So, you are done with installation of WordPress. Now what? It takes few minutes and steps to install WordPress website. There are still some important things you should do after installing WordPress website or before writing any content to your site. You can’t leave default settings as it is. It is necessary to change these settings to improve the performance and security factor on your website.

Here is a list of some important suggestions and tweaks that you should do after installing WordPress website to improve the performance, security and productivity of your website.

1. Edit Permalink Structure

Permalinks are the URLs of the content you publish on your website. When you install WordPress the first step I recommend you is to edit your default permalink structure. The default permalink looks like:

The above default permalink is not search engine friendly. To make your URL search engine friendly, change the permalink structure . The most common permalink structure is post name. Simply click on Settings >> Permalinks in your WordPress Admin Panel and change your permalink and set it like below screenshot:

2. Select Appropriate WordPress Theme

If you want to make your WordPress blog more attractive then change default style to any of the best WordPress theme that suits your blog. There are plenty of free and premium themes available for your WordPress blog. I recommend you to choose premium themes because these themes include lots of important feature that helps you to make your site attractive. To install free themes click on Appearance >> Themes  in your WordPress admin panel and add theme you want for your blog.

3. Add New Categories

Categories are very important factors from user point of view. If you add any category to your blog it offers your visitors best user-experience. Change your default category depending on the content of your site. Click on Post >> Category to add or edit your category.

4. Activate Antispam Plugin

Comment spam is very irritating factor when you install WordPress freshly. You can deal with these comment spam, pingbacks and trackbacks in two ways. You can remove these spam comments manually or by installing antispam plugin. These plugins save your time and keep your blog away from such comment spam. You can read my previous post on best Antispam plugins to select best for your blog.

5. Install Essential Plugins

There are some important plugins every blogger should install for the better performance of their website. Some of them are:

• WordPress SEO by Yoast: A highly rated plugin that provides you great way to set all the pages and post for search engines to find the content of your website. This is the best plugin to optimize your website.
• W3 Total Cache: This is the best plugin to improve page speed and user-experience of your website with caching. The plugin caches all the static content of your website and improves speed of your website. To install and setup W3 Total Cache plugin to your blog, check my previous post on How to install and setup W3 Total Cache plugin.
• Contact Form 7: Another simple and popular plugin for WordPress used to manage multiple contact forms.
• WP-Smush.it: This plugin helps you in compressing images without losing their quality to reduce page load time and speed up your WordPress website.
• Security plugin: It is very important to protect and secure your site from malicious attacks. So there are lots of security plugins available that helps you to protect your website from such malicious attacks. Check 6 Best Security Plugin For WordPress here.

6. Generate Authentication Keys

WordPress uses authentication keys and salts to encrypt the information stored in your WordPress cookies and prevent your account from hackers. Authentication keys and salts plays very important role in securing your WordPress site. To do this:

1. Got new authentication keys and salts from this link:  
2. Open your wp-config.php file in text editor and took for Authentication key area and replace that content from new one.

7. Configure Backups

Regular backup of your site is very important which helps to recover your site in case of server crash or when you need a new host. There are so many free and premium backup plugins available that creates backup of your website and keep your site safe and secure.

8. Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics gives you detailed information about who visits your site, how visitors are responding to your site and what are they actually looking to your site. You can sign up and integrate Google Analytics to your site. It gives you detailed information about website traffic. There are number of plugins available to track the performance of your website. I recommend you to install Google Analytics for WordPress because it is easy to use for beginners and experts.

9. Change Your Blog tagline

Blog tagline helps you to create a unique brand of your blog. These taglines are important in branding of website. These taglines conveys your site’s message and tell your visitors about your idea. To change your blog tagline click on Settings >> General and then change tagline you like.

10. Change Timezone

You can also change time according to your requirement . There are lots of time options available. You can set time according to your blog. Click on Settings >> General >> TImezone and select right timezone for you.

11. Set Your Preferred domain URL

Search Engine considered www and non-www both as two different version of sites. Select your domain that is good for SEO and stick with that domain URL. To set the preferred domain URL click on Settings >> General. Set your preferred domain in WordPress Address and Site Address to either www or non-www version.

12. Delete Hello Dolly plugin

Remove default plugin from your website because it has no use.

13. Remove default Content

When your WordPress installation is completed, you may notice that by default there is a “Hello World” post along with a sample comment and a sample page. This is dummy content and is of no use. Hence, you can remove these pages/posts before you start adding your content.

14. Secure Your login

Secure your login by keeping a strong password and limiting login attempts. You can use Limit Login Attempts plugin for this or you can also generate complex passwords for your accounts.

15. Disable post revisions

WordPress revisions keep backup copies of each saved draft or published update. These post revisions however increase the size of WordPress wp-posts table in database. Every time you click on save draft button, a revision is saved and a new row is created in wp-posts table. If you deactivate these post revisions from your blog, you can save lot of space in your database and improve the performance of database queries. To do this add the below line of code in wp-config.php file:

define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);

16. Disable HTML in WordPress Comments

Many WordPress theme allows HTML tags in comments such as <a>, <em>, <strong>, <b> etc. Spammers can easily attack your WordPress blog because lots of spam comments also contain HTML tags. To prevent your website from comment spam, disable these HTML tags in your WordPress comment. To do this add the below line in your function.php file:

add_filter( ‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_specialchars’);

17. Create Favicon

Favicon image is important for your website’s branding. Here’s a guide to adding favicon to your WordPress site.

18. Update Discussion Settings

The discussion settings are used to control on how your visitor interact with your website. To update discussion settings click on Settings >> Discussions and change the settings according to the need of your blog. You can enable/disable comments, check if only registered users should be allowed to comment, auto-close comment posting on old posts, enable nested/threaded comments etc.

19. Create About Me page

This is also important part that you must do to introduce yourself with your visitors. This page shows information about you and your achievements which is very strong point for your blog or business website.

20. Add Gravatar

Gravatar is also an important element to know about active users on your blog. Gravatars also helps you in online branding of your website. It creates relationship between you and your visitors so it is very important from you and your visitors.

Check: How to add custom Gravatar.

21. Add Contact page

Contact page is an important part of every website. Adding a contact page is good, so that you can generate leads. You can also add your location by embedding Google Map that helps your visitors to find your business location.

Check: How to create a form using Contact Form 7

22. Update your Profile

It is very important to provide as much information as possible to your visitors to gather more visitors on your site and maximize your website. You can change passwords and contact details by updating your profile.

I hope the above suggestions helps you. If you also want to share some suggestions then please share with us in the comment section below.