So, you’ve got a brand new wordpress blog!

Now what?

This post will tell you what you need to do after you start your wordpress blog.

If you already have a wordpress blog, you can still do these things if you haven’t done them yet .

So, here is my checklist of the 17 important things to do after starting your wordpress blog! Enjoy!

(Psst…If you’re thinking about why you should start a blog, >> 22 Reasons for You to Blog
And if you don’t use wordpress, click here to read about why you should use wordpress).

1. Decide whether you want to ‘www’ or not

If you have noticed, some blogs, like http://mashable.com/, don’t use the ‘www’ in their address. And some blogs, like http://www.techcrunch.com/, use the ‘www’.

So if you type http://www.mashable.com, it will redirect to http://mashable.com, and vice versa.

One advantage of having a www is your blog address will look more formal.

And if you don’t use the ‘www’, your address would be shorter.

To decide, go to yourblog.com/wp-admin/options-general.php and change both the ‘Wordpress address’ and ‘Blog address’ to http://www.yourblog.com, or vice versa.

WWW Image by bull3t

2. Set up a feed so people can subscribe to your blog

If you are wondering what a blog feed is, it is a slimmed-down version of a blog that is created to be easily syndicated. You can subscribe to it using email or an RSS reader. A feed is represented by the orange RSS icon.

Many people prefer to get updates of your new blog posts through this easy way.

You can set one up at feedburner (Here’s how mine looks like). It’s free and easy! Just type in your blog address and click Burn Feed .

After that, set up email subscriptions, which enables your readers to subscribe by email. Go to Publicize >> Email Subscriptions in order to activate it and get the form.

Not setting up email subscriptions is a big mistake when it comes to getting subscribers to your blog because most people don’t know about RSS readers. Also, about 50% of my blog subscribers subscribe by email, so email subscriptions is a must!

After that, put the form and the RSS icon on your blog and link it to your feed at feedburner so people can subscribe.

3. Install Feedburner Feedsmith

Feedburner Feedsmith is a plugin that detects all ways to access your original wordpress feed and redirects them to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/yourfeed.

This plugin is needed for feedburner to track every possible subscriber to your blog by redirecting those who access http://www.yourblog.com/feed to feedburner. So, click here to install this plugin!

4. Subscribe to your own feed via RSS and email

It’s important to subscribe to your own feed, because it lets you see what your subscribers see, and when something is not right with your feed, you’ll notice. Besides, it boosts your subscriber count by 1 too . Hehe.

You can either use an RSS reader or email to subscribe to your feed, but it is best if you subscribe to both of them.

If you have a google account (which you most probably do – if you use Gmail, you have one), you can go to Google Reader. After logging in, click ‘Add a subscription’ and type in your blog address there.

5. Get your blog a favicon

A favicon is the icon you see next to your browser address bar and in your browser bookmarks. Gloson Blog’s favicon is .

It helps you brand your blog and also helps people locate your site more easily in their bookmarks.

To do this,

1. Create a square image and upload it to http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ to generate a favicon.

2. Download it and upload the .ico file it using an FTP client to /wp-content/themes/yourthemefilename.

3. Go to the wordpress administration area and then go to Appearance >> Editor.

4. Click on “header.php” to edit it.

5. Add this code on the line just before </head>:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="wp-content/themes/yourthemefilename/favicon.ico" type="image/ico" />

(Be sure to replace ‘yourthemefilename’ with your theme file name )

6. Press Ctrl + F5 (Clear cache and reload) on your homepage. You should see it now!

6. Change the permalink structure

A permalink is the address of a blog post. This post’s permalink is http://www.glosonblog.com/17-important-things-to-do-after-starting-your-wordpress-blog/.

By default, the permalink structure is like this: http://yourblog.com/?p=123.

Instead of the post ID, I suggest changing it to http://yourblog.com/your-post-title in order to gain SEO benefits. Also, if  a visitor looks at it, he will know what the post is about before clicking it.

To do this, go to yourblog.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php and then, type in   “/%postname%/” in Custom Structure.

Don’t worry about broken links because the default structure will redirect itself to the new structure .

For example, this post’s old permalink structure is http://www.glosonblog.com/?p=1833. Click it and see what happens .

Link photo by cindy47452

7. Write Your About Me page

An ‘About Me’ page is essential for every blog. When your readers are interested in your content, they want to know who wrote it. That’s when they go to the ‘About Me’ page.

