backups, you need to navigate to UpdraftPlus Backups in Settings.

Doing this will take you to UpdraftPlus dashboard. There you can click Backup Now to take a complete backup of your site.

And for enabling automatic backups, you need to click the Settings tab and it will show you all the UpdraftPlus settings.

Here you need to change the File backup schedule and Database backup schedule to Daily or any other duration and retain backups to 1.

In the next step you need to select a remote storage location from the list and allow UpdraftPlus to store data.

After this the last step is to select the files that you want to include in the backup and once done click Save changes.

Install a cache plugin

In the current scenario where all the information is available on your finger tips, you cannot afford to have a slow loading site.

It will negatively impact both the user experience and revenue. On top of that there are chances that your site may not perform well on search as it is a ranking factor.

To help you with this you need a powerful cache plugin. Before we dive into this, it is important we discuss what a website cache does.

When a user visits your site, a request is generated by the browser which is complete by the server by serving the requested page.

This process can take some time depending on various factors. However, if you are using a cache plugin then it stores a copy of your site in the temporary storage and hence the request can be completed quickly improving the loading time.

There are plenty of cache plugins available in the WordPress ecosystem and we recommend you install WP Rocket.

WP Rocket not just a cache plugin but a performance optimization plugin as it includes features like database cleanup.

See- What is WP Rocket

This is another plugin that we use on all our sites and below is a screenshot of our page speed.

This plugin is very beginner friendly and can be easily installed and configured on any site with just a few clicks.

As far as the numbers go over 1.5 million websites use WP Rocket to improve site speed and you shouldn’t miss out on this.

Image Optimization plugin

While browsing the Facebook groups, you might have often seen people posting screenshots of their sites page speed.

A common trend you will notice among all these sites is the images used are heavy and not compressed.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that there is plenty of advice available in the market regarding starting a website. But none really talks about the role of image sizes.

As you know, your website is made up of various files and these are stored on a server.

When you constantly upload heavy image file on the site, it takes up all the space and as a result of this you will notice frequent downtimes or in the worst case scenario you will have to pay more money to upgrade your plan.

Also, it is important to know on a web page media is the heaviest element and takes more time to load than text.

In case your images are not compressed then you will have slow loading pages and you don’t want that.

To tackle this situation you will have to compress image file.

Often when we talk about image compressions, it is related to loss of quality and that is why to help you with this we recommend using Optimole.

Optimole is a image compression plugin by Themeisle that will help you reduce the size of the images automatically.

This means the only thing you have to do is install the plugin and it will take care of the rest.

Optimole is available in 2 versions both free and paid. If you are starting out then the free version will be more that enough for you.

Personally speaking, we use Optimole on our site and it is a very superior plugin as compared to the others.

Install a security plugin

When it comes to securing your WordPress site one of the first things you have to do is install a security plugin.

There are plenty of security plugins available in the WordPress ecosystem and below are the ones that we recommend.

• Wordfence
• iThemes
• Sucurri

For this tutorial we will be using Wordfence. This plugin is one of the best security plugins and gives you access to features such as.

• Web application firewall
• Malware scanner
• Login page captcha
• Two Factor authentication
• Block logins for compromised credentials

and more.

This plugin is very easy to use and after installing we will be configuring some of its features later in this article.

Having said that,

To install Wordfence, you need to head over to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and click Add New.

Doing this will show you all the free plugins that you can install on your site and here you need to search for Wordfence.

Once found you need to click Install and then activate the plugin.

On activation, Wordfence will ask you for a valid email address to send security related information. Here you need to provide an email that you check regularly.

And that’s it you have successfully activate Wordfence and it will automatically start blocking any malicious traffic or attempts.

Remove unused themes

Just like the plugins, a fresh WordPress install comes with a bunch of themes by WordPress such as

• Twenty Twenty One
• Twenty Twenty
• Twenty Nineteen

In case during the WordPress installation process you have select a theme then that would come pre-installed and activated as well.

It is important to know that you can only activate a single theme on your website and this means rest of them will be of no use.

Also, the free themes by WordPress are very basic and in most cases people will use some other theme that fits their requirement.

Keeping this in mind, it is recommended that you keep one theme from the default ones as a backup for safety reasons and remove the rest.

For example, on Blogging Unplugged we are using Kadence and we have removed Twenty Twenty and Twenty Nineteen. But still have Twenty Twenty One installed as a backup

Having said that,

Once you have installed a new theme, the Twenty Twenty One theme will serve as a backup for in case anything does not go as planned in the future.

In case you are wondering which themes we recommend then below are a few options.

• Kadence
• Astra
• Genesis

All of these themes are beginner friendly, SEO and performance optimized to get you started on the right track.

We will be covering theme installation next in this tutorial.

Moving forward,

To delete an unused WordPress theme, you need to go to Appearance in your WordPress dashboard and click Themes.

On clicking themes, it will show you all the themes installed on your WordPress site.

Here you will have to click a theme that you want to delete and it will show you the Delete button in the bottom.

Click Delete and a popup will appear asking if you want to delete the theme. You need to click OK and the theme will be deleted.

Repeat this process until you are left with just your choice of theme installed and a backup theme for safety.

