[This is part of the Common WordPress Mistakes series to help bloggers, churches, ministries and nonprofits avoid common mistakes when creating a new website using the WordPress CMS.]
Just because WordPress has an easy learning curve and has become the number one CMS, doesn’t mean it’s hard to make mistakes!
In fact, the fact it is so common and is so easy to use, increases the chances of users making mistakes. That’s why we’ve put together this series. We want to help all of you DIY church, ministry and non-profit website builders avoid these all-too common WordPress mistakes.
Common WordPress Mistakes
You know you’re a serious WordPress user when you see this upon your first visit to a WordPress built website:
1. Not Setting Up Your Permalinks
If your permalinks—your URLs—on all your blog posts and pages look something like this:
https://churchm.ag/?p=123
Than you’re doing it wrong.
This is not only incredibly butt-ugly, but can make for some equally crappy SEO. Naturally, this is another one of those vanilla, out-of-the-box default settings that can be overlooked by most first and second time users.
Here’s how you can fix it:
Under your Settings menu, go to Permalinks.
Here’s where you make your selection:
As you can see by my newly created Pressgram blog (DYECASTING), I prefer Post name.
See? Wasn’t that easy?
🙂
2. Not Setting Up Your SEO
This can be easy to mis—even for PROS!
For instance, when you’re setting up a new website you’re asked about this during installation. If you’re setting up a new website, you may want to block Google bots until everything is up and running, but then forget to uncheck the box.
Go ahead.
I’ll wait while you go login to your WordPress install and make sure this box is unchecked.
…
…
…
…
Great!
You’re back!
There is a second part to not setting up your SEO.
Even if you don’t plan on using all those fancy Meta this and Focus Keyword that, do yourself a favor and install WordPress SEO by Yoast and run it vanilla style. After you’ve seen it around for a while, chances are you’re going to get curious as to what it all means. Even if you never tweak the settings, this isn’t a bad idea and will take care of some of your basic site SEO.
(Hmmm…perhaps we should go into this in more detail in the future.)
Alright! You’re all set! Two more mistakes you can avoid! You’re well on your way from leveling up from n00b to beginner! WOOT!
As always, feel free to ask questions and leave helpful comments.
[…] [Part 6] Not Setting Up Your Permalinks & SEO […]