Using WordPress software for your website is a good decision. Anyone can create a blog, website, and or online store on WordPress. WordPress is an open-source content management system.
WordPress powers more than 30% of the websites on the internet and is a powerful platform. It is an easy and SEO-friendly platform.
If you want to start a blog or website, you signup for your hosting account. Just pick a domain name of your choice and install WordPress Software. Fill in all the required registration details and start creating your blog or website.
Add a theme as per your choice. You can use a free theme and you can also use a paid theme. You get a lot of flexibility and power when you are making your site on WordPress.
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In this blog, I am sharing some important settings, tips, and tricks that you should know to enhance and secure your site.
Install WordPress Software
To download your WordPress software, you just log in to your hosting account. Go to the WordPress tool section and click on install. Fill in all the required details. Set your user ID and password.
Most of the good hosting plan providers have the option to install WordPress in just one or a few clicks only.
Hosting is a very important and crucial part of your site. So, choosing your hosting will properly research and homework. Your domain name will be your website address and people will know your site with your name only.
Siteground, Bluehost, Kinsta, etc are some of the popular hosting providers.
General Setting
Log in to the WordPress account. You will see a setting option on the dashboard page. Click on the setting option and after that click on General.
Here you fill in your Site Title and Tagline of your site.
You will notice options of WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL). Normally, you should keep both URLs the same.
Custom Home Page
You can design a beautiful and unique custom home page for your site. This will be the front page of your website site. To make this custom page your home page you have to do some settings.
Go to your dashboard and click on the setting. After that click on the reading setting and You will see two options
- Your Latest Posts
- A static page (select below)
By default, WordPress displays the latest post on your site’s home page. Here you change the setting and select the A static page (select below) option. Below this option, you need to select Home Page.
After doing this setting, your custom page will be your home page. You can also see the setting in the below image.
Permalinks Setting
You should do the permalinks setting from your dashboard. Login to your account and click on the setting. After then you will see the option of permalinks. You just click on it. Now you will see a list of common settings.
You may see the following options
- Plain
- Day and Name
- Month and Name
- Numeric
- Post Name
- Custom Structure
Normally, the most preferable option is the Post Name option. You can click on the option to set this format as your permalinks structure.
or
You can choose the option of custom structure and customize your permalinks as per your choice from the given settings.
You should not change your permalinks structure again and again if your site is live on the internet.
Search Engine Visibility
If you are a blogger or a site owner, you must be aware of the importance of search engine visibility.
You should keep your search engine visibility option on your site. For this, you log in to your site admin dashboard. Go to the setting and click on the reading setting option. Here you will see the option of Search Engine Visibility.
Keep Unmark this option if you want to enable the search engine indexing.
or
Keep marked this option if you want to disable the search engine indexing.
At the start of the website, you may keep the indexing OFF. Whenever your site is ready to live then you may ON the indexing option.
Update Services and Ping-o-Matic
You scroll down on your writing setting page. You will see an option of Update Services. This is a tool that lets other people know that you have updated a blog on your site. You can keep this setting if you want that WordPress to automatically notifies to updated services.
WordPress sends an XML-RPC ping when you update or create a post. This immediately notifies updated services that you have updated or created a post.
If you don’t want notifies immediately then you can remove it. The search engine will crawl your site as usual if you have your search engine visibility option.
SSL Certificate
You must use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate on your site. This will make the site more secure. If you are using an SSL certificate, it will encrypt the data transmitted between the server and the user’s browsers.
Encrypted data will be unreadable to everyone except the server. Whenever you use SSL Certificate, you have the user’s trust also.
Most of the good hosting service companies like Bluehost, Kinsta, etc provide you an SSL certificate for free. You must enable your site.
Password Setting and Two-Step Password Authentication
We are living in the internet world. Cybercrime is very common in the internet world. You may also be aware of hacking and password breaches etc. If you have a blog or website you have to be more cautious about the security of your site.
You should set a complicated password for your WordPress account and Hosting account as well. You must avoid simple passwords like ABCD, 123456, or your mobile number, etc.
Second, you can protect your site by adding two-step password authentication. You can do it by mobile app or a plugin or any alternate way.
Setup 404 Page Redirect
There may be some dead links or broken links on your site. In case, the user will click on these links there will be a 404 error. When the user clicks on any broken link, the browser communicates to the server. But the server couldn’t find the request.
You can set up a redirect for the 404 error page to your home page. You can design a beautiful custom page for the 404 error page. It will have a good impression.
There should not be any broken links or dead links on your site. You must remove it as you find any. From time to time you can do your site audit and remove such kinds of links.
Increase PHP Memory
It is possible that you have exhausted your PHP memory limit after some time. By default, there is limited memory is allocated.
If you have exhausted your limit, you may face some errors. You should change and increase the limit from your CPanel. To increase your memory limit, log in to your Cpanel and open your wp-config.php file. Update your limit from here.
You can increase up to a specific maximum amount of memory limit. Check with your hosting provider that how much memory you can increase.
Disavow Spam Backlinks
If there are some Spam and poor quality backlinks on your site and spamming your site then you should disavow these links.
To disavow these links on google, you click on disavow links and select your website. Then click on disavow links. Select your backlinks file which you want to disavow and submit it. Your file should be in .txt format.
Conclusion
Having a good Domain name, Hosting and Theme are important parts of the site. But it is also important that you are doing all the required settings on time. You should protect your site as much as possible.
Protection of your site is very much important. You should add google analytics to your site. So, you can measure your traffic and the performance of your site.
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