Basically, it is just a page that tells who you are, what is your blog about, interesting things about you, and of course, a picture of yourself.

It really helps your readers to know you and your blog better! (Here’s my ‘About Me’ page by the way.)

8. Set up a contact form

A contact form is an professional and easy way for your readers to contact you. It also protects your email address from spammers.

There are some wordpress plugins that allow you to put up a contact form. I recommend Contact Form 7, a very popular contact form plugin.

After installing it, make a new page called ‘Contact’ and insert the form into it. (Here’s how it looks like on this blog )

9. and don’t forget the archive page too!

An archive page (here’s mine) is where people can find all the posts on your blog, from the first post to the latest post.

An archive page is important because it lets people discover your older content easily (and generate more pageviews).

To make an archive page, I recommend SRG Clean Archives, the one I’m using now. It’s clean and displays all your posts neatly.

If you are looking for a more creative and fun archive plugin, you should try Snazzy Archives, and here’s how it looks like.

10. Find a free theme and tweak it to make it unique

or hire someone to design it or design one yourself .

A theme (design) is really important to a blog because it represents the blog’s brand. Because if content is king, the design is the shiny robe and crown.

So I recommend you to find a not-so-common theme that you like. Then tweak it and make it a little (or better, a lot) different than the original.

One way is to change the structure of the theme by going to the Theme Editor (yourblog.com/wp-admin/theme-editor.php) in wordpress.

Another easier way is to change the images of the theme. The images are located in the theme’s folder.

After editing the images (like changing its color or texture), you can overwrite them to your blog using an FTP client like Filezilla.
(In the directory /wp-content/themes/yourthemefilename/images)

Be sure to press Ctrl + F5 to clear the cache to see the new design.

11. Set up your ping list

A ping list is a list of services that will be pinged each time you post. The services will notify sites and directories that you have posted a new post, thus giving you more exposure.

To set up your pinglist, go to the Update Services section in yourblog.com/wp-admin/options-writing.php.

And paste the sites you want to send a ping to. Note that the more pings you list, the more server resources your host has to use. So you might get suspended on a shared hosting if you use too much server resources.

This is a short recommended list of pings.

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

12. Install Google Analytics (or any site stats counter you want)

Site statistics counters are important for you to monitor, analyze and study your blog’s traffic, so you can get to know your visitors better

I recommend Google Analytics, because it’s quite advanced and has lots of features. It’s free and all you need is a Google Account.

Google Analyticator, a wordpress plugin, allows you to easily add a Google Analytics tracking code.

Note: And please don’t become a stataholic! Write more posts!

13. Install Wordpress DB Backup to schedule blog backups

Wordpress Database Backup, a wordpress plugin, allows you to schedule blog backups (hourly, twice daily, daily, weekly) easily and have them automatically sent to you by email or stored in the server.

Backups are really important because if anything ever happens to your blog, you have the backup, your best defense.

14. Change the admin username

Most of the login usernames of wordpress blogs is ‘admin’. If your wordpress blog’s login username is ‘admin’, too, you should really change it to something that can’t be guessed easily because the default name makes hackers’ lives so much easier.

Changing it is super duper easy. Here are the steps to do it:

1. Go to the wordpress admin area.

2. Go to Users >> Add new

3. Fill in the details with a different username and give it administrator privileges.

4. Log out and log in with the new username.

5. Delete the ‘admin’ user.

6. When you do so, it will ask you whether you want to move the posts and links of ‘admin’ to another user or delete them. Attribute the posts to the new username you have just created.

Photo by Darwin Bell

15. Install the All-in-One-SEO Pack Plugin

All-in-One-SEO-Pack is a really popular wordpress plugin to do all the basic SEO things on your blog like page titles, post titles, meta tags, descriptions and those kinds of stuff. By default, the browser title of a wordpress blog post is:

Blog Title >> Blog Archive >> Post Title.

If you install All in One SEO, the structure will be changed to (or you can customize it):

Post Title | Blog Title

Which looks simply much better and shorter.

It also noindexes the date and category archives so that it won’t appear in search engine results pages and won’t receive duplicate content penalty.

16. Create your own 404 page

A 404 page is what your readers see when they go to a non-existing page on your blog. Like this: http://www.glosonblog.com/thispagedoesntexist.

By default, the page is just a ‘404 error – Page not Found’ 404 page that isn’t much help to your readers. Why not make it more helpful instead?

To do this, go to the wordpress admin area and then Appearance >> Editor. Click on 404.php to edit it.

