Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips

by Daniel in 56 Comments — Updated Reading Time: 2 minutes

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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

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

Themes & Design

  1. Choose a professional theme
  2. Remove unnecessary information from your theme
  3. Add a favicon
  4. Place an RSS icon at the end of single posts
  5. Create a functional footer for your blog
  6. Organize your categories
  7. Optimize the “About” page
  8. Speed up your site

Check & Validate

  1. Make sure your blog works in different browsers
  2. Check the load time of your site
  3. Test the SEO aspects
  4. Validate your website
  5. Keep a maintenance checklist

Plugins

  1. Install Akismet
  2. Install WordPress Database Backup
  3. Install Subscribe to Comments but leave it unchecked
  4. Install Chunk URLs
  5. Install Related Enteries and consider setting it to 3
  6. Install Custom Query String
  7. Install Jerome’s Keywords

SEO & Analytics

  1. Install Google Sitemap Generator
  2. Install Enforce www Preference
  3. Optimize your Meta Description Tag
  4. Setup an optimal URL structure
  5. Make category pages display excerpts
  6. Setup any needed 301 Redirects
  7. Create a robots.txt file (and here is a collection of different ones)
  8. Modify your title tag to be optimal
  9. Remove the hyperlink from the single post titles
  10. Offer email subscriptions
  11. Install the Feedburner Replacement plugin
  12. 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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56 thoughts on “Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips”

  1. Thanks for this incredible write up. This helped me get up and running smoothly. I still have some work to do but you have saved me a TON of time and for that I thank you!

    Reply
  2. nice tips about word press seo. I did not find any information about changing robot meta tag in word press blog in your post. can you give some idea on this?

    Reply
  3. Just wanted to thank you so much for this. I have been trying to figure this out and you made it so easy! Thanks so much! :)))

    Reply
  4. I have my own blog in Blogger platform.I wanted to create in wordpress.By reading your post I got an idea.thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  5. I’m definetely bookmark this. It’s a “bible” to guide the newbies to install their first blog. It’s appreciated if you can provide some video tutorial on “installing” the blog or “plugins”. Thanks!

    To Your Success
    Bryan Hee

    Reply
  6. Simply Excellent!

    This is definitely a reference for new bloggers! Thank you very much for all of these tips 🙂

    Keep it up!

    Reply
  7. 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.

    Reply
  8. thank you for the tips. just found it.
    About the theme, I think it should be updated 🙂
    There are huge improvements in this area.

    Reply
  9. 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?

    Reply
  10. 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!

    Reply
  11. 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!

    Reply
  12. 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?

    Reply
  13. 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.

    Reply
  14. Fantastic advice. I’ve been researching blogs for about 6 weeks now and there is so much information out there it’s rather overwhelming.

    Reply
  15. 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..

    Reply
  16. 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!

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

    Thank you for the list!

    Reply
  18. 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.

    Reply
  19. 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.

    Reply

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