Select and Install a Theme

You must have heard the famous quote ” The first impressions matter” and that is exactly the case when it comes to the visual appeal of your site.

When a user lands on your site, the first thing they see is the design of your site.

In case the layout is a little messed up or color combination is a bit off or may be the font sizes is too small to read then there are chances that the visitor might leave your site quickly and never come back.

And you don’t want that. Instead you want the users to spend the most time on your site and engage.

Apart from the visual appeal, you want your site to be fast loading and secure as well. This means you need a theme that is

• Well coded
• Light weight
• Secure
• Search engine optimized
• Compatible with other plugins
• Well maintained

Keeping this is mind it is important to know, there are plenty of free and premium themes available in the WordPress ecosystem and testing each of them is not really possible.

And that is why to make this process a bit easier for you we have listed a few themes below.

• Kadence
• Astra
• GeneratePress
• Genesis by StudioPress

These themes are available in both free and premium versions except Genesis is only premium.

Also, we have used or are using all of these themes on our sites and are pretty satisfied with the performance, appearance and support.

Having said that,

Once you have shortlisted a theme, the next step is to head over to Appearance and then click Themes in your WordPress dashboard.

On doing this, it will show you all the themes installed on your WordPress site and here you need to click the Add New button on top and it will show you all the free themes.

In case you want to install a free theme then you can search for it using the search box.

And once found you need to hover your mouse pointer over it and it will show you the option to install and activate it.

On the other hand, if you are installing a premium theme then you need to first download the theme files from the provider.

And then upload them on your site by clicking the Upload Theme button.

Remember some of the premium themes might have a plugin associated with them and in that case you will have to install that particular plugin.

Once you have installed the theme, the process isn’t over yet and to perform this step correctly, you will have install and activate the child theme.

A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits the features and functions of a parent theme. However, when a parent theme is updated, the changes, modifications and customizations that you have made are not lost.

This step is often missed by many new bloggers causing them to losing all changes when the parent theme is updated.

Having said that,

Every theme mentioned above comes with a child theme that can be downloaded using the links below.

• Kadence
• Astra
• GeneratePress

As you can see Genesis is not on the list as the theme you will buy is already a child theme and it wouldn’t work without installing the Genesis framework.

To install a child theme you need to follow the exact same process mentioned above where you will have to go to Appearance in your WordPress dashboard and click Themes.

After clicking Themes, it will show you the Add New button on top.

On clicking this button, it will show you an option to upload the child theme zip file that you have just downloaded.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that the child theme will not work without the parent theme. Hence, it is required that you do not delete the main theme.

Update Media Settings

Images are an important part of any websites as it makes a block of text interesting to read.

However, there is another side to this story which is media being the heaviest element on a page can cause loading related issues if not optimized properly.

A vital part of image optimization process is the dimensions of the image and this is often overlooked.

WordPress comes with predefined image sizes and when you upload an image it automatically creates several copies of it.

It is important to know that when you create a post or a page and upload images, it lets you select an image size based on this settings.

Also, at times these sizes are used by theme developers to display images in various part of the theme.

This means when you upload an image, it can appear blurry or cropped based on the acceptable sizes by the theme.

Therefore, it is recommended that you go through the theme documentation once before changing these dimensions.

To change the media settings, the first thing that you have to do is check your themes documentation for recommended images sizes.

Once you have this detail, the next step is to head over to Media under Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

Clicking Media will show you all the media related settings and here you need to add the dimensions as per the themes documentation.

After changing the values you need to save the changes you have made.

And that’s it you have successfully changed media settings in WordPress. Before we move to next setting it is important to know, in case the Uploading files option is disabled then you need to enable it to organize image folders into month and year basis.

Add a Logo

Let’s start off this section with a few examples.

• Which brand do you associate with a fruit- Apple
• Which brand comes into mind when you see a right swoosh- Nike
• Which brand is associated with 4 boxes- Microsoft
• Which brand comes to mind when you see just the letter f- Facebook
• Which brand do you think of when you see a hand with raised index finger reminding you of a click- Blogging Unplugged

Each of these logos have a story behind them and people can associate and differentiate these brands from the others just by looking at the logo.

Logo of your site plays an important role in the branding as it is an image that people will associate with you and your site with.

On top of that it is displayed at very key locations on your WordPress site such as the main navigation or header and at times on footer.

In case you have no graphic design experience and are thinking how can you come up with a concept and then create one.

The answer is simple as you are starting out your logo can be as simple as your brand name in fancy fonts and you can use a free graphic design tool like Canva to create it.

Canva is a very useful tool and will come in really handy throughout your online journey. Personally speaking, we use this tool on a daily basis to create various graphics for our site. And it comes with pre-built templates for everything including logos that helps speed up the process.

Having said that,

Once you have created a logo and want to upload it, the first step is to navigate to Appearance and then click Customize in your WordPress dashboard.

When you click Customize, it will take you to the WordPress customization settings where you will have to locate Site Identity.

It is important to know, there can be more settings on this list based on the theme you are using and that is why the list might look a little different.

All in all you have to find the Site Identity settings.

Once you have found Site Identity, you need to click it.

And the first option that you will come across lets you upload the logo.

After you are done uploading the logo, click Publish to save the changes you have made.

