Configuring an installed version of WordPress
Posted in CMS and Wordpress 2 years, 11 months ago at 10:06 am
Basic steps to updating a WordPress installation
Most parts of the WordPress site can be edited within the Dashboard.
If you want to update styles, however, it is possibly faster to do it inside an external editor such as Dreamweaver or TextWrangler rather than doing it in the Theme editing screens in the Dashboard.
Update these basics
- Settings->Permalinks …get set to custom %postname%
- Settings->General update Tagline …to describe your site.
- Posts->Categories…Rename “uncategorized” to News or something similar.
- Posts->Categories…add more categories for topics.
- Pages->About…revise the text here to reflect your site.
- Pages->Add New…add a contact form using this code: [contact-form] This is basic, but will do the trick until you install a plugin. MAY NOT WORK with newer versions of WordPress. Install The Contact 7 plugin.
- Pages->Add more pages for other sections of your site that are not news/articles.
- Posts->Add new. Add at least one new post for each category so they will show up in the menu.
- Appearance->Themes. Either update the default theme to use your header and color scheme, or COPY the default theme folder (on the server and hard drive), rename it, and restyle it. OR install a new theme from the Add New Themes area.
- Appearance->Widgets. Remove sidebar widgets you do not need. Leave the meta on there if you want to be able to quickly login from your WordPress home page.
Essential Plugins
- Akismet
- Contact 7, Easy Contact, or cForms for making forms
- WP Database Backup
- PHPmyAdmin
- Google Analyticator
- InstantUpgrade
- Search & Replace (keep it off unless you are cleaning house)
- WP low Profiler