Find the part of the code where it says <h2>404 Page Not Found</h2> or something like that. Then overwrite that line with this code (My version of a 404 page).

Be sure to make a backup of your old code before overwriting. It will probably work on most themes, but in some cases, it won’t, then you need to have a little bit of HTML knowledge in order to make it work.

<h2>404 Page Not Found</h2>
<p>Oopsie! The page you are looking for cannot be found! It might be renamed or removed. Please check your spelling or return to the homepage.</p>

<p>Or, you can also view our latest posts below. Hope you’ll enjoy them. Thanks! </p>

<p>
<h2>Latest Posts</h2></p>
<ul>
<?php
query_posts(‘posts_per_page=10′);
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Permalink for : <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

Feel free to edit and customize the code! Do tell me if this code doesn’t work!

17. Write a post!

Still, without any content, a blog won’t be a blog.

So go on and write a post! Write a unique high-quality thought provoking post on a topic you are passionate about!

After that, promote it on twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, and so on and on. Ask your friends to read it too!

Photo by KatieKrueger
_______________

So here are my 17 things to do after starting a wordpress blog checklist. Be sure to bookmark this post and read it when you start a new wordpress blog!

If you know of another thing to do after starting a wordpress blog, please tell me in the comments!

And if you have any questions, please drop me a comment and I’ll be very glad to answer it!

47 Comments

Recently, Alex Fraiser, a 16-year-old blogger who is the founder of Blogussion, interviewed me. He asked me some really fantastic and thought-provoking questions. And I think you would like to see my responses .

Today, my interview with Alex Fraiser is published on his blog, Asnio.

Here’s a part of the post. To view the full interview click here.

When you think of a young entrepreneur, you usually think of some one like Mark Zuckerberg or maybe even my dude Michael Dun­lop. How many people think of the really young people? The kids? I’m 16 myself, and there are probably hundreds of other 15–16 year old entrepreneurs. But how many of you would think of an 11 year old kid as a young entrepreneur?

I know first hand that it’s not always wise to judge some one by their age, but what were you doing when you were 11? I bet no one was doing the things my friend Gloson Teh was doing. He is a blogging super star and yes, is only 11 years old.

He was willing to answer some questions for the Young Bloggers series I have going on Asnio, and he shares some very insightful and inspirational answers. Be prepared to be amazed.

To view the full interview click here.

No Comments

If you have been visiting my blog in the last 3 weeks, you could see that it had a lot of errors and it was behaving weirdly. Here’s why.

My former host, Host Commando, ‘accidentally’ deleted my blog.

And this post will tell you how I restored my blog completely. I did not backup my blog for about 1 month, really! I had to restore the posts and comments in 1 month manually, which I’m going to tell you how!

What Happened

1. Host Commando’s billing system went wrong

My father paid the fees for next month’s hosting. But somehow, their billing system went wrong and said that my father didn’t pay. Then, my account was suspended.

2. They said they ‘accidentally’ deleted my hosting account and all the files

On Monday, my dad went to their office and told them the matter. They said they ‘accidentally’ deleted the files in my account. They said they were working on some sort of ‘transferring-into-a-new-server’ process or something.

3. What happened

Then, I changed the DNS (Domain name servers) of Gloson Blog to point it to my older host, which was outdated (25 September 2009). That’s why you might have noticed that my blog lost October’s posts.

(I also lost the information of my affiliates and customers of my poetry book on my other site, Poetry Talents too.)

Oh, and as I said, and I didn’t make any backups during October, so all the posts in October were gone!

How I fixed it

How to transfer blog hosts in 7 steps

So, I bought a HostGator account. I transferred the files from my older host to HostGator. Here are the 7 steps which I used to successfully transfer the blog files from one host to another:

1. Use the Wordpress Database Backup Plugin to backup the database of your older host and download the database backup file.

2. Download all the files of your blog in wp-content from an FTP client like Filezilla.

3. Point the Domain Name Servers (DNS) to the new host so you can create an addon domain. If you don’t know what DNS looks like, it looks like this:

ns2163.hostgator.com
ns2164.hostgator.com

4. Go to your new host’s cpanel and go to fantastico, the automatic wordpress installation tool, and install wordpress.

5. Upload the database backup file to phpmyadmin (to the correct database using the import feature) in cpanel.

6. Upload and overwrite all the wp-content files to the same folder in the new host using an FTP client.

7. After that, your posts and pages will be 404 pages. log in to your wordpress and navigate to every sub page under ‘Settings’ until ‘Miscellaneous. I don’t know why

But the problem wasn’t over yet… the blog was still outdated!