Add Favicon

When you visit a website you may have noticed a small icon / logo on the browser tab that distinguishes it from all the other ones opened.

The icon that is displayed is known as Favicon and it plays an important role in building your site brand and identity.

This is another important setting that often missed by many new webmasters and if that is the case with your site then you will either see a WordPress logo or your themes logo on the browser tab.

It is important to know favicon is displayed at a very critical spot on the browser and it can’t be missed. Also, if the user has multiple tabs opened in the browser then it helps them find your site easily which is a huge plus.

Keeping this in mind, if you are wondering what should be the favicon of your site then the answer is simple, your site’s logo or your image if you already have an established personal brand.

In case you are thinking about creating one then you can create it using Canva which is a free online graphic design tool.

Having said that,

To upload a favicon, you need to visit Appearance in your WordPress admin and then click Customize.

Doing this will take you to the Customization menu and there you need to click Site identity.

When you click Site Identity, it will show you various identity and branding related settings and the option will let you upload a site icon or favicon.

As you can see, the site icon has to be square and at least 512 x 512 px and you need to keep these dimensions in mind when creating it.

Once you are done uploading the favicon, the last step is to click Publish to save the changes you have made.

See- How to add a favicon in WordPress

Install an SEO plugin

Everyone wants to rank higher on search engines and get that massive influx of traffic and sales.

The only way your site can rank on the first page of the search engines is by optimizing the site for it.

It is important to know, there are various factors that impact the performance of your site on search and on-page and on-site SEO are an important part of it.

On-site SEO is basically optimizing your site as a whole for search engines and one page is for the individual pages and posts.

To help you with this and make the optimization process much more easier, you need to install an SEO plugin.

For this we recommend you install any one of the plugins mentioned below.

• Rank Math
• Yoast

Both these are amongst the best SEO plugins for WordPress and are available in both free and premium versions.

We recommend you go for the free version of either Rank Math or Yoast and that will be more that enough for you.

Personally speaking, we use the free version of Rank Math on our sites as it offers more features than Yoast.

Having said that,

To install Rank Math, you need to navigate to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and then click Add New.

This will take you to the free WordPress plugin repository where you need to search for Rank Math.

Once found all you have to do is click Install Now and then activate it to install the plugin.

It is important to know that the installation process isn’t complete yet as you have to configure it properly before you start using it.

For this we will be soon releasing a tutorial.

Having said that,

If you want to install Yoast SEO then the first few steps are the same as above where you have to go to Plugins and then select Add New.

This time instead of Rank Math, you need to search for Yoast.

And once found you need to click Install Now and then activate the plugin.

Again the process, isn’t over here yet and you will have to configure Yoast SEO plugin properly in order to use it. We will release a tutorial about it soon.

Install a Pinterest optimization plugin

Pinterest is a social media – image search engine that you cannot miss out on when starting out.

Just like Google, it has a potential to drive massive amount of traffic to your website or blog easily and in no time.

Before we dive into the plugin installation part, lets first understand how this platform works and how can you optimize for it.

As mentioned above, Pinterest is a social media platform yet it behaves very similar to search engine.

When a user visits your site and shares the content on Pinterest, it means that they have pinned an image from your site to the platform.

And just like any other social media you can also pin your articles and products on Pinterest.

Now, when an image gets pinned on Pinterest, it automatically fetches the title and the description from the URL that is attached to it. And using this information, Pinterest ranks your content for various queries on Pinterest search.

For your pins to have a better probability of ranking on Pinterest search there are a few optimization techniques that you have to follow which are very similar to SEO.

And these are

• The image’s aspect ratio has to be 2:3. You can create one using Canva.
• The pins title and description must contain keywords.
• You have to pin new content consistently on the platform.

This means you need a tool that will

• Add optimized titles and description on pins
• Disable pinning of unoptimized images
• Hide multiple images in blog posts
• Encourage visitors to share more on Pinterest

Although this seems like a tall order. However, there is a plugin known as Tasty Pins that will help you do this with just a click of a button.

See- Tasty Pins Plugin Review

It is a wonderful plugin that takes care of everything related to Pinterest optimization making it the best Pinterest optimization plugin.

Add social share and follow buttons

When it comes to driving traffic to your site both SEO and social media plays an important role.

While SEO takes some time to show results, social media is the channel that will drive traffic to your site instantly.

Also, social media is an amazing tool using which you can communicate with your audience as it helps you build a relation with them or in other words adds the human touch.

Think about a scenario where you have landed on a page and it contains everything that you need, be it products or information.

In this situation when the users finds the information they are looking for or a solution to a problem they are facing, chances are high that they will share this information with others.

Also, in such cases we have seen that people would want to know the person behind the scene or the brand and will most likely want to follow them on social media.

And that is it is important that you add social media share and follow buttons to your site.

To add these buttons you need a social media plugin that will help your with both.

For this we recommend you install Social Snap as it is one of the best social media plugin in the industry and it gives you access to features such as

• Social share buttons for 30+ popular social media networks
• Social follow buttons for 40+ network
• Share counter
• Pageview counter
• Analytics integration
• URL Shortening
• Boost old posts
• Social media auto posted
• Social login

And more. See the complete list of features.

