After installing a WordPress site some necessary actions can set the direction of your site or blog to a positive start. Knowing this, we must implement them as correctly and quickly as possible to have the best use.

I will show you step by step in practice how to do these necessary actions.
There are many more than 10 important actions to carry out, but this will be defined based on the niche and model of your site and according to your personal preference.
So, I decided to put the 10 that I think are more general and that will be useful for 99% of WordPress sites.
Now, below, we will follow the step by step procedures after installing a WordPress site.

STEP 1 - Adjust WordPress Settings
WordPress site installed, now let's go to step number 1 which is basic WordPress settings.
We will only work on the items that matter. Of course, you can and should configure everything very calmly later.
Configuring WordPress general tab
Settings> General
Fill in the "Site Title" and "Description" here. Something important here is to put your keyword in the description which should not be too big.
"Site Language" and "Time Zone" are of paramount importance as well.
The time zone is always (WAT +01:00), which is the West African time zone
Save everything and go to the next configuration still from Step 1.
Configuring WordPress Discussion tab
Settings> Discussion
We will disable the item "Allow warnings for links from other blogs (pingbacks or trackbacks) in new articles" from the "Default post settings" option.
This is necessary so that you do not constantly receive pingback warnings that, for me, are unnecessary.
In the option "Before a comment appears" check the item "The comment must be approved manually"

With this setting in place, every comment made on your site must first be moderated by you and thus published definitively. This avoids many SPAMS, which we will work on later.
Save everything and move on to the next point from Step 1.

Configuring WordPress Permalinks tab
In Settings> Permanent Links
In the option "Common settings" check the item "Post name" so that the entire URL of your site has the structure: https://sitename.ng/pagenamepoup.
This is very important not only for the organization but also for the SEO of your WordPress site.

STEP 2 - Create Essential Pages.
This step is very simple but one must take notice of the sequence that I propose in this tutorial. This is necessary because every professional WordPress site should have these pages by default.
Before creating such pages, delete the “Simple Page” which is a sample page created automatically by WordPress in new installations. Do the same for the post “Hello World“.
To create pages just go to Pages> Add New.
The pages we should create are:
About
Contact
Privacy Policy[i][/i]
After these pages have already been created and with relevant and original content, we move on to the next step.

STEP 3 - Create Security Menu
After the basic pages are created, we go to step 3, which is to create a menu to display them.
This step is a complement to Step 2. It is extremely important, especially because whoever visits will need to access and for that, we use the WordPress menus.
Go to Appearance> Menus
As we still don't have any menu, we should create it. Just add a name in “Menu name” and link it to a location. This location can be different in each theme.
Add the 3 pages created to this menu and Save.
Ready! Now, let's go to step 4.

STEP 4 - Edit Users (Security)
This Step is of maximum importance, because if not done, it can leave a security breach. We don't want our site hacked so let's take this step calmly and very seriously.

In Users, you must create 2 new users to manage your website.

Users> Add New

A new user with Administrative privileges and another with Editor privileges.

Once this is done, log in to the new administrative user and delete the default user that was active on your WordPress site. This is necessary as ID 0 is well-targeted and attacked by hackers.

The new administrative user will be used for necessary configurations, updates, and modifications. You should use it as little as possible. The Editor user will be your most used user due to the need because, with it, you can do actions such as creating content.

Look, your website is now looking like a professionally designed site.

Let's go to step 5.

STEP 5 - Install Important Plugins
This step was already expected because WordPress gives us good options for implementations through its Open Source.

There are thousands of plugins for WordPress, but I will pay attention only to the initial functionalities. This is due to the need only and also because the site is new and we are not going to clog it.

Let's exclude the ones we don't use, a good example is “Hello Dolly”, for me this feature is useless. Do this with all the plugins you are not going to use.

Below the list of plugins that should be installed and we will configure them gradually.

The list follows sequentially:

YOAST SEO;

A great plugin, in fact, the best plugin for SEO. It does everything from helping to optimize a post to creating files like Sitemap and Robots, among others. Indispensable and we will talk more about it in the next steps.

Contact Form 7;

I have never used another contact plugin because contact form 7 is 100% effective.

Akismet;

Speaking of protection, we have to pay attention to SPAMS! Nothing better than the Akismet plugin, which does automatic filtering and eliminating lot of junk that bots try to leave as unnecessary links and messages in comments.

All In One WP Security & Firewall;

Well, here we take care of the security of our WordPress site fundamentals. from website framework security to capping the amount of user login attempts and many other things.

WPUpper Share Buttons;

We need our content to be shared and this plugin does it exceptionally.

STEP 6 - Files for Bots

We need to create these 3 files below so that robots like Google understand our site better. This is essential for the propagation of content such as being indexed and presented whenever similar subjects are searched online.

The files are:

Sitemap.xml file
This file is used to map our website by inserting all the url's on our website in an updated way, making it accessible for search engines like Google.

To create it, just activate the YOAST SEO plugin. Then go to SEO> General> Resources and activate the option “XML Sitemap” (usually already activated).

After that, save.

Finally, click on the “?” of this same option (XML Sitemap) and then you can access the URL of your Sitemap.

Ads.txt file
Little known, but it should be inserted if your site promotes ADS like Google Adsense.

There is not much to do as each company has a different type of display.

What should be done is to add the name and contact of the user who makes the advertising.

As with robots.txt, you should also create a file called ads.txt at the root of your website.

Here is my example:

google.com, pub-2124309022569749, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
Where pub-numbers is the user ID.

STEP 7 - Design - Themes / Templates
In this step, we will appreciate the layout, colors, and typography of our website. The design of your website is very important because it is the first impression that your reader will have after visiting your website.

For that, we need WordPress Templates that can be free (with some limitations) or premium (paid and more robust). There is still a third option that few people use, you can create your WordPress template without knowing how to program!

Here are the options:

1 - Free WordPress Templates
The free themes are too simple but in some cases enough.

2 - WordPress Premium Templates
It will depend a lot on your projections and personal preferences, if you are going to work with marketing or even with blogs, I indicate 3 options:

3 - Create your template:
The 3rd option is to create your template. Of course, it will take more time, but you can customize it 100% to your taste and need.

After all your design with at least the basic settings already done, it's time to move on to step 8.

STEP 8 - Add Site to Google Analytics
In step 8 we will insert the Google Analytics script on our website so that it can always track all existing traffic. I know that the site is new and will most likely not have large traffic, however, it is very important to track all your traffic now to improve the conversion of your WordPress site.

STEP 9 - Add Site to Google Search Console
This step 9 is indispensable (as well as all others). Let's add our site to Google Search Console a definitive step to let Google know that we were born and are ready to grow.

STEP 10 - Create Quality Content
Content is the last step because it will have no end. That's right, from now on, you will have to insert quality content to attract as many followers as possible.

If you don't want to or can't write, you can hire proficient freelance writers like me for this task. Of course, you will have more expenses than learning to write your content well (tip above) but it can help you in the specific situation of lack of time. hiring a very good freelancer for you content will also help you in the search engine optimization aspect of your website.


having a very good start as a blogger, web-owner or business man is very important to a successful digital journey, and putting the right things in place is very key to a beautiful start.
I hope I have helped you with my experience on the 10 important action tips to be applied after installing a WordPress site from scratch.



Temitope Is An Experienced Freelance Writer And Also A Web Designer/Web Developer
He Can Be Reached Through His Email Address: Temmydtys@gmail. com