While the specifics of posting and maintaining your site may vary depending on which theme you choose/build, the basics will always be the same. Here’s a roundup of some useful posts and tutorials, plus a couple of tips of my own, starting from scratch and guiding you through to making your first post.

Installation

WordPress is extremely easy to install, that is if you already have the necessary software or are lucky enough to have a host who offers auto-install. If you’re completely new to this stuff, however, it’s easy to make a simple mistake and not know how to fix it. This great blog post from Solostream takes you through the process slowly and in lots of detail, and even comes with video demonstrations. Note: the tutorial is very slightly out of date, nowadays you’re able to set your own password during install unlike in the example.

Preparations

If you’re working on a live site (ie something that people could type into their browser and actually visit) but you don’t want anyone seeing it until it’s ready, I highly recommend a plugin named under Construction. You should be able to install it through your admin panel (plugins > add new) and when switched on it simply displays a coming soon page to all non-logged-in users.

The WP admin panel makes it easy to change settings and generally keep things running smoothly, but there are a lot of options and it’s easy to overlook important things when doing this for the first time (or, as I can attest, after 100 times). This guide to post-installation tasks from Pro Blog Design is basically the holy grail of WordPress to-do lists. Perhaps some tasks listed won’t apply to your site, but it’s almost guaranteed that the majority will.

Appearance

If you haven’t already, it’s time to upload your theme. If it does not provide a way to upload your own header/logo, an easy trick is to find the default header image and overwrite it with your own, keeping the exact same name. That way you don’t need to change any code to point to your new file, it’ll update automatically.

Playing with widgets can be a tiny bit addictive, especially if your chosen theme has multiple sidebars (the possibilities are endless!) but now is the time to decide which you want on display and make sure they look good when used with your theme.

Almost time to post

Depending on the type of site and your workflow, it may be worth setting up categories in advance. You may also need to create a custom menu (or more than one) if supported by your theme, here’s a handy guide on how to do so.

Dive in

The only way to end up with an engaging site is to start filling it up with content, so go ahead and knock yourself out. Be sure to read the documentation for your theme to find out how things like image sliders or portfolio pages are going to work, as some require certain category structures or other criteria.

When creating a post, try not to paste from Word. It can leave some awful code showing in your post that you may not know how to get rid of. Remember if something does go wrong but you can’t see the problem, switching from visual to HTML view (top right of the edit box) could help. Always preview your posts before actually publishing them, remember to use tags where appropriate to organise your content further, and post at least a couple of things before advertising your shiny new site to everyone you know!

That’s about it for this post, it should be more than enough for you to be getting on with. If you have any useful links to share please feel free to leave them in the comments, future generations of WP users will thank you!