Personally speaking we use this plugin on some of our sites and absolutely love it.

Create a Contact page

A contact or a contact us page falls under the category of essential or must-have pages on a website or a blog.

As the name suggests, using this page visitors and other related business can contact you for collaboration, feedback or even just to say Hi.

WordPress being the most popular CMS comes with a ton of features yet it does not have the form builder functionality.

And this means to create any type of form in WordPress you need a plugin.

There are plenty of plugins that allow you to create contact form in WordPress and we recommend you use WPForms.

Form building functionality is also available in page builder plugins and if you are going to create design your site or parts of it using any such plugin then we recommend you go with Elementor as it is the best in the industry and comes with a lot of features including a form builder.

Keeping this in mind, in this section we will be briefly discussing the process of creating contact forms using both the plugins mentioned above.

To create contact form using WPForms plugin, the first step is to install WPForms and then navigate to WPForms menu in your dashboard and click Add New.

Doin this will take you to the WPForms form builder and there you need to select a template for Simple contact form.

On selecting the template, it will create a form just like above with all the required fields and in the next step you need to configure it properly.

Once done you need to click Save on top and exit the form builder.

As we are creating a contact page, you need to head over to Pages and then click Add new. It will take you to the WordPress editor and here you need to enter the title of your page first.

And in the next step you need to embed the contact form that you have just created.

And for that you need to add the WPForms block using the block inserter and then select the form using the drop down.

Once you are done till here, you need need to check the slug of the page, add some content or any other contact details and then Publish the page.

And that’s it you have successfully create a contact page. Before we move forward, it is important to know contact forms are prone to spam submissions and you can prevent it by adding CAPTCHA.

See- How to connect WPForms with hCaptcha

When it comes to creating forms with Elementor, it is important to know that you will need Elementor Pro as the free version does not come with the form builder functionality.

Having said that,

To create a contact form using Elementor, the first thing you have to do is install Elementor Pro.

After you are done installing the plugin, you need to go to Templates in your WordPress dashboard and click Add New.

Doing this will take you to My Templates where a popup will appear asking you to select the type of template, its location and name.

Once you are done adding all the details click create template and it will take you to the Elementor editor.

In the Elementor editor, the first thing you will see is the Template Library that will show you all the pre-built templates that you can use to speed up the creation process.

Here you need to select one depending on your requirements and then configure it correctly.

After making the changes you need to Publish the template as we will be embedding this template on a contact page.

Keep in mind you don’t have to add any display conditions on this template.

To embed the contact form your will have install a free plugin known as Elementor blocks by Gutenberg.

And once done you need to create a new page and then add then add the Elementor Library block on it.

When you add this block, it will let you select a template using the drop down and here you need to choose the contact form template you have just created.

Once you are done selecting the template, the last step is to check the slug of the page, add additional content if required and Publish it.

And that’s it you have successfully created a contact form using Elementor.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that when you create any form in WordPress it is recommended that you test it once or you may end up losing important messages.

Legal

When you are running a website being legally compliant is really essential. Be it you are making money or not, it is important that you are transparent about everything from how you handle to products you promote and more.

Keeping this in mind a legally complaint site sends a signal to the visitors that you are running a legit business and it basically helps builds trust.

For your blog to be legally complaint, you need to add a few pages on your site such as

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Affiliate Disclaimers
• Cookie policy

and more.

First things first Blogging Unplugged is the hub for information when it comes to blogging, WordPress and more. However, for matters like these we will always recommend you speak to an attorney. Here is the link to the one WE TRUST.

Also, we know that legal consultations can be costly if you are just starting out and there is a cheaper alternative and that is using a plugin called WPLegalPages Pro.

This is a plugin that generates legal pages for your site as per your requirements. It cover 25+ expert vetted legal pages and comes it at a pocket friendly price of $39/ year

Configure Reading settings

While browsing the internet you must have noticed some site have a custom home page while others display recent blog posts like ours.

To know if you can use a custom or a recent posts page as home page depends on the purpose of your website.

If you have a recently started blog and only have a few posts then the recent posts will work perfectly fine for you. However, if you are creating a business website then you will need a custom home page.

Also, if you are a blogger and are using your blog to sell some of your own products the having a custom home page can help you as well.

As you have a new WordPress site, you will notice it by default displays only posts and nothing else.

And to change this and set up a static page as your sites homepage, the first thing you have to do is navigate to Setting and then click Reading in your WordPress admin.

Doing this will take you to the Reading settings where the first option lets you select a home page for your site.

In case you want to display blog posts on the homepage then the default settings will work just fine.

However, if you want to display a page that you have created then you will have to select A static page first and it will enable both the options below

After this in the Homepage option you need to select the custom homepage that you have created.

And for the posts page you can select any other page on which you want WordPress to display recent articles.

Once done you can save the changes you have made.

In case you are wondering how can you design pages easily in WordPress without any technical experience then we will recommend you use Elementor.

Remove irrelevant categories and tags

A WordPress fresh install comes with a default known as Uncategorized. As the name suggests, any post that you publish on your site that is not assigned to a category will be automatically marked Uncategorized.

Uncategorized plays an important role in WordPress and that is to remind you or let you know that some posts on your site aren’t categorized yet.