So I had to restore the posts, comments, and other changes manually that were made after the latest backup.

1. How I Restored Posts
Windows Live Writer
Luckily, I use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to write my posts. It stores all your blog posts in your computer.

So, I opened the October posts in my computer and edited the publish date to the date they were published. Then, I published them.

Luckily wordpress has this feature that allows you to edit posts dates! That means you can publish a post with the date set to 1st of January 2001! And if you set the posts to a future date, they will be published at that time.

How to edit publish dates in Windows Live Writer and Wordpress

But..what if you didn’t use Windows Live Writer? Don’t worry, here are other methods.

Google Cache
You can also use Google Cache to get your lost posts (this works if only your posts are indexed).

Just type “cache:http://www.(yourblogaddress).com/(yourpost)/” in Google search and hopefully, you’ll get a cached version of your post of a particular date Google spidered your site.

Feed Reader
If you’ve subscribed to your own blog, that’s great! Because it lets you see how your other subscribers see your posts… and stores your posts in case you’ve lost them.

I subscribe to my blog via Google Reader. I’m not sure if this works for other readers but it probably would.

Just click your blog feed’s name and click ‘All items’. Your posts’ latest version will be displayed.

Email
If you subscribe to your own blog via email, you can retrieve it from there.

2. Restoring Comments
Here’s how I restored my precious comments.

If you choose to receive blog comment notifications, which I think most of you do, you’ll receive the comment with the author’s name, email, website, and the date of the comment.

All I had to do is post the comments with the author’s name, email, and website, and set the correct dates. Though, the IP addresses were mine.

Thank goodness wordpress also allows you to edit comment dates, so I can edit the time and date to when the comment was posted, which is the time and date the comment notification email is sent to you.

You can also use Google Cache to help you.

3. Uploaded images
I had to re-upload the images that were lost. Just upload them from your computer into where it was before.

4. Updated Gloson Blog’s layout
I also updated Gloson Blog’s layout. I did this by checking my blog in Google Cache. I could see how the sidebar looked like and what the differences are.

I’ve learned my lessons

1. Backup Your Blog Regularly
If you are blogging on a small blog and you are not posting often, I recommend you backup every week.

But when your blog gets popular and you post very often, you should backup everyday so that you won’t lose your precious posts and comments.

Now I decided to backup two times a week.

2. Have a Backup Hosting
You should get a free hosting where you can place all your files there. Free hosting can be unreliable and can have down times often but who cares? You just need a place to store your backups.

3. Think carefully before buying a cheap host
Even though it’s cheap, a cheap host’s quality may probably not be very good and have frequent downtimes and errors and poor customer support. So you’ll end up losing more if you buy a cheap host.

Instead, buy a popular blog host that is recommended by a lot of people. Their quality would probably be high.

What you should do to make sure your blog is safe

1. Backup often

I’ve now got an alarm that reminds me to backup my blog twice every week. To backup,

1. Use the Wordpress Database Backup Plugin to backup your blog’s database.

2. Download the backup file.

3. Download all the files of your blog in wp-content.

And don’t forget to test your backups!

2. Subscribe to your blog

If you subscribe to your own blog by RSS or email, you’ll receive your blog posts and can restore them in case they are lost.

Besides, you should also subscribe to your own blog to see how your feed looks like for other subscribers, and whether there are errors in your feed.

3. Get comment notifications by email/Subscribe to your comments

This will make sure your precious comments are safe. Comments are very precious and is one of the best ways to bring a blog to life.

Where Gloson Blog is hosted now

Gloson Blog is now hosted on HostGator, which is probably going to be a good host as I had heard from many. I hope there will be no more problems this time. I hope that now Gloson Blog is much faster too!

What’s been going on last three weeks

You might have wondered why it took more than half a month for this process. Well, it was because I was writing and illustrating my new poetry book for kids in which the poems are to be sung to the tune of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, which is done now.

__________

So I hope you understand what was going on on Gloson Blog and why it was behaving weirdly. I hope there are no more problems or bugs on Gloson Blog (If there are some, please tell me!). I hope Gloson Blog will be running smoothly again!

If you have anything to add to this post, or if you have any questions, please comment!

More tips from rocking commentators below

Gerald Weber
Gloson,

I had an interesting experience where a silly hosting company erroneously canceled my  account. Ever since that incident I always make full backups which is easy simple to do. In cpanel click on backups, generate and then generate and download a full backup.

