Optimizing your WordPress settings for success.
This is the fourth video of the [Get Started] series especially for WordPress beginners.
Time To Configure for Optimization
So before we fire off writing posts and pages in our new WordPress site, we want to make sure we have our settings optimized. What do I mean by optimized? We essentially want to make sure we are optimizing the foundation for success. Our work-flow, SEO, and process for publishing can be much easier if you have everything setup correctly ahead of time.
Let’s start with a setting that catches even the most seasoned blogger. The time setting.
Make Sure To Set Your Timezone!
So if you wanted to “schedule” a post to publish at a certain time and date, it is important to make sure your site knows what time it is for you. Missing this is setting is a common mistake and can be configured under the General Settings of your website.
If you would like to publish content from a third party or remote connection, you will want to make sure you enable Remote Publishing under the Writing settings.
What might you use for remote publishing? Well there is a nice mobile WordPress application that allows you to write, edit and publish articles from your mobile device. In order for it to work this must be enabled.
Configuring your media preferences from the get go can save you a lot of time when you are publishing new articles that will contain images and video. You can pre-define how you want the dimensions, as well as auto embedding for your video and what size you would prefer the video. Obviously the settings will strongly depend on what theme you are using. This site uses the Standard Them 2.5 and I know that I don’t ever want media expanding past 570 pixels wide. You can easily determine the max width of your screen by taking a screen-shot, and then pulling it into any modern photo editor and drag your box tool across the width to see what the width is.
Set It.. and FORGET it!
The next important setting is defining our Permalink structure. I will go into more detail about permalinks in a later post, but for now just take my word for it that most of you will want to just set your link structure to “post-name” for this setting. This will help with your site-map, SEO (search engine optimization) and keeping your URLs pretty.
Set That Permalink... like a BOSS
Here is a quick video that walks you through most of these important settings:
As always, please post any questions or snags in the comments and I will be sure to help you out.
Related posts:
Joshua Chase (15)
Joseph McCullough (7)
Adam (5)
John Saddington (4)
Charity (3)
Audrey of Infinit Outsourcing (2)
Jonathan Malm (2)