And using this information you can solve this minor issue.

Keeping this in mind, on several sites we have seen webmasters changing the name of this page to blog and then use this to replace the main archive page.

This happens mostly in situations where your homepage displays recent posts and hence you do not have a so called dedicated archive.

It is important to know here that your homepage is taking care of this feature and you do not have to create another dedicated category for this.

Once you get a custom homepage then you can move the recent posts to a dedicated Blog / Recent Posts page.

And that is why we do not recommend doing this as it defeats the purpose of this category (Uncategorized).

Having said that,

There is another scenario that you might come across where you will have to delete a few categories before starting out. When you install a WordPress theme and download a demo site, there are chances that it might include some demo categories and posts.

In this situation, you will have to remove these categories and posts before you start publishing.

We have already discussed the removal of pages in this article and here we will be just deleting the categories.

To delete a category in WordPress you need to navigate to Posts in your WordPress dashboard and then click Categories.

Doing this will show you all the categories and to delete the demo / unnecessary categories all you have to do is hover the mouse pointer on it and it will show you the option.

Click Delete and it will remove the category from your site.

Keep in mind, deleting categories does not mean all of the posts in it will also be deleted. This means when you remove a category, the posts without it will show under Uncategorized.

Before we move forward it is important to know that just like categories there are tags in WordPress as well.

And there are chances that some theme demos might come with a few tags and in this situation you will have to remove them as well.

Set up the main Navigation

One of the most common layout element that you will see on almost all websites is the main navigation.

It contains links to pages that you want users to visit and is visible on top and hence can’t be missed by anyone.

As the main navigation is positioned at such as prime location it is important that you take full advantage of it.

Keeping this in mind, you might have seen navigation menus containing all sorts for links such as

• Links to pillar articles
• Deals and discounts
• Services offered
• Freebies
• Company pages
• Private communities

And more.

As you can see, the navigation on Blogging Unplugged is pretty simple and currently just contains links to important content pages and resources.

Soon we will be adding a freebie section where you will be able to find all the free courses, services, products and other downloadables under one roof.

Having said that,

To create a menu for your site, the first step is to head over to Appearance and then click Menus in your WordPress admin.

When you click menus, it will show you the option to create a new one or edit an existing menu.

It is important to know if you have installed a theme demo then chances are the menus will be already created.

And in this case you will have to just edit it and add your pages.

To add new menu items you just have to select the pages, posts and categories from the left side where it says Add menu items and then click Add to menu.

In case you want to add custom URL’s then you will have to select Custom Links and add the URL of your choice in the box in front of URL and the link text in the box below.

And once done click Add to Menu.

After adding the menu items, you are required to select a display location for the menu you have just created using the Menu Settings.

As we are creating this menu for the navigation click Primary menu and then click Save Menu. Once you are done till here, it is important that you visit the website to see how it looks.

And that’s it you have created a menu in WordPress.

Setting up the Footer

Just like the main navigation on top, there is a similar section at the bottom of every page on your website know as the footer.

It is another spot on your site that is important and hence can contain links to other pages.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the footer of Blogging Unplugged contains links to various essential pages such as legals, about, contact and more.

On top of that it has links to various beginner guides and socials.

Soon we will be adding another section that will contain links to all our products and freebies.

Having said that,

All of these links on the footer can be easily changed using Widgets in WordPress.

Widgets are small blocks of content or functions that you can add to the widgetized areas of your site and change / control the design aspect.

Mainly there are 2 widgetized areas on your site namely footer and the sidebar. However, in certain themes we have seen this functionality extended to homepage and headers as well.

To add widgets to the footer, you need to navigate to Appearance in your WordPress dashboard and then click Widgets.

Doing this will show you all the available widgets and the areas you can add them to.

As we are adding widgets to the footer, you need to click the widget that you want to add to the footer and it will show you the list of areas you can add it to.

Select the areas depending on your requirements and click Add Widget. Once done you need to configure it and Save the changes.

Keep in mind, do not over populate the footer as doing that will make it look spammy.

Set up the Sidebar

As discussed above, there are mostly 2 widget ready areas on a WordPress theme, one of them is the footer and the other one is the sidebar.

While browsing the web, you may have often come across sites that have content, ads, social media buttons, subscription boxes and more on the right or left side of the main body of the page.

And that area is known as the sidebar. Certain themes allow sidebars both the left and the right side. However, some just have it on the right.

On Blogging Unplugged you can see the sidebar is on the right and it contains recently published posts, a search box, table of contents and an image that leads you to start a blog tutorial.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that the sidebar is one area on your site that will stay with the users while they are going through the page.

Hence, the elements that you add to it must be relevant and there shouldn’t be too much going on as it can make the site look spammy.

On several occasions we have seen sites that have a larger sidebar than the body of the page.

And it results in half the page being empty and you don’t want that.

Keeping this in mind, to add widgets to your site’s sidebar you need to head over to Appearance and click Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.

Doing this will show you all the available widgets and here you need to select the one that you want to add to your sites sidebar.

And it will show you all the locations where you can add it to. This time instead of the footer you need to select the sidebar and then configure it.

Keep in mind, a WordPress theme can have multiple sidebars and you need to select the right one in order for it to show on the correct place.