It will email you once the backup is complete and then you can FTP the full backup to your hard drive. This will backup EVERYTHING. Files database and the whole nine yards.

Now the good news is Hostgator make full backups on all their shared plans every Sunday. So as a fail safe you can always get a full backup from them from the most recent Sunday.

Glad you got your blog back together.

Marie Culver
I love Hostgator and I don’t doubt you will enjoy it too.

However, I wouldn’t recommend anybody depending on them or any other host to be responsible for backups. No matter how good the hosting is.

One, many hosts that include backup services have caveats, like file limits. Too many files or too large and you’re on your own. Hostgator has an “inode” limit (one file of any type equals one inode).

Two, even if a host gets back to you in an hour, that’s still an hour that your site is down when you could have fixed things yourself in a third of the time or less.

Three, there is no guarantee that a host backup is even that good or readily available. Sometimes files do get corrupted, you might need a backup right before the next backup cycle (you may have made many site changes by then), or if the host is having issues, your files are out with your site.

It’s better to take other steps and be able to verify that your backups are not only there, but viable for usage. An interesting site about backing up files is the Tao of Backup (taobackup.com). Ultimately it promotes a backup utility but it’s both entertaining and informative.

Marie Culver´s last blog ..I Love My Thesis

33 Comments

Comments are essential to a blog. It can be used to determine a blog’s quality. Without comments, there won’t be any discussion going on on your blog. However, a study shows that most of the blog visitors don’t comment.

And so, here are 11 tips on how to get more comments on your blog.

1. Comment on other people’s blogs

Especially small blogs. Most bloggers visit their commentators’ websites, so if you comment a lot, the bloggers might return the favor and comment on your blog too.

But remember to leave quality comments too! Click here for more tips on commenting on other blogs.

2. Recommend people in your blog posts

I’ve seen many blog posts like “10 Influential Bloggers of 2010” and most of the people, who know that they are recommended, thanked the author of the post for putting them on the list.

So, the bigger the list, the more comments you get! But don’t forget to tell them that they are on the list, though.

3. Write question blog posts

Question blog posts, like this one, which is recently published on Problogger, tend to generate tons of quality replies. It is because the reader probably knows the answer and wants to contribute.

4. Post less frequently

If you post less frequently, the latest blog post stays on top of the blog for some time, which makes time for more commentators to comment.

But if you post too frequently, the post will be pushed down and it won’t have much exposure. It also gives your readers information overload.

5. Network with more bloggers

Bloggers visit their friends’ blogs quite often and sometimes they comment, so if you make lots of blogger friends, more people might comment on your blog.

6. Reward your commentators

If you reward your commentators, they might comment again on your blog because they like your present.

One way to reward your commentators is to install the “Top Commentators Plugin” to show off your most frequent commentators and give them a dofollow link.

Another way is to post their comments on your posts if they are good.

7. I comment for you, you comment for me

i.e. Trade comments

Ask your friends to trade comments, which simply means commentating on each others’ blogs.

8. Reply to your commentators

If you reply to your commentators, they will feel noticed and might reply and comment again.

But if you don’t, they might feel neglected.

In other words, do your best to reply to every comment on your blog!

9. Write quality posts

If you write quality posts, it will bring in more traffic. And more traffic means more people will comment. But be sure to also promote your quality posts too!

10. Ask them to!

If all else fails, simply follow the old saying, ask and you shall receive. So, ask your friends to comment (by instant messaging them, DMing them on twitter, or sending a ‘please comment’ update on facebook), and they most probably will.

11. Ask your readers to add more to the post

This is somewhat similar to the point above. Ask your readers to add another point to your post, and if the answers are good, add them to the post!

So, uhh, do you know of another way to get more comments on your blog? If so, please comment and I add your answer here if I like it .

More great tips from commentators below

Simon Liew

Good points! I like no.7 “I comment for you, you comment for me” . I would like to add another point, “Never ever doing SPAM on your friend’s Blog”. I’d come across and felt frustrated with less visitor, more visitor means getting chances of comments will increase.

Gerald Weber

Also using a plugin like Comment Luv May encourage readers to comment because they will get a anchor text rich link back to their blog from one of their recent posts. This will not only encourage then to comment but also to comment more often or on future posts.

One more… if your blog is “do follow” state that it is do follow on your blog. To many bloggers this is an additional benefit since their link will get credit or “link juice” when the search engines follow the link.

