Fresh WordPress Installation Checklist.

WordPress is a truly unbelievable platform for blogging and content management. And with it’s famous five-minute installation, it could not be easier to get up and running quickly. In fact, most web hosts offer a 1-click installation of WordPress, which makes the process even faster.

But once you have WordPress installed, the glorious default them on display, and you’re viewing the dashboard for the first time, there are number of things you should do to optimize your fresh WordPress installation. Here are a few things for your checklist:

1. Change your username to something other than “admin”

This is a basic security precaution. Since “admin” is the most commonly used account username, leaving it in place leaves it vulnerable to an easy guess from a hacker.

2. Set a good password

While you’re changing your username, you might as well take the time to set a good password. Use a combination of letters, numbers, and both uppercase and lowercase. Replace letters with numbers to further obscure your password. For example, use 3 in place of E. 5 in place of S.

3. Set your display name

One more user related setting to change… Go to Users > Your Profile and set your “Display name publicly as” to whatever you want. I often find the default setting (your username) is not always optimal, so I usually change this to my first name.

4. Activate the akismet plugin

Akismet is the anti-spam plugin, which comes pre-installed (but not activated) when you install WordPress. Written by Matt Mullenweg, Akismet will stop spam commenters in their tracks. Don’t let this powerful plugin go un-used. Activate it and enter your WordPress API key.

5. Set your permalinks structure

In Settings > Permalinks, you have the ability to change the way your website URLs are displayed. For better SEO, it’s best to structure your permalinks with relevant keywords, rather than dates or post IDs. Use the last option, “custom” and enter:

/%category%/%postname%/

As you probably can gather, this will make your permalinks display as: http://www.yourwebsite.com/category/post-or-page-title. The sooner you do this the better. If you already have lots of published posts, changing your permalinks structure can cause 404 errors for users who have bookmarked your blog or high ranking search engine results. If this is the case, you might want to the redirection plugin.

6. Configure general settings

In Settings > General, you should change the tagline to something relevant for your site. You may also want to change the date and time format.

7. Enable threaded comments

Who doesn’t love this fairly recent WordPress feature? It’s not enabled by default, so you probably want to head over to Settings > Discussion to turn it on and set the number of reply levels.

8. Install a contact form plugin

I find that having a contact form is much more effective than simply publishing your contact information on your website for everyone to see. A) It’s more professional this way. B) It protects against spammers who can grab your email address off your site. A few popular contact form plugins are: Contact Form 7, Enhanced WP Contact Form, and Gravity Forms (premium).

9. Install a few more plugins

These are a few plugins that I like to install on almost every WordPress blog or website I design (regardless of niche or industry):

Subscribe to comments – Great way to keep your readers in the loop and returning to the conversation.
TweetMeme – Useful and unobtrusive button to allow users to Tweet this blog post or page.
WordPress.com Stats – Traffic stats right on your WordPress dashboard. This is good to use in conjunction with Google Analytics.
All in One SEO Pack – Great set of SEO tools for your WordPress website.

10. Install a great theme

Obviously, we think this is a super important step The key is to find find a theme that will align with your brand, business, or personality. It should also offer a feature set and layout that suits your content. You can browse our selection of free and paid WordPress themes.

11. Install Google Analytics

Sign up for a free Google Analytics account, then drop your tracking code into your theme’s footer.php file. Of course, if you’re using a ThemeJam WordPress Theme, this is super-easy to do just by pasting the tracking code into your Theme Options Panel (no need to edit theme files).