Update services in WordPress

After you have launched your site and submitted pages in the search engines along with the sitemap, you will notice that some of them will index faster than the others.

Also, once you start creating and updating posts on a regular basis you will see that some pages will be picked up quickly by search engines while others can take a lot longer than expected to show up.

And because of this, often you will see new bloggers asking about their pages not being indexed quickly or at all in search.

There can be a lot of reasons behind pages not being indexed at all. However, when it comes to indexing pages quickly there is an Update Services option available in WordPress that will help speed up the process.

In case you are wondering how this service works then let me tell you briefly about it.

When you create a post or a page in WordPress or update it, WordPress automatically notifies popular update services by sending an XML-RPC ping, letting them know about the change.

These update services then process the pins and further updates their proprietary indexes with the change.

Once these indexes are updated, it helps search engines easily discover, crawl and index the new pages on your site.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that updating these services only quickens the process and you must always request indexing of your pages manually using the inspection tool after publishing or modifying.

Solely relying on these services is never recommended.

Having said that,

By default WordPress automatically notifies the Pingomatic services. However, it is suggested that you add a few more services to this list.

To add more services to this list, you need to navigate to Settings in your WordPress dashboard and then click Writing.

Doing this will show you all the Writing Settings and here you will have to scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see Update services.

Here you will have to add all the ping services in the box and once done click Save Changes.

In case you are looking for the list that we use then you can click THIS LINK to download the file.

Integrate Cloudflare CDN

When it comes to performance of your site, the location where it is hosted plays an important role.

To understand this lets say you have a site hosted on a server in Canada and you are getting hits from Australia and USA.

Because the server location is nearer to the users is USA they will experience a better speed than the users from Australia.

And is why it is recommended that you pick as server nearest to the location of your target audience.

Now, this concept will work perfectly if you have a website that targets a local area. But what happens when you want to target multiple locations.

In this scenario, you will have to use a CDN.

CDN is also known as Content Delivery Network and it is essentially a network of servers spread across the world.

And when you add it to your site, it creates a copy of it and distributes it across its network.

Now, when anyone visits your site from anywhere around the globe they will experience the same speed.

Having said that,

As you are starting out, we will suggest you use Cloudflare CDN as it offers a free plan that have enough features to improve the performance of your site.

After reading this some of you may be thinking that your hosting providers offer a free Cloudflare integration then why not use it.

The answer is simple, when you create an account on Cloudflare directly, it makes the management process easier and you get to access more features.

Having said that,

To create an account on Cloudflare, you need to visit Cloudflare.com and click Sign up on the main navigation.

Doing this will take you to the Sign Up page where you will have to use your email account to sign up.

Integrating Cloudflare CDN with a site is an individual tutorial on it and we will be soon creating it.

Change the default Login URL

A few of the common ways to boost the security of your WordPress site are

• Installing SSL
• Adding a security plugin
• Using a strong password
• Limiting login attempts

And more.

Even after using these methods you will see hackers trying to use different usernames and passwords to break into your site.

Because of the fact that you have put limit on the number of login attempts you will at times receive notifications regarding IP’s or users being blocked.

And this can be a bit nerve wracking if you are starting out and implementing different ways to protect your site.

The reason behind hackers constantly trying to breaking is that the default WordPress login URL is known to everyone.

Lets say the URL of your website is example.com and then in order to login you will have to use example.com/wp-admin which is the default login URL.

Now, if you change the login URL’s slug from wp-admin to something less known or personal to your then chances are high that the login page can’t be easily discovered.

And this will further improve the security of your site.

For changing the default Login URL, you need to install a plugin called change wp-admin login.

It is a free plugin that can be downloaded and installed from the WordPress plugin repository.

Once you have installed the plugin, you need to navigate to the Permalinks in Settings where you will have to scroll down to the bottom and there you will find the option that will allow you to change the wp-admin URL.

Here you need to enter the slug that can’t be guessed easily in the box in front of Login URL.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I have set it to enter-new-slug-here and kept the redirect URL option empty.

This means is anyone will type in the default WordPress login URL then they will be taken to the homepage of the site.

On the other hand to login you will have to use the URL bloggingunpluggeddemo.com/enter-new-slug-here.

Note- enter-new-url-here is a slug that we have used for demo purposes for this tutorial. It can be anything excluding special characters.

Once you have made the changes, save it by clicking Save Changes and bookmark the new URL for in case you forget.

Activate Two Factor Authentication

Another method to boost the security of your WordPress site is by implementing the Two Factor Authentication.

Two Factor Authentication adds an extra layer of security where, in the first step the user is required to enter the login credentials and then is asked to provide another dynamic passcode which is generated using the help of an authentication application.

This newly generated code is valid only for a certain amount of time and hence changes periodically.

If you are new to the online world then activating 2FA might seem like a complicated process . However, it can be easily activated with the help of Wordfence plugin.

To activate 2FA on your site you need to head over to Wordfence and then click Login security.

When you select Login Security, it will take you directly to the 2 Factor Authentication settings in Wordfence where you will see a QR code on the left and Recovery codes on the right.

Here the first step is to download an authentication app like Google Authenticator on your phone and scan the QR code. For iOS you can download it using THIS LINK and Android users can use THIS.

