When In Doubt, Stick to the Basics
If you are new to WordPress, you should check out these settings before you do anything else. Some things need to be done correctly, right from the start.
Some of the Basics Included
Updates
This is not found under the Settings tab, but it’s a basic first thing to understand. Make sure you have the most recent version of WordPress installed and set it to auto-upgrade new versions. Do this to 1) stay current and most importantly 2) to keep from being hacked.
You will probably want to back everything up before you do this, unless this is your first time upgrading. Always backup your WordPress data, and all you other data, too!
General
Check that your site name, site tag (it’s like a site’s subtitle) and you dates/times are set correctly.
Permalinks
This is where you tell WordPress to make your webpage titles legible to humans. By default WordPress talks in computer code,
To WordPress, a link might look like this… http://NewWildMedia.com/?p=264
But we want it to look like more like this… http://NewWildMedia.com/title
The second example is legible to both humans and search engines, since they are looking for keywords. So change your permalinks to look “pretty” to us and to be more functioal for Search Engine Optimization. (SEO)
Permalinks are a big deal because you want to stay consistent from the start.
