Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips

One of our readers, Max Pool, was kind enough to send a guest post with 40 practical tips to setup and optimize your blog. All the tips are actually links to previously published articles on Daily Blog Tips. Enjoy!

WordPress Setup

Do your homework first and read about others’ mistakes
Choose a reliable web host
Choose a good domain name
If you need inspiration, check this list
Register and keep your domain name with a registrar
Always install WordPress in the root directory
Update your ping list

Themes & Design

Check & Validate

Plugins

Install Akismet
Install WordPress Database Backup
Install Subscribe to Comments but leave it unchecked
Install Chunk URLs
Install Related Enteries and consider setting it to 3
Install Custom Query String
Install Jerome's Keywords
Install sig2feed

SEO & Analytics

Install Google Sitemap Generator
Install Enforce www Preference
Optimize your Meta Description Tag
Setup an optimal URL structure
Make category pages display excerpts
Setup any needed 301 Redirects
Create a robots.txt file (and here is a collection of different ones)
Modify your title tag to be optimal
Remove the hyperlink from the single post titles
Offer email subscriptions
Install the Feedburner Replacement plugin
Add the Google Analytics plugin and track your stats

Max Pool is a software engineer by day - aspiring SEO expert by night. More ideas can be found at his blog codesqueeze.com.

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Daniel Scocco on July 16, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging Basics

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78 Responses to “Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips”

OneYearGoal.com - $100,000 online on July 16th, 2007 12:36 pm

Wow,
I’ll definetely bookmark this. It’s great to have it all down in one place like that.

One Man. One Year. $100,000 online. How’s he doing it?
http://www.oneyeargoal.com
Ash Haque on July 16th, 2007 2:30 pm

Thanks Max, this is a very solid list
Kukuh on July 16th, 2007 5:35 pm

Yeah….your “practical tips” list mostly work for my new blog, thank your for sharing them with me.
Ramkarthik on July 16th, 2007 7:41 pm

Max, great list. Seems you have been reading this blog for a long time. Good work man. Now I’ll have to bookmark and read everything once again even though I have read all these.
dEEPAK on July 16th, 2007 10:10 pm

gr8 list.. I had missed lots of articles from this..
Melt du Plooy on July 17th, 2007 1:50 am

This is a very helpful and clear list of what to do on your blog. It also helps to quickly identify what you’re not doing. Thanks Max.
Kolin on July 17th, 2007 1:51 am

Very helpful article, thanx, but I have to rebuild my own blog totally
William Profet from OneJobTwoSalaries.com on July 17th, 2007 7:22 am

This is great. I’ve done most of the tips, but there are some I have to check.

Thank you for the list!
John T. Pratt on July 17th, 2007 8:14 am

Great list! I wrote a Best Practices for setting up a Wordpress blog post awhile back with some very similar points, but I have a bit more detail on some of them. The great thing about different posts on this subject is getting different perspectives. I always learn something new in every post!
DayJobNuker on July 17th, 2007 8:22 pm

Wow these are really great tips. I will have to come back and take more time to read them.
vijay on July 17th, 2007 9:13 pm

Good tips..Most of them I al1redy followed before launching a new blog http://www.etechbuzz.com/
Scorpio on July 24th, 2007 4:15 am

Use these videos to be a perfect
http://freevideolectures.com/webdesign.html
Lincoln on July 24th, 2007 7:43 pm

These lists are giving me serious bouts of deja vu, lemme tell ya.
jopdhaezux on July 29th, 2007 1:32 pm

Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! ynnwxbhkmry
AskApache on August 9th, 2007 5:40 am

If you are just starting out there is going to be a lot of trial and error.. In my case at least I was backing up and restoring all the time..
Jessica on September 7th, 2007 8:33 pm

Fantastic advice. I’ve been researching blogs for about 6 weeks now and there is so much information out there it’s rather overwhelming.
منتديات on September 17th, 2007 8:45 pm

hi there
thanx for your tips
i love your blog:)
Keith on September 21st, 2007 10:43 pm

This is an excellent list of tips. Keep up the great work!
Chris Moncus on October 9th, 2007 12:10 pm

Great list. Bookmarked and RSS subscribed.

Note that a few of these plugins may need to be reconsidered in light of the new Wordpress version 2.3.

Like the enforce www preference. WP handles that for us now with canonical URL’s.

Also, WP now has built-in tags. SO that a whole other can of worms.
blogrtools on October 15th, 2007 4:44 am

Good and useful posts

- blogrtools
http://blogrtools.blogspot.com
greg hickman on October 25th, 2007 7:22 am

Thanks for this idea. When I first added these links ( I added both in my wordpress admin site and in my ecto preferences) I noticed a boost in traffic. In the last week or so, I have not seen much traffic at all. Granted I am real new to this but I’m still trying to figure out If I might be shooting myself in the foot by having these ping links in both ecto and wordpress.

any thoughts?
Joel Libava on November 3rd, 2007 7:07 am

I know that WordPress is very popular, but is their a Typepad blog site out there that is full of great suggestions?
Joel
Aneesh on December 3rd, 2007 5:21 am

Thanks for the step by step procedure to set up a good blog..
jakes on December 3rd, 2007 6:21 am

Good and useful posts…..good step by step procedure to attain final goal..
Blogging Tips on December 5th, 2007 1:08 am

Wow, I’ll bookmark this. Great resource.
clai on December 27th, 2007 6:25 am

Hi,

This is really good tips for beginners to setting-up a new blog. A step by step process able to guide the bloggers to avoid mistake from the beginning. Excellent job!
Hilton on December 31st, 2007 10:32 pm

A wealth of information. Thank you!
Moe Green on January 6th, 2008 12:17 am

Dude, Thanks! I have been needing something like WP-Chunk for months and never thought to look for a plug-in!
Abi on February 20th, 2008 9:55 pm

I am a new blogger and was looking for some useful tips. Just came here for the first time and found this blog really good one for getting useful blogtips. I will like to implement these tips in my new business bog to makeit a real success with the entire help of tips from dailyblogtips.

Thanks a lot!
executivehacks on March 7th, 2008 2:22 pm

Thanks for the list - I’ll start working my way through them.
Website Promotion Lincolnshire on April 3rd, 2008 11:54 am

Wow, thanks for the list. This will save time.

Many Thanks
Friendzhug on April 6th, 2008 11:14 am

Thanks for this idea. When I first added these links ( I added both in my wordpress admin site and in my ecto preferences) I noticed a boost in traffic. In the last week or so, I have not seen much traffic at all. Granted I am real new to this but I’m still trying to figure out If I might be shooting myself in the foot by having these ping links in both ecto and wordpress.

any thoughts?
James on April 22nd, 2008 11:35 am

Thanks for such useful article. I hope it will really prove helpful for me in promoting my site!
hamdanm on April 28th, 2008 12:07 am

thank you for the tips. just found it.
About the theme, I think it should be updated
There are huge improvements in this area.
Philippine Website Developers on May 1st, 2008 8:56 am

Thank you very much for sharing 40 Practical Tips in setting up blog. Great help!
SEO Genius on June 7th, 2008 9:17 am

Another awesome tutorial, loads of information
Thank you
SEO Genius on July 3rd, 2008 3:58 pm

Some absolutely great tips here, awesome indeed.

I can not wait to get started on my wordpress theme if i do decide to go with a WP theme instead of my current design.

Thanks.