05th Jul 2007
Blog Setup Checklist
I have that weird fondness of working on a website in vivo. That is, directly on the web so that every change is immediately visible. That includes all the missteps and mistakes like crashing the theme in front of the eyes of readers, too. Now taking one step forward, this post is my personal plan and checklist for setting up this blog. It is something that I'm supposed to do on a piece of paper but this way, it may be of use to other bloggers and there is no risk of myself losing the precious piece of paper. At the end, when each bullet is checked, it may be useful as a roadmap through one category of this site. So, what should be done in the first phase of blog's life?
- Name and domain Not much point in doing anything before these are known. I spent last week letting my mind spontaneously brainstorm about this. I needed something that sounds good and is more or less SEO friendly.
- Instalation and basic setup Installing WordPress, going through the options page, setting up permalinks and other hard-core stuff. It is quicker if it's done before other plug-ins are installed. Also editing the "Hello World!" post and writing another one. Those will be useful in the next step. Yay! I did this one!
- Basic theme Now, heading to the WordPress Theme Directory looking for something appropriate. We're looking layout not colors now! Colors and graphics are easy to change, I just look for something that is clean, has two sidebars on the right-hand side. Of course, your preferences may vary, e.g. you might want something that supports widgets. I have to check if the theme works in Internet Explorer too. I don't know why anybody on Earth is using IE but I don't want painful surprises in the near future.
- Plugins This one should be easy because I will use the list of plugins I'm already using on my other site. For the start I need spam killer, WYSYWIG editor, something to make tags and feedburner to manage feeds.
- Basic taxonomy It is hard to think about categorization of the posts while there is one named hello World! and the second one is been written right now. But I do have some ideas what about this blog is so I'll let the ideas clear up as we go. Categories will change over time anyway, so there is no hurry with this one.
- Some pages People who come to the blog might want to know who you are and what is this in their browsers. I need about pages for the site and for the author. I like to have credits page also, to link to WordPress site, theme, all the plug-ins and maybe something other.
- Starting blogroll Blogroll comes with time. No point to go over the blogosphere and collect the list of links. Blogroll is social feature and it will develop as the blog grows. But two or three links of the blogs I read and enjoy are OK for the beginning.
- Theme tweaking Now we are talking about colors, images and other things to make the site visually appealing. We also talk about arrangement of sideblocks, adds and details of the navigation. At this step widgets can make life easier but most probably the basic knowledge of HTML and CSS will come handy.
- Basic networking a.k.a. wireing No, not social networking. I'll save myself from that now. In the next phase there will be too much of that. Not more than it is natural when one is into these things. But here we have to make the highway for the bots. That means, connecting to Technorati, Google Analytics and Feedburner. Make the engine ping around when something happens.
Huh! I think that is quite enough job for the next couple of days. It will take a considerable amount of time so there will be not much for SEO, promoting and social networking. Those things are not important now. Still, to give my mind a bit of diversity I'll also write a post here and there. It is nice opportunity to write about blog setup while I am doing it. But, no pressure about posting frequency nor promoting the site. That is the next phase.
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