This part 4 of my 25 Things I Do for Every WordPress Site I Install – The Series.  People have been lining up overnight to get copies so here it is.  If you missed Part 3 about creating a Static page then pop back and have a look. 

Although ostensibly not a WordPress specific task I squeezed this one in here.

An About page fuels the interest  that people ma have about you and your company.  I always look at about pages when I visit company websites as it helps me to put a bit of colour on what they do and sell.

I am not going to bore you with the history of blogging since 1990.  Go to Wikipedia for that (off with you now).   There are millions of blogs out there like this one with people tapping away and WordPress is one of the most popular by a mile. However you may just want a website that you can edit that looks like well a website and not a blog.  In recent releases WordPress has made it much easier to be a content management system (CMS) and also made it so much easier to actually dive in and start editing the content.

WordPress since its inception has found huge popularity as a blogging platform.  It always claimed under it’s breath that it was a content management system.  But it hasn’t been until its more recent releases (3.x onwards)  when it made it easier to add menus to headers that it really crossed that barrier to for the casual website creator.

I must admit till the menus feature came on board I was a bit reluctant to push WordPress as a CMS and used Drupal and Joomla more often than not.  But more and more I tend to develop sites with WordPress as the back end as it is really one of the easiest site for the non PC literate person to use.  The proof of this once I handover a site to clients I often see within days that they have created lots of content, played with the menu structure and gotten to grips with the basics.  It also is great for me as I do not have to support multiple HTML updates over weeks when now they can control all the text themselves.  So we both win (I think I come out best though!)

With the Menus feature (Appearance –> Menus) you can create your own menu with pages as the menu items.  So effectively you might never even write a blog post for your site at all.  But lets quickly see how to make your static landing page.

How To Move Your WordPress Blog to a CMS

In your admin area, just go to Settings » Reading.  Here you can decide if your home page will display your blog posts or a static page, if you choose a static page you can also choose which page to be your home page from the select box.

You choose the page that you want to be on the front of the site Save Changes and voilà instead of the original Hello World post that may have been there you now can have a page of your choice.  Yipee.

However there is still a pimple on the face of this page and that is the comment option at the end of the page that makes the page still look like a blog.  The actual page may (depending on your theme) allow you to turn off comments and it is possible to do this on a page per page basis or I will show you how to disable this on pages in an exciting post soon.

If you read my previous post on Installing WordPress then here is the long awaited part 2 of the 25 part series on WordPress and other stuff (as I lovingly title it today).

If you don’t know what ASKIMET is then you definitely know what Spam is.  We all hate Spam and the endless ridiculous emails that we get into our inboxes (admittedly GMail users see little of it these days).  unless you are in the market for Viagra then spam is something you can do without.

The other hated type of Spam is comment Spam.  This is sent by Pygmies who live in the Tibetan mountains and by all accounts they are a busy bunch.  When you finish your install with WordPress the probability is high that within days you will starting getting comments from the spam pygmies on your posts who smell every new blog with their blog sniffing tools.

So when you get all excited to see a comment and the read it and it will probably say something along the lines of

“Great Post I really enjoyed it.  It awakened new thoughts in my mind.  check out my Viagra site interesting site here <a href=”completely spammy – virus ridden link from hell>”

And it will continue day after day unless you put a stop to it.  The most reliable to stop this is to install a plugin to block it.  Plugins are the backbone of WordPress and there are hundreds of great free ones available.  There are hundreds of dreadful ones as well available but you wont see any of those mentioned here – no sireeee.  Plugins for WordPress are again one clickers (remember part one the one click installs).  Well sometimes a plugin may take two clicks but the workout will be worth it.

If you don’t know what a plugin is don’t worry I am here to help lets look at where these puppies are.

Installing Plugins for WordPress

Over on the left of your dashboard you will see the plugins options.  It may not be expanded so click on the small arrow nest to the word Plugin (OK next to the letter s in Plugins) and Select Add New.  Don’t be scared all will be well.  Admittedly there are some plugins that when you install will completely hose your site.  I am not joking here they will block your login and take some back end work to fix.  I have had this experience in the past few weeks alone.  The plugin looked OK installed nicely.  I configured it.  Logged out then couldn’t log back in.  I fixed it but the broken cups and abusive language wasn’t worth it.

Adding Askimet

The method for installing Askimet is practically identical for all plugins so I wont dwell on that too much but after the excitement of selecting Add New you will end up with a window like this.  Type in Askimet into the Search Plugins window and don’t be shocked if you find the plugin.

When you find it click Install Now and in a few seconds you will see it installed.  Click Activate and the plugin is installed.

But There is a Little More Work to Do

After you have activated the Askimet plugin you will see up top of your screen text like in the figure below asking you to enter your Askimet API key.  Before you run away shrieking in fear at the word API don’t worry.  Relax getting and API key is as easy as getting a key cut at the cobblers.  Read on.

Getting An API Key is easy.  The kind folks at Askimet will give you one for free or you can give a donation if you are feeling generous.  Its up to you.  Go to https://akismet.com and select a personal Askimet key and follow the easy steps and add your details.  If it is a business site then consider giving them some money.  It is a great tool and weeds out the tools from the blood sucking spammers.  You will then get an email from them with the key.

Go back to the Installed Plugins section.  Select Enter Your Askimet API key that was emailed to you and you are done.  Askimet does the rest.  Filters out the spam and even auto deletes it after a month so you don’t have to do anything.

