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5 Simple Steps To A Perfect WordPress Website

A while back, Yo, Roller Derby wrote an article called “How to Get a (FREE) Derby Website“, where we gave you a quick step-by-step guide to setting up a website for your roller derby team to league and FAST. The following article takes this one step further and gives more techy advice from Yo, Roller Derby Contributor, Snappy Lappy. Snappy tells you which are the first important steps you need to know in order to create the perfect WordPress website.

WordPress has had an impressive evolution over the last couple of years. First created for bloggers only, it is now one of the most powerful content management systems available. WordPress flexibility and simplicity makes it perfect for almost any kind of websites you want to build: blogs, magazines, e-commerce websites, podcasts, membership websites, forums, small social networks, portfolios… piece of cake! It has a beginner-friendly navigation, it’s easy to install, it’s SEO-friendly and it’s free!

Choose the Right Hosting

WordPress doesn’t require too much system resources, however if you care about your website it’s very important to find a good hosting service. There is a bunch of good well-known hosting services, but Yo, Roller Derby recommends Bluehost. They rock. (But, if you feel like shopping around, the only service we warn you against, is those douchbags at GoDaddy.) Anyway, most hosting services offer a big variety of features, from unlimited hosted domain names to 99.9% uptime guarantee, so probably the first thing you should be considering is the price, or more precisely, the price/offered features ratio. VPS.net is another good example, you could check it out. It is very reliable and offers good support.

The uptime is another big point you must think about. Most of the hosting services give you a 99.9% network uptime guarantee and that is good, but, not always enough, you don’t want to disappoint your visitors someday because of that damned 0.01% unmentioned in the agreement, do you? I’m not saying you must keep searching for a 100% uptime guarantee hosting because I don’t think you will find one, what I am saying is that you should start surfing the forums, blogs and social networks to hear what are people saying about one hosting or another and according to that, make your best choice.

Choose the Right Theme

If you can’t create a WP theme by yourself then you need to find one. Finding a WordPress theme is as easy as switching TLC to the Food Channel with your remote control… finding the right WordPress theme though, can give you a bit of a headache.

Choose a good theme for your roller derby website

Choose a Good WP Theme, Don't Fart on Your Fans

Finding the right theme for your website is pretty tricky because they usually have at least one thing you don’t want, and don’t have at least one thing you want. So you have two solutions – spend days searching for the perfect one or just grab a random theme and get used to its imperfections. My advice is to go with the first solution even if it requires a lot more time. Why? Because choosing the wrong WP theme is like farting on a first date. You may eventually get the forgiveness of your fanbase later, but you also want to ensure a 2nd date, and farting may decrease your chances.

The most important thing you need to do before searching for a good theme is to know what you want in your site exactly. A popular WordPress theme type is called an online “magazine”, and these are great for adding layers and layers of content over time. So, yeah, I know this seems obvious, but not all people know about that however and start complaining about it afterwards.

Another thing to decide is whether you are willing to pay for it or not. There are thousands of free WordPress themes and there are some good ones too, however, a premium theme is what you need if you want a good support, lots of useful video tutorials, reliability and many other great things they come with. And that is the great thing about premium themes, you don’t only buy the theme itself, you also get a good amount of knowledge and a some kind of insurance that there will always be someone to help you in one case or another. Check out some premium these types like Elegant Themes and see what you see!

Must-Have Plugins

Another good thing about WordPress is that it supports a lot of plugins you can use to increase your websites possibilities. I would like to suggest a few important plugins you should consider installing before you launch your site.

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.
FD Feedburner Plugin – Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com. It does this seamlessly without the need to modify templates, setup new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files, or asking users to migrate to a new feed. All existing feeds simply become Feedburner feeds seamlessly and transparently for all users. Just tell the plugin what your Feedburner feed URL is and you’re done.
Google Analytics for WordPress - Allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews.
WP-DB-Backup - Allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.
WP Super Cache – Generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Many premium WordPress themes have these features by default, so if you buy one then you probably won’t need to install the plugins listed above, if not – it would be a very good idea!

Secure Your Website

Security is probably the most important thing you must ensure after the website itself is done. Here are some tips how to make your WordPress site a little bit more secure:

Always update your WordPress version and plugins - Developers release updates for their products to make them better and that includes security as well. Any security-related bug your current version may have, could disappear in the next update.

Give Pervert Hackers the Finger!

Use sFTP instead of FTP for file transfers - SFTP is for Secured File Transfer Protocol so I think it should be clear why you must use this one. Make sure your FTP client supports it, if it doesn’t – change it now!

Remove the “admin” account – Every WordPress installation generates a default username called “admin” and I assure you, anyone who will ever try to hack into your website knows that information very well. Replace the default username with something less obvious.

Always back-up – You never know what can happen that’s why it is critical to back-up your content every time you update it. You can use the WP-DB-Backup plugin I mentioned above for this one. It would also be a good idea to back-up your wordpress files once in a while, especially if you edited your theme, plugins or whatever… just in case.

Hide your directories - There is a lot to talk about it if you want to do it the proper way, but there is a simple solution too. For example you don’t want other’s to access your “uploads” directory from the browser. All you have to do is to create a blank index.html file inside it (or any other directory), and nobody will be able to see the actual files from it. The best solution however is to ask your hosting service to forbidden them for other viewers.

Make It Fast

The last thing I wanted to talk about is speed. It is always pleasant to know that people care about your time. You must do the same for your visitors. There is a couple of simple solutions to make your WordPress website work faster.

Again, always update your WordPress version and plugins – every update usually comes with a number of important performance enhancements. never ignore new updates, they help!

Use external scripts – Do not paste all your Java Script into the “header.php” file. External scripts allow the browser to cache the script so it won’t have to read it for every other page.

Disable unused plugins – Disable any plugin you don’t use. Many active plugins slow your website down so leave them active only if you really need them.

Install a caching plugin – I mentioned the WP Super Cache plugin earlier. It is not the only one. Choose a caching plugin you like the most and install it, it will make your website faster.

The Epilogue

I hope you found this article useful and interesting…. and maybe a little entertaining. Please tell me in a comment about other techniques you know and/or prefer. See you next time!