Delete plugins and themes.
This will be a short post and it is just a recommendation. When you install WordPress using a one click installer your web host often adds a some plugins and themes. I recommend deleting all of these plugins except Akismet (*read important information about Akismet below).
You need to be a wordpress.com member to get a key
Akismet is a great tool for preventing spam comments and trust me you will need get spam. There are other tools but this one works fine. Regarding the other plugins I recommend only installing what you need. Plugins are great and without them WordPress would be boring but to keep your website performing well you ought to keep their use to a minimum. I don’t always practice what I preach but as I write this post the only plugin I am using is Akismet. In the future I will discuss the plugins that I am using on my other WordPress sites.
How do I delete the plugins. Follow these steps.
- Click ‘Plugins’ on the sidebar of your WordPress control panel.
- In the ‘Currently Active Plugins’ area select everything except Akismet and from the dropdown menu choose ‘Deactivate’ and click ‘Apply’.
- In the ‘Inactive plugins’ select all and from the dropdown select ‘delete’.
How and why should I delete themes?
If you want you can preview the themes that your host has pre-installed for you by going to the ‘Appearance’ area in your control panel sidebar and selecting ‘themes’. When you are checking them out make a note of ones that you would never use and later delete them. I recommend keeping the WordPress default theme just for emergencies. Later when you are playing around with themes trying to get the perfect look for your WordPress website or perhaps creating your own themes it will just be a hassle looking through the pages and pages of other themes that web hosts often provide. Delete them now and you will save yourself a lot of time.
Deleting and installing themes is currently not as easy as deleting plugins but I think in the future it will be. Let’s deal with the present though. To add or delete themes you need FTP access. FTP is just a system for uploading and downloading files to your server. Web hosts often provide several ways to do this and they will have details on their site.
*I spoke to soon. As of Wordpress 2.8 you can also install and delete themes from your WordPress control panel.
Activate Permalinks
If you want people to find your website you will need to do SEO and that is not something that I am going to get into in this post but the Permalinks setting contributes to your SEO. Compare these two urls:
http://www.cafetemplates.com/?p=21
http://www.cafetemplates.com/2009/06/10/tips-for-installing-wordpress/
The second is with Permalinks activated and will help search engines to find your WordPress posts. Whether you activate it or not is up to you but I recommend it. To activate it follow these steps:
- Under ‘Settings’ in the WordPress control panel select ‘permalinks’.
- There are several settings to choose from but you should select one that includes ‘name’.
- Press ‘Save Changes’ and that’s it.
*To get Akismet to work you will need a WordPress API key and to get one of those you need to join wordpress.com and they should mail you a key or you can find it in your control panel. This API key can be used for other plugins as well which I will mention later but if you don’t wish to join wordpress.com (it’s free) there are other options to stop spam. I might make a post about them at a later date.