And that’s it…

25 Things I Do for Every WordPress Site I Install – The Series

1. Install WordPress of course!
2. Install Askimet Plugin the spammers will find you within seconds
3. Use a static page as the front end as more and more of my sites are CMS
4. For a low cost site with a template I edit the php to remove the commenting features on pages as I don’t want commenting on the pages but do on the posts.
5. Tell Google Webmasters you exist by registering the site using your Analytics account
6. Create an About Page
7. Create a Contact Page
8. Add a contact form to the above contact page
9. If the company has a location then I add a Google Map to the contact page.
10. Add an XML Sitemap plugin to auto create the sitemap.
11. Generate this sitemap.
12. Generate a page that contains this sitemap.  There are plugins to do this as well.  Install one and update it regularly
13. Create a page with a privacy policy.  If there isn’t one yet then write some text to that effect.
14. Create at least one main menu with Home, About and Contact.  This will grow over time.
15. Add Social Media icons to sidebar for the company.  If they don’t have social media accounts link the icons to a page that says so and ask people who click through for which ones are their favourites.
16. Get the customer to create a GMail account and get Google Analytics code
17. Add this Google Analytics code to the site.
18. Install Yoasts SEO plugin – it is the best I have seen lately.
19. Fix the Permalinks that are set by default for some combination of the actual post or page name.  Better for search.
20. Install Testimonials Widgets – if you don’t have Testimonials then you should ask for some and add them.
21. When you get your first testimonial – add the testimonial widget  it to sidebar or footer.
22. Weite 3 Posts for the Blog and establish categories.  No ideas for a post here are 3 straight away.  About You, Why You have this Site, Plans for the Site. Done
23. Install social sharing plugin for these posts. You never know someone may like them
24. Create a domain specific email address like myname@example.com
25. Make sure that your contact details are above the fold for all pages and especially on the contact page.

Recently on Google Plus I posted the 25 things I do for every WordPress site that I install and I promised myself and the other two readers of this blog that for Christmas they would get that unbeatable present of a 25 part series that would expand on each post and be the must have book for Christmas. The list is at the end of the post and as I progress through the posts I will link back to the series to beat all series.

As the cunning title suggests the first thing for any installation of WordPress is of course to install it.  I of course have no intention of telling you how to install WordPress as the folks at WordPress can tell you this quite easily without me regurgitating up the facts again.  So for detaile instructions go over to the WordPress site where they explain in nice detail how to do a full WordPress install.

If this scares the living daylights out of you may be OK as many hosting platforms now offer a one click install.  For those of you who don’t know what a one click install is it is a once click install.  Yes literally select WordPress click install and put in some details on user name and password and where you want it to be installed and in a flash (well about 15-20 minutes) you will have WordPress installed.

Is that it?  Yes I am afraid so.  It is handy to know how to use the WordPress full install as there are still lots of hosting companies who don’t offer the one click install.  And sometimes it is better to do the full install as it gives you control over where the WordPress files are actually located on your hosting platform.

But one click is the bees knees and the cats pyjamas and as I am lazy I use it when it is available. When the install is complete you will be presented with the Twenty Eleven theme as default as shown above.  Here is more detail on the theme the number one theme  on WordPress as they push it to all of us unsuspecting once clickers when we do an install.  It isn’t a bad theme and if you are new to WordPress you can have many happy days playing with it.

Phew only 24 more tips to go.  Here is the full list which again I have only written 24 but tomorrow (or definitely the day after) we will have one of the most important plugins you need to install Askimet.

25 Things I Do for Every WordPress Site I Install – The Series

1. Install WordPress of course!
2. Install Askimet Plugin the spammers will find you within seconds
3. Use a static page as the front end as more and more of my sites are CMS
4. For a low cost site with a template I edit the php to remove the commenting features on pages as I don’t want commenting on the pages but do on the posts.
5. Tell Google Webmasters you exist by registering the site using your Analytics account
6. Create an About Page
7. Create a Contact Page
8. Add a contact form to the above contact page
9. If the company has a location then I add a Google Map to the contact page.
10. Add an XML Sitemap plugin to auto create the sitemap.
11. Generate this sitemap.
12. Generate a page that contains this sitemap.  There are plugins to do this as well.  Install one and update it regularly
13. Create a page with a privacy policy.  If there isn’t one yet then write some text to that effect.
14. Create at least one main menu with Home, About and Contact.  This will grow over time.
15. Add Social Media icons to sidebar for the company.  If they don’t have social media accounts link the icons to a page that says so and ask people who click through for which ones are their favourites.
16. Get the customer to create a GMail account and get Google Analytics code
17. Add this Google Analytics code to the site.
18. Install Yoasts SEO plugin – it is the best I have seen lately.
19. Fix the Permalinks that are set by default for some combination of the actual post or page name.  Better for search.
20. Install Testimonials Widgets – if you don’t have Testimonials then you should ask for some and add them.
21. When you get your first testimonial – add the testimonial widget  it to sidebar or footer.
22. Weite 3 Posts for the Blog and establish categories.  No ideas for a post here are 3 straight away.  About You, Why You have this Site, Plans for the Site. Done
23. Install social sharing plugin for these posts. You never know someone may like them
24. Create a domain specific email address like myname@example.com
25. Make sure that your contact details are above the fold for all pages and especially on the contact page.