installing wordpress

Once your site is up and running, there are a few things you should take care of right away.

Password and Byline

Before doing anything, make sure you've got your new username and password memorized or stored securely. If the password was generated for you, change it immediately to something you can remember. You'll also need to enter your full name into the system so that your stories will have complete bylines. We cover these steps in our WordPress for Writers tutorial: Set Your Byline and Password.

Permalinks

Like every page on the internet, each story on your site will have a unique URL. By default, this URL looks something like this on most WordPress installations:

http://shacker.net/?p=123

That "?p=123" portion doesn't provide any useful information to humans or search engines, and you'll want to replace that with something more elegant before you start publishing. See the Settings section of our Advanced WordPress tutorial for more on this.

Spam Control

It won't take long for the spambots to find your site and start trying to attach spammy comments to your stories. Nip this in the bud by installing spam controls now! See the Comments and Spam section of our Advanced WordPress tutorial for more on this.

Learn WordPress

There's a lot more to running (or writing for) a WordPress site than first meets the eye. See our WordPress Basics tutorial for a detailed first look at the system.