View the complete article: http://qcmny.com/guide/wordpress-getting-started/ A complete beginner's guide to getting started with WordPress. Learn about best practices and tips for launching your new WordPress website.

1. WordPress:
Getting Started
Queen City Media

2. Queen City Media @qcmny
Why WordPress?
• WordPress powers 22.5% of all websites on the internet.
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Free Software — free to download, install, use & modify.
• Search engine friendly.
• Safe & Secure — built with security in mind.
• Easy to manage
• Extendable by using themes & plugins — fully customizable.

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First things first…..
Navigate to the “Users” area and
create a new user with
administrative privileges under a
unique name. Next, delete the
account titled “admin”. This is a
quick and easy step that will go
along way to making sure you
website remains safe from
attacks.
Set/Change Admin NameLocation: Users > All Users

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Limit User Account Creation
Location: Settings > General
If you don’t provide additional
functionality to registered users you
should immediately uncheck the
membership box labeled “Anyone can
register”. I strongly recommend
adding an additional step or even a
membership plugin if you would like
users to register for your site.
With this enabled it is very easy for somebody to create a
malicious script that creates user accounts on your site. This
can create security issues or even crash your database. Safety
first!

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Install BruteProtect
A Brute Force attack uses a bot to test thousands of passwords against your user
account to gain access to your site.
Simply navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for “BruteProtect” after you
install the plugin, you will have to request an API key that you enter in the plugin
settings. That’s it!
Location: WordPress Plugin Directory

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Maintenance Set-UpLocation: Settings > General
• Set Time
Before taking your site live, check your settings to make sure that
everything synced to the correct timezone.
• Site Title and Tagline
Remember when you were installing WordPress and you were prompted
to enter a site title and site description (tagline)? Did you choose a title and
sub-title for your site or just put in a place holder? Maybe you’ve set your title
but left site description blank. If you leave this field blank and your theme
utilizes the site description functionality your visitors will be greeted with the
cliche “Just another WordPress blog”.

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Search Engine Optimization
• Confirm/Set Preferred URL
Location: Settings > General
Consistency in your preferred URL is important
in preventing duplicate content issues. the site
URL to be set to your preferred setting
(http://www.example.com or
http://example.com).
• Clean Up Your Links!
Location: Settings > Permalinks
This tip is helpful for many reasons. Permalinks
are often referred to as “pretty urls”. Because
well, they just look better. There is also an SEO
benefit to using relevant keywords in your post
URLs.

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Install Yoast (Plug-in)Location: Plugins > Add New
Yoast’s plugin optimizes your website
for search engines, functionality and
user experience. WordPress SEO
allows you to set proper SEO title and
meta description for posts/pages.
These elements can great increase
CTR in search results and improve
page rank.

9. Queen City Media @qcmny
Deleting the Unnecessary
Remove Packaged
Plugins
Location: Plugins > Installed Plugins
WordPress, by default comes
packaged with 2 plugins: Hello
Dolly and Akismet. Depending on
your hosting provider you may also
see plugins packaged by partners.
For me, this is like cleaning up a
fresh OS install; delete everything
that you’re not going to use.
Delete Sample Page, Post
and Comments
Location: Pages > All Pages, Posts > All
Posts
I don’t like sample content. If I didn’t
create it, I don’t want it on my site. Give
your site a fresh start and delete the
sample page, post and comments
created by default. If nothing else, It
feels good to know you had a hand in
creating every piece of content on your
new site!

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Taking it Further
Install Favorite Plugins
Location: Plugins > Add New
Kraken.io – Simply the best, most powerful image optimization tool out there.
Save time, and space on your website for faster loads and less bandwidth
usage.
Velvet Blue URLs – Very useful when moving your WP site.
Regenerate Thumbnails – Make a a change to your image sizes? This helpful
plugin will take care of any thumbnail issues.
Caldera Forms — A powerful, flexible form builder. Customize your forms,
notifications and functionality to meet the needs of your site.