Tinh

Nice ones but I do not totally agree with you on this point “Post less frequently”. Yes, it will keep the latest post at the top of the blog and commentators have more time to comment but you will loose comments from other returning readers. So, post more frequently at reasonable level is better

@Katjaib

Good suggestions from you and other commentators. Instead of “post less often”, why not include a mention & link to one of your related, earlier posts to get more readers/comments? Something I’ve just started doing that seems to be working. (But did I do it in my latest post? No! LOL)
And yes! Be generous in supporting others. Good karma.

EVo

This is a pretty good post. ‘post less often’ is a good point, which I know and hear from other people to be effective, especially when it’s a paid post and the blogger wants more exposure.

I’m gona share a personal experience on a blog that I read. Apparently she has hundreds and nearing thousands of readers, daily. But you’ll see that she gets close to zero comments. Surprising? Not really, cause she repeats the same topic over and over again..so people actually visit her blog for the wrong reasons. She probably will be getting hate mail soon enough lol.

40 Comments

Photo by Daveblog

A few months back, I’ve made a post on Gloson Blog, 7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog (Most of which you haven’t done). Now, I’ve come up with 7 more things to do to make your blog better (Also most of which you haven’t done). So… here they are.

1. Frequently use pictures on your posts

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words.

Putting pictures on your blog posts, if you haven’t yet, is a big improvement you could have made. One single picture on your blog post could make a big difference.

It makes the blog posts colorful and will show up in social media sites (It might get a lot more favorites). It also stimulates the readers to read it. It might even make the readers like it more.

We, humans, like to see than read things. That’s the human instinct. So, why not put up the picture and get more views?

To find cool pictures for your posts, go to CompFight, a really cool flickr search tool.

2. Number your lists

like this. Making your list numbered helps people keep track of where they are reading and how far they are from the ending of the post. When I read unnumbered lists, somehow I feel that there is no end to this list. Does this happen to you too?

So, please make your lists numbered, especially long ones.

3. Modify your title structure

This is the default title structure of wordpress blogs: Blog Title >> Archive >> (Post Title).

Search engines has a limit for titles in their search results. So if your title is long, search engines will only show a part of the title.

To make the title: “(Post Title) | (Blog Title)”, or even just “(Post Title)” install the famous All in One SEO Pack plugin and it will automatically do everything for you. It will give you SEO and other benefits.

Oh, and blogger users, don’t worry, I have not forgotten about you. This post will teach you exactly how to modify our title structure like that.

4. Put your picture in your about page

If you haven’t put your personal picture in your blog yet, you should do it. Your readers are curious about what you look like. So put up your picture! It helps your readers get to know you and your personality better.

5. Stop using mailto links and install a contact form

Putting your email on your blog (It automatically becomes a mailto link) is one of the most common mistakes I’ve come across. It can be a target for spammers. You could put up your email address as a picture.

But still, a contact form is the best.
It conceals your email from people who will send you spam.

To install a contact form, I’d recommend Contact Form 7, a simple contact form plugin for wordpress.

For Blogger users, this post will help you.

Oh, and here are 10 Reasons to Avoid Mailto Links.

6. Install the Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin

With threaded comments, you can directly reply to a comment and your reply will show right below the comment, making discussion easier.

Brian’s Threaded Comments wordpress plugin also automatically separates comments from trackbacks. It adds gravatars (The commentator’s picture. You can get one here.) too.

Blogger users, please don’t be sad, because I came across a post that teaches you how to enable threaded comments –> Threaded Comments in Blogger.

Your comments will be very organized.

7. Display Popular Posts

One way to show off your best content to your new visitors is to display popular posts in the sidebar. To do this install the “Wordpress Popular Posts” plugin. Then, you can configure its settings. Next, go to the Widgets section and enable the Popular Posts widget.

If you don’t want to install it, you can put up some posts that you think is best .

You can also make it stand out to catch people’s attention (like what I’m doing. Check it out at the sidebar).

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There you go! 7 more things you can do to improve your blog! Be sure to check out 7 things you can do to improve your blog (Most of which you haven’t done) too.

If you haven’t done #1 and #2, do it in your next blog post.

But if you haven’t done #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7, I recommend you to do it now (or bookmark it), or not you’ll forget about it later.

It will only take at most 30 minutes (Unless if you’ve got a slow connection or if you are doing it slowly), and could be a very big improvement to your blog!

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