On the conservative side of things I would guess I have about 100 WordPress installs on many different sites. So for the most part I am pretty experienced in setting up a WordPress site but there are still a couple things I seem to forget every time. If I would just remember these things when I get everything set up my life would be much easier.
1. Disallow comments after 14 days. Since most of the sites I build are affiliate sites and aren’t meant to generate many comments from users I see no reason to keep comments on. The only comments I ever seen on those sites are spam comments and I hate logging into a WP install and seeing hundreds or thousands of spam comments. I know there are plugins that can help with that but it is usually just easier to turn off the comments after a certain amount of time. Or just turn them off all together.
2. Change permalinks. In most cases I like to set the permalinks on my sites to /%postname%/ but so often I forget this step. When I go back to the site at a later date or look at the logs and see Google spidering pages like /?p=1434 or whatever I then realize my mistake. I would much rather have the permalink contain the title of the page than just some ugly looking numbers.
3. Changing the footer links on a theme. On 99% of my sites I use either Studiopress or Thesis. Both these themes are fairly easy to customize and easy enough for a guy like me to use. But on the bottom of the page there is always a link that links back to the theme. On sites like this I don’t really care about it too much but if I am trying to sell someone something I don’t want anything on the page that will distract them. If nothing else I need to remember to change those links to affiliate links. But if you were to look at most of my sites those links are still sitting on the bottom of the page.
There are a couple plugins that even make this super easy to do and you won’t even need to edit any CSS or PHP files. But this is something I nearly always forget to do.
4. Add analytics code. For the most part I just use Google Analytics. I usually don’t need any super fancy stats or anything but it is usually a few months down the road that I remember to add the analytics code into my site. It is just a simple cut and paste job that takes maybe a minute to set up but I can never remember to do it while building the site.
5. Remove the default posts and pages. When you install WordPress you always get those default posts and pages. I don’t think it is a huge problem leaving them but I always find them annoying. Yet so often I don’t remember to delete them.
If you are absent minded like I am there are probably some of these things you forget. None of them will make or break an affiliate site but I like to do them on my sites. Maybe I need to develop a site building checklist I go through every time I build a site to make sure I remember these things.
Also if you are forgetful you might have forgotten to register for Affiliate Summit West in January in Las Vegas. Well, consider this your reminder that will save you a ton of money. The earlybird registration ends on October 21st so you have a week to get registered. Silver passes are $99 right now and will jump to $249 after the 21st. Gold passes go from $279 to $549, Platinum passes (I recommend this one) will go from $879 to $1249, and Diamond passes go from $1879 to $2249. So you can save well over $300 on most of these passes. Don’t wait to register! I have done this in the past and have gotten stuck with a lower level pass because the prices went up. Register for Affiliate Summit now.
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