WordPress is a great tool whether you want to install a basic blog or use it as a content management system. Programmers can very easily go in and manipulate the code to get it to do anything they please. Plus there are tons of great plugins available to add every single feature you can imagine.

Whenever I work with WordPress, there are a few things I do immediately after a new install. They help with search engine optimization and making things work a little better.

1. Activate pretty-permalinks

When you first install WordPress, the permalinks default to something that looks like this,
http://bavotasan.com/?p=123
But we want it to look like this
http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/things-you-should-do-after-installing-wordpress
Why? Because that is the first step to optimization your new WordPress install for search engine ranking.

How do you do it?

1. After logging in to you wp-admin, click “Permalinks” under the “Settings” menu on the left
2. Select “Custom Structure”
3. Type “/%category%/%postname%/
4. Click “Save Changes”

2. Make sure thumbnails do not crop to exact dimensions.

When you upload an image to WordPress, the default setting crops the thumbnail to be exactly 150px by 150px. Not too good if the images you are uploading are not perfectly square. (If by chance you do want your images to be cropped to these exact dimensions then you can ignore this one.)

How do you do it?

1. After logging in to you wp-admin, click “Media” under the “Settings” menu on the left
2. Click the checkbox under “Thumbnail size” that says “Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)” to remove the check.
3. Click “Save changes”

Even though these are two little things, I find that they are both very important to start things off on the right foot with a new WordPress install.