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
- Choose a professional theme
- Remove unnecessary information from your theme
- Add a favicon
- Place an RSS icon at the end of single posts
- Create a functional footer for your blog
- Organize your categories
- Optimize the “About” page
- Speed up your site
Check & Validate
- Make sure your blog works in different browsers
- Check the load time of your site
- Test the SEO aspects
- Validate your website
- Keep a maintenance checklist
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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78 Responses to “Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips”
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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
Thanks Max, this is a very solid list
Yeah….your “practical tips” list mostly work for my new blog, thank your for sharing them with me.
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.
gr8 list.. I had missed lots of articles from this..
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.
Very helpful article, thanx, but I have to rebuild my own blog totally
This is great. I’ve done most of the tips, but there are some I have to check.
Thank you for the list!
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!
Wow these are really great tips. I will have to come back and take more time to read them.
Good tips..Most of them I al1redy followed before launching a new blog http://www.etechbuzz.com/
Use these videos to be a perfect
http://freevideolectures.com/webdesign.html
These lists are giving me serious bouts of deja vu, lemme tell ya.
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! ynnwxbhkmry
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..
Fantastic advice. I’ve been researching blogs for about 6 weeks now and there is so much information out there it’s rather overwhelming.
hi there
thanx for your tips
i love your blog:)
This is an excellent list of tips. Keep up the great work!
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.
Good and useful posts
- blogrtools
http://blogrtools.blogspot.com
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?
I know that WordPress is very popular, but is their a Typepad blog site out there that is full of great suggestions?
Joel
Thanks for the step by step procedure to set up a good blog..
Good and useful posts…..good step by step procedure to attain final goal..
Wow, I’ll bookmark this. Great resource.
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!
A wealth of information. Thank you!
Dude, Thanks! I have been needing something like WP-Chunk for months and never thought to look for a plug-in!
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!
Thanks for the list - I’ll start working my way through them.
Wow, thanks for the list. This will save time.
Many Thanks
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?
Thanks for such useful article. I hope it will really prove helpful for me in promoting my site!
thank you for the tips. just found it.
About the theme, I think it should be updated
There are huge improvements in this area.
Thank you very much for sharing 40 Practical Tips in setting up blog. Great help!
Another awesome tutorial, loads of information
Thank you
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.