Doing this will give you a verification code on the app which you will have to enter in the box on the bottom right below recovery codes.

Before you click the Activate button make sure to download the recovery codes and save it somewhere safe.

Once you done downloading, click Activate and that’s it you have successfully implemented 2FA on your site.

Limit Login Attempts

As mentioned before, in this article that we will be tweaking / configuring some of the settings of the Wordfence plugin to further up the security.

And the first setting that we are going to change is Limit Login Attempts.

Limit Login Attempts is an option using which you can easily block anyone who is trying to access your sites admin panel using the wrong credentials.

Wordfence by default has set this to 20 which means anyone will be locked out after 20 login failures or forgot password attempts.

We suggest you change this number to something lower.

And for this you need to navigate to Wordfence in your WordPress dashboard sidebar and then click All Options.

On selecting All Options it will show you every Wordfence Global settings, Firewall options, blocking options and more.

Here you need to go to Firewall option and look for Brute Force Protection.

When you click Brute Force Protection, it will show you all the settings and here you need to change

• Lockout after how many failures- 5
• Lockout after how many forgot passwords- 5
• Count failures over what time period- 24
• Amount of time a user is locked out- 12

Once done click Save Changes on the top right.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that you can increase or decrease these limits depending on your requirements.

Disable HTML in comments

Previously, in this tutorial we have discussed how can you install Akismet anti-spam and filter out the spam from the good.

To further prevent linking of your site to anything spam on the web, you need to disable HTML in comments.

Before we dive into the process, it is important to know linking back to a site using anchor text or naked links through comment box is an old school link building tactic used by many to manipulate rankings.

And that is why is it still so much used and abused by spammers.

In case you are thinking does the blog commenting still help with this then the answer is no and the reason behind this is search engines have evolved the algorithms to combat such spam tactics and hence no credit is given to any such links.

Sometimes back Google released an update where it evolved the nofollow and introduced 2 new link attribute UGC and Sponsored to understand the linking patterns better.

See- Nofollow, UGC and Sponsored link attribution update

This update has made it very difficult for anyone to trick search engines.

On the other hand, Blog commenting is an amazing way to build relationships with others in the industry. However, for that you need to submit meaningful comments without any anchors linking to your site.

Now, to disable HTML in WordPress comments you need to add a code snippet to the functions.php file.

Also, we recommend making any such changes to the child theme and not the parent theme.

In case you haven’t yet installed the child theme then I will recommend you do that first.

Having said that,

For disabling HTML in comments on your WordPress site you need to navigate to Theme Editor in Appearance.

There you will see the list of your theme files and in this you need to find functions.php file.

Once found you need to open the file and add the below mentioned code snippet to it.

add_filter( 'pre_comment_content', 'wp_specialchars' );

And the last step is to save the changes you have made.

After successfully adding this code spammers won’t be able to use HTML and create anchored backlinks from your site.

Before we move forward, it is important to know that just disabling HTML is not enough to prevent spam as when you drop a link in the comment section, WordPress automatically converts it into a link.

There is no setting available in WordPress to help you with this and hence you will have to add a code snippet for this.

To disable automatic linking of links in comments you need to add the below snippet in the functions.php file.

remove_filter('comment_text', 'make_clickable', 9);

And once done it will convert all links into text and will stop auto-linking naked links.

Remove website field in comments

As discussed above, spammers can add naked links in comments or create an anchor using HTML to build a backlink from your site.

And by now you know how to block both of these techniques.

However, there is another way spammers can get a link from your site using the comments and that is by using the website field.

Comment section on a WordPress site comprises of 3 fields

• Name
• Website
• Message/ Comment

In these 3 fields, name and comment are the ones that are required. However, website is optional.

When a visitor lands on your site and fills in all the details and you approve the comment, the name gets automatically converted into an anchor.

This means if anyone click the name it will take them to the linked site.

This is another popular and very abused method used by spammers to create backlinks.

In this scenario when you remove the website field, the spammers will have no way left to create anchors from your comment section.

As a result of this your website will be linking to no spam sources.

Removing the website field from the comment section is a slightly complicated process and it might require you to either add or remove code depending on the theme you are using.

In case you are using Kadence WordPress theme then it comes with a built-in functionality where you can disable the website field in comments with just one click.

You can find this option in General Settings under Customization where you will see Comments.

When you click comments, it will show you the option to remove Website field from comments in Kadence

Enable this option if disable and click Publish to save the changes you have made.

In case you are using a theme other than Kadence then you will have to add the below mentioned code in the functions.php file.

add_filter(‘comment_form_field_url’, ‘__return_false’);

Once you are done adding the code, click Update file to save the changes you have made.

Disable Directory Browsing

In this tutorial you must have noticed that we are heavily focusing on site security and spam prevention.

And by disabling directory browsing, we are further going to boost the security.

Before we dive into how its done, it is know that the files related to your website are stored on the server in various folders just like you will organize them on your system.

And people with enough technical knowledge can access them directly which is a huge security threat.

To improve the security further and disable the directory browsing you need to add the below mentioned code in the .htaccess file.

Options All -Indexes

In case you are wondering where will you find this file then let me tell you .htaccess is located in the root directory.

