Welcome to WordPress, now that you have installed one of the best platform to blog with, there are a few things you might want to tweak and change to get the best out of it.

I am starting a new series called “WordPress For Beginners” that will focus on helping newcomers and moderate users optimize their WordPress installation, though I will try and cover many things here, there may still be things that may not make it to this list, so if you think I left anything out please feel free to add to this list.

This guide is based on WordPress 2.8 so few things may not be available/different if you are using a older version of WordPress.

In this post I will concentrate on exposing the different settings WordPress has and you can use after installation.

After Installing: Change Your Administrator Password

The initial administrator password is generated randomly, so you might want to change it to something that you can easily remember.

Create Another User With Administrative Privilege

Though not required, it is always good to create a new user with your name and use that for all administrative purposes, again this is not a requirement, however I personally don’t like to write blog posts using the admin user.

Change Blog Title & Tag Line

Your blog is unique and you might want to give it a nice title and tag line, to do that go to Settings -> General and update the information there.

Disable Option For Anyone To Register

Unless you want people to register and comment on your site, you do not require this feature, go to Settings –> General and uncheck the checkbox next to “Anyone Can Register” and save the settings.

Setup your Timezone, Date & Time Format

On the same general settings page, setup the timezone for your country and change the date & time format that suits you best.

Configure Writing  Settings

Go to Options –> Writing and configure how you want the write panel you to display, and also other options related to converting content and correcting improper HTML in the post to be XHTML valid.

If you plan to write blog posts from a desktop or external editor, you will have to enable remote publishing, without which you may not be able to publish using a external tool or device.

If you want to publish posts using email, you can also set that up on this page itself.

Add Ping Servers

Whenever you write a new post not all services will automatically know about it, however WordPress allows users to automatically ping these services whenever you write a new post.

In the Settings –> Writing options page you can enter a list of Update services WordPress needs to ping when you write a new post. Here is a comprehensive list of services you can add there.

Update: Based on comments from Otto and Matt, I have removed this list, to get a list of services you can check the WordPress Codex: Update Services.

Setup Reading Options

By default WordPress will display the latest posts on the home page, however you can also show a static page instead of it, to change that go to Settings –> Reading and change the default page that should be shown when someone visits your blog.

In this page you can also change the number of posts that should be displayed on each page of your blog and the number of posts that should be shown when someone subscribes to your RSS feed.

You can also decide whether to show full or partial content in feeds, I suggest you keep it as full content.

Commenting, Trackbacks, Pinging & More

Whenever you write a new post, you may sometimes include a link to another site, WordPress provides you with an option to automatically notify the external blog in the form of a trackback or pingback.

In addition to that other blogs may link to you, and WordPress has the ability to provide us with an option to send you trackbacks & pingbacks.

If you do not want that to happen you can go to Settings –> Discussions and disable it.

You can also setup if you want to allow other users to comment on your posts, the criteria for allowing users to comment on your blog and so on in this page, along with displaying of Avatars for commentators.

Setup Media Options For Images

Whenever you upload a image to your blog, WordPress will resize and display it accordingly, if you want to change the size of the thumbnails and other image sizes, you can visit Settings –> Media.

Privacy & Disallowing Search Engines From Crawling Your Blog

If you want to let your blog remain private and don’t want it to be crawled by search engines, WordPress provides you a easy option to do it, go to Settings –> Privacy and change the privacy settings for your blog.

Setup Permalinks

WordPress is a wonderful platform in the form that it allows users to setup how the URL for your blog should be like.

Optimized URLs are usually good for SEO, you might want to change the Permalinks for your blog by going to Settings –> Permalinks.

In addition to the available options, you can also setup custom permalinks by using tags, you can find a list of tags you can use in the permalink by visiting this WordPress Codex document for custom tags.

Image Upload Location and URL

A often overlooked area of the settings is the Settings –> Miscellaneous page, on this page you can change the default location of where images get stored when you upload it and also provide with a URL that you want the images to be appended with.

For example I use cache.techie-buzz.com instead of techie-buzz.com for my images, so I can set it up on this page.

This concludes the first part of the new WordPress for Beginners series, in the next part I will look at a bit more technical aspects of setting up your blog and installing essential plugins and themes.

Please feel free to comment and tell us about things I may have missed out.

If you do face a problem, please do understand that there may be certain factors that may not have been tested for (and it is virtually impossible to test for every factor in this world) as there are so many different factors that cannot be accounted for while testing.

However if you do come across a problem with WordPress, don’t panic. The first thing you should do is to take stock of what the problem is and then head to the WordPress forums and search for similar problems like yours, more likely than not you will find a solution for your problem.

If you do not find a answer, create a new forum post and describe your problem as clearly and in a detailed format as you can. Keeping the forum post detailed helps, here are some things you may want to include.

1. Which area of your blog is having a problem (admin area, write panel, home page etc)
2. What is the problem you are facing.
3. If you can provide Screenshots of your problems, it may help others who want to help you out and make it easier for them to understand.
4. Any other details that may sum up your problem.

