Get started with your WordPress blog
In the previous session, we had a long day, and I showed you exactly how you can create your blog from scratch. We got the WordPress installation right from WordPress.org and then uploaded it into your server – no shortcuts, no wildly scripts to help you. You did it!
Now before we start blogging, there are some settings to get done with in WordPress.
Let me bring you through them.
1. Permalink Structure
The first thing you want to set is your permalink structure. What is a permalink structure? Let me explain.
As we have learnt previously, every post you do in your blog will eventually become a permanent page in your blog, called the permalink. The thing is, the default installation of WordPress comes with the URL of pages that goes something like this: http://www.bloggingessentials.com/?p=123, where “123? is your post id (a unique number for each post).
This URL, as you will notice, is not very friendly – there is no way for the search engine or a human visitor to find out what the content of the post is, based on the URL.
We are going to change it into something more descriptive, like http://www.bloggingessentials.com/2007/01/07/5-blogging-tips/. In this structure, the permalink is determined by the date of the post and the title of the post. In this example, one can probably make out that the post is about one that talks about five blogging tips.
This permalink structure would also have a good advantage in search engines, since your keywords will be in the URL.
So, how then do you change your permalink structure? Here’s how.
Log in to your WordPress admin console. The password can be found in the email that you have received when you installed WordPress. In the top navigation menus, click options->permalinks.
You will see that the default setting is the first option where it says http://www.bloggingessentials.com/?p=123. Simply click on the second option and click “Update permalink structure” and you are done!
(If you get a status message that says something like “You should update your .htaccess file now”, then you must have missed out the step on changing the permissions of your .htaccess file in the previous session.)