At times you won’t be able to find this file as it will be hidden and in this scenarios you will have to unhide it.

Disable File Editing in WordPress

After starting your WordPress site, often you will be searching the web looking for ways to improve your site’s design and functionality.

And on a few occasions you will be editing your theme / plugin files to add the code snippets you have found.

WordPress being a user friendly CMS allows you to edit both plugin and theme related files from your dashboard.

This functionality is incredibly convenient. However, it comes with a huge risk.

Think about an unfortunate scenario where you admin password is somehow found by a hacker and because this they will be able to easily access the dashboard.

And as a result of this can add malicious code easily to your theme and plugin files.

This can lead to a serious problem which will be difficult and expensive to fix. Keeping this in mind it is important that you disable file editing.

File editing in WordPress can be easily disabled by adding the below code snippet in the wp-config.php file.

define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);

The wp-config file can be found in the root directory of your site and after adding the you will notice the theme and plugin editor options will not be visible.

Add Google Analytics

Generating traffic to your website is just one part of running a website and if you want to grow consistently then you need to know your strengths and weaknesses.

And to help you with this you need Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free tool by Google that gives you access to insights you need to know about your website in order to grow it.

These insights will help you understand which channels generate the most traffic to your site and which needs your attention.

On top of that Google Analytics also gives you access to information about your audience and this will help you understand them better.

Google Analytics is a must have too for any website owner as using it you can take informed decisions that will help you grow quicker.

Having said that,

To install Google Analytics on your WordPress site, the first thing you have to do is visit Google Analytics and create an account on it.

Signing up with Google Analytics is pretty straight forward and the only requirement in a Google Account.

It is important to know you can add Google Analytics to your site in 2 ways and that is

• Manually
• Using plugins

Both of these processes are quite simple yet somewhat elaborate and that is why we have created detailed tutorials for you to follow

Keep in mind, you need to just add the Analytics tracking code once or else it won’t work correctly.

Index your site in search engines

When you create a website or a blog, it does not automatically show up in search engines. And in order for it to appear you will have to index it.

When you index your site in search engines, it gives you access to important data such as

• Keyword position on search
• Clicks received over time
• Indexing related issues
• Security concerns

And more.

Using this information you can improve your site to perform better on search and generate more traffic.

Just like Google Analytics, indexing a site on search requires you to add a small code fragment in the theme header or header.php file.

Before we move forward it is important to keep in mind that there are 3 major search engines that you will have to add your website on.

And each of these have their own service / tool using which you can verify your site.

• Google search has Google Search Console
• Bing (Microsoft) has Bing Webmaster tools
• Yandex has Yandex web master

In case you are thinking about adding your site to other search engines like Duck Duck Go, Yahoo, Ecosia and more then let me tell you all these search engines are either fully or partially powered by Bing.

This means if you will add your website to Bing the it will automatically show up in these search engines.

As mentioned above, verifying your website on search requires you to add a code fragment on your site and this can be done in 2 ways

• Manually
• Using plugins

There are theme like Genesis by StudioPress that comes with the functionality that lets you add scripts in header and in case you are using any such theme then you don’t need a plugin.

To add your site in Google Search Console, the first thing you have to do is create an account on it.

You can sign up using your Google Account and once done it will ask you to select a Property Type.

Here you will have to add the website URL in the URL prefix property and then search for the HTML tag.

On finding the HTML tag you will have to click it to reveal the code and then add it to the header.php manually or by using a plugin.

Once you are done adding the code you will have to go back to the search console tab and click Verify.

And that’s it you have successfully verified your site on Google search console.

For indexing your site on Bing, the first thing you have to do is visit the Bing Webmasters Tool and then create an account on it using any of the services listed below.

• Microsoft
• Google
• Facebook

Doing this will take you to the Bing Webmasters Tools dashboard where you have to either add your website or import it from Google search console.

As you have already indexed your site in Google search, it is better and easier that you import it.

To import you will have to click Import and a popup will appear letting you know what data will be imported and how it will be used.

In the next step you will have to select the Google Account associated with the Search Console and it will show you all the verified sites imported.

Select the site that you want to verify in Bing Webmasters Tool and click Import.

And that’s it you have successfully verified your site in Bing Webmasters Tool.

See- How to verify a WordPress site on Bing Webmasters Tool

Now that you have submitted your site on Bing, the next step is to index it on Yandex.

And for that the first step is to visit the Yandex Webmaster and create an account on it.

Once you are done registering, the next step is to click Add Site and it will let you enter the URL of your website.

The final step is just the same as the previous verifications where you will have to add the verification meta tag in the theme header or header.php file.

After you are done adding the code, you need to go back to the Yandex Webmaster tab and click Check to see if the process is complete.

This can take a few minutes and once done you will have to submit your sitemap and individual URL’s to be indexed in the Yandex search quickly.

And that’s it you have successfully verified your site on Yandex Webmaster Tool.

And that’s it you have successfully configured every important setting in WordPress and are now set up to start publishing blog posts and promote products.

Once you are done till here, the next step is to

Having said that,

I hope you will find this article helpful and are able to easily configure these WordPress essential settings.

In case you have any queries then feel free to reach out via the comments sections. Also, don’t forget to share this tutorial with on social media

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