More likely than not you will receive a answer to your question within a short span of time.

It also helps to keep in contact with people who have advanced knowledge as they may help you out if you come across problem.

One more area where you can get help fast is social networking, you can ask for help there, quite recently one of the persons I know posted that he had a problem with one of his sites on Twitter, I saw that and messaged him, we had a quick chat and the problem was solved in 15 minutes.

All in all help is just a matter of forum post or social networking entry away, if all fails, there is also a WordPress support service which provides support through phone at WordPress Help Center, phone calls under 3 minutes are free, anything above that will be paid support.

Are there any better ways to troubleshoot problems with WordPress? Do you want to add to this list, do feel free to do that through your comments.

Does It Matter If You Use 1 or 100s of Plugins?

The answer is yes, it does matter, each and every plugin you use has to be processed before an actual page is generated, so all the plugin files are compiled in order to get the intended output.

This may in the end not actually make a big difference in your blogs load time, however it may eventually slow it down a little bit.

Do Plugins Add Overhead To Your Site?

Yes at times they do add overhead to your site, for example quite recently I was using a plugin that added 180Kbs of JavaScript code to each and every page on the site, however that plugins functionality was only useful on a single page.

You should periodically check these things out as you may be unnecessarily increasing your page load times, if possible try and find an alternative or contact the plugin author to add an option to limit overheads to only those pages where the plugin functions.

Should I Stop Using Too Many Plugins Then?

Not exactly, like I said it does affect your blog load times and you might want to take a look at your plugins to see which of them are really useful and maybe remove some of them.

I usually change several things on the site quite often, and with that I stop using the functionality provided by certain plugins. I run a weekly or bi-weekly maintenance or spring cleaning of the blog, in which I take a look at all the active plugins and see whether I am using them or not, and disable those that I no longer use.

Many a times you will find that there are plugins that are unused and are still active, it is best to disable those plugins while you are not using them and enable them back whenever you need to use their functionality.

What Type Of Plugins Should I Avoid?

There is no real rule-of-thumb for me to say what to avoid and what to use, each plugin’s functionality is different and useful, however something that is useful to me may not be useful to someone else and vice versa.

However as a general rule, on a high traffic blog try and avoid plugins that make many database calls, since it may affect performance, it is ok to make around 10-20 queries per page, however anything more than that degrades performance and may crash the DB on high traffic sites.

What Else? Tell Us Your Tips

There may be several other things you might want to add, go ahead and tell us what you think should be ideal when it comes to using plugins, we would love to hear your opinions.

Also, I will be doing a follow up post addressing several things that have been left unanswered in this post, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment, I will try and answer them in the follow up post.

The best part about it is that most of the help comes from the community itself, who spend time to help WordPress quash bugs and also help other users to solve problems they face with their installations.

This community would grow bigger and better with more and more users, and many users are eager to help but may not know where to start, here are some ways to help out with bugs in WordPress, or help out other users solve their problems.

WordPress Trac

WordPress Trac is a place where users can file bugs and help solve them by testing and submitting fixes, this is a place where many bugs are filed and solved, helping make WordPress releases bug free and better for the larger audience.

If you are a developer or would like to contribute bugs by testing, this is the place you should be in.

WordPress Trac

WordPress IRC Channel

Once again focused on developers and testers, this is a place where many users are active and discussing about everything related to WordPress, feel free to join by adding the WordPress IRC Channel to share you views and help out in real time.

WordPress IRC Channel

WordPress Forums

WordPress Forums is a place where users add problems and questions with regards to their installations, if you think you can answer them feel free to jump in and help users out, it really helps many users who are new and starting out or have problems to be guided by someone experienced or known to the issues they are facing. Your help goes a long way.

WordPress Forums

Any Other Ways?

Do you use any other channels to help the WordPress community? Feel free to share it with everyone.

Look forward to your views and suggestions.

Here is a checklist that you can fallback on whenever you install WordPress for the first time or for that matter on a newer blog, the list is not exhaustive, so please feel free to contribute and add things that I may have missed out on.

• WordPress Tips + Things You Can Do After Installing WordPress – Digital Inspiration
• 10 Things To Do After Installing WordPress – Pro Blog Design
• 15 Must Do Tweaks After a WordPress Installation – Techie Buzz (disclaimer: this is my personal blog)
• 10 Things To Do After Installing WordPress – Blogsolute

These are just a few links, however they will go a long way to help you optimize your WordPress setup from day 1, you can also test out these changes on a local installation before you move out to a real blog, here is some help to get WordPress setup on a local environment before you decide to move it to your blog.

• Install WordPress Locally Part 1
• Installing WordPress Locally Part 2

What else Help? You can find appropriate help when you face problems or require help with getting started with WordPress.

• Getting Started with WordPress – WordPress Codex
• WordPress Forums – Please search first, you will find fixes to tons of problems, before you create a new forum post.

And this is not the entire list to fall back on, there are really tons of great resources on the Internet that will help you get started, need help with anything, just ask and more than 1 person will be willing to help you.