Things to do before you start blogging

OK, before you get carried away and start blogging, there are a couple of things you need to do to your Wordpress admin area.
1. Go to Permalinks and Custom Structure and change it to: /%category%/%postname%/
- this will change the way the URL looks when you create a page or a post. i.e. you will have [...]

OK, before you get carried away and start blogging, there are a couple of things you need to do to your Wordpress admin area.

1. Go to Permalinks and Custom Structure and change it to: /%category%/%postname%/
- this will change the way the URL looks when you create a page or a post. i.e. you will have a google friendly post instead of an ugly URL which is the default in Wordpress.

2. Activate Akismet
- This is an spam filter and will save you from having to delete loads of messages from people trying to sell you viagra or sex toys. When you go to activate Akismet they will ask for your API Key. Check your email as you should have been sent this the first time you set up a Wordpress blog. Enter this API key in and you are away.

3. Install Plugins
- Plugins give you additional functionality in Wordpress. There are loads of different plugins, but there are some that you really should use which will make a big difference to your site. I have made a list of what I believe to be the most useful/important plugins. There are a bunch of blogs out there which can expand on this list, but for now these are my recommendations.
- To install a plugin, download the plugin folder to your desktop and then drag and drop it to the Plugins folder on your FTP Client.

4. Change password to something more memorable
- When you log in to your Wordpress admin for the first time you will see a message at the top of the screen asking if you want to change your password. Unless you want to keep the default password, I suggest you change it to something more memorable. You can also change your login name.

5. Set up a Contact Us page
- make sure you activate the Contact 7 plugin
- Go to the ‘Contact’ link on the left hand side in your admin panel
-  Scroll down the page where it says <p>Your Email (required)<br /> [email* your-email] </p>. Insert your email into the part where it says Your email (required).
- Copy the text at the top – [contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]
- Create a new page called Contact Us or whatever your prefer.
- Insert the code – [contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"] into the body of the page.
- Save it and you are done.
Note: If you are using Thesis, go to Thesis Options, Navigation Menu and click on the + sign where it says Select pages to include in the nav menu. Select the Contact Us page and save.

5. If you are using the Thesis theme,do the following:

- Change name of the ‘custom sample folder’ to ‘custom’ in your FTP client
- Write in some ‘Home Page Meta Data’ in appropriate spot in admin area