I like the Wonderwheel thing. I will be trying this out!

Wow, this is a nice list. I’ll be going through my blogs this evening.
You rock!

Great article with some new ideas I haven’t thought of. Just a question, what do you think is the maximum for the amount of plugins that should be installed to keep WP running smoothly? I also use W3 Total Cache. It’s used by big sites like Mashable. I also use WP Optimizer which I’ve become sort of addicted to.

Great content-rich, actionable article, Michele.

I’ll be adding a couple of plugins that I had forgotten about to my local small business marketing website: http://www.localseoatlanta.com and also at my new site that informs local small business owners of a new way to help their “cash & credit challenged” customers purchase their goods/services (http://www.beethebuzzoftown.com).

Michelle – thank you so much for sharing this – these “best practices” while basic, are so infrequently shared and in many cases are the difference between making it and not. Really appreciate you taking the time and sharing this, it really ads value!

@Tracy & others re: comment moderation & no trackbacks – this list is for content-type sites, on which I’m not particularly interested in community building. On sites where you want to build community, by all means, adjust the setting to fit your project!

SEO Smart Links sounds interesting… I would love more info on what it actually achieves. And since I own the Max Banner Ads Pro at your urging I am going to check out their Psychic plugin… sounds interesting too. Thanks for the suggestions AND the list.

Thank you for this great checklist http://www.refurbishedlaptopsale.net

Thank you for this very helpful article. I’m saving this check-list for future reference. I thought I had all the plugins I needed for seo, however you have shared some more that I’m going to try on my site: http://howtoplayit.org

I just wrote up a wp install checklist while having breakfast and then I checked my email and came across this. It was kind of weird. But good weird. You have some stuff on her I had forgotten about, so thanks.

A checklist like this is very important. I create $99 websites using wordpress so I have to efficient with a plan and a template if I expect to make any money and get projects completed on time. Excellent post!

We won’t need Global translator if we don’t have AdSense and sell products to english speaking market.

I agree with Mathew Lewis about Pingbacks, and with Mike Wilson about security. I would also add WordPress Database Backup plugin.

Great checklist, Michelle – thanks so much for sharing!

Great Article! It almost mirrors my checklist when I install WP! Instead of SEO-Booster light, I would try LJ Longtail SEO

I use SuperPopUp for e-mail newsletters and awesome updates I must share.

FeedWordpress to share articles across many blogs

Although!

I would strongly stay away from SI-Captcha! There was a Botnet attack on one of my sites this week (Wed Night –Thursday Morning) specifically targeting a weakness with SI-Captcha. According to my host, the attack was 1000′s hits a minute from 1000′s of IPs targeting the SI-CAPTCHA default directory with sending malicious code to break the CAPTCHA plug. Also, (my host) they said that If I had it installed my site would have been flooded with 100,000′s of spam messages from this Botnet in minutes. They (my host) caught it, and were able to slow it down and keep my site up for all my normal visitors (with some fancy my host is awesome IP wizardry), but because the Botnet was so distributed, it was hard to stop completely, eventually I think the owner of the Botnet figured my site was a waste to attack, they stopped.

Great checklist, thanks.

Thanks Michelle, this is a great help

You can see from http://www.StephenJBarrett.com that I’m just starting out and really do need – and appreciate – your help.

Best regards
Stephen
New Zealand

Hey Michelle~ I actually googled your name a few times over the past few months because you just kind of disappeared and I was worried about you. (Yeah, I know, I’m a goof.) It’s good to have you back sharing and starting conversations.

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it yet, but a google-compliant Privacy Policy is a must-have for the checklist if you’re running adsense. I know you know that, of course, but someone just starting out might not know there are plugins to accomplish this.

Here is a link to an expanded ping list, many with an international focus:

Blog And Ping — Expanded List Of Ping Services>

Once you have your wp installation set up the way you want you can use a program like WP Twin to clone your site so you can cut the installation of subsequent sites down to less than 5 mins… just need to load analytics code and keywords. It’s a great time saver.

Thanks Michelle for the check list! Very useful information I already shared it with my friends .
Can’t wait to install all the plugins and see my site growing! Thanks again!

Wounderful content and very useful. you sunarise it all, Thank you
http://www.hiwaar.org/vb/forum.php

Thanks for sharing! Very useful indeed. I’ll make sure you to use this check-list next time I get started with a web site.

Very useful checklist! Thanks Michele for sharing. Will definitely update mine to the light of yours.

One thing caught my attention though…why should we not allow pingbacks and trackbacks?

Hello, this is very useful for me, I need to say thank you, I use wordpress for my educational site, http://www.arabic-alphabet.org/ and as soon as I applied some of your advice, I felt a big improvement. Thanks!

@John Chartrand – Take a look at the Backup Buddy Plugin from iThemes. It among other things, it is very useful for migrating a site from one host company to another. It will back up the both database and the file structure, so the restore onto the new site is quite simple. I use it to migrate my client sites from my staging area to thier hosting account.

Disclaimer – I do not work for iThemes, but I have used their products for a couple of years.

Thanks Michelle.
Ive jusT recently met with a bunch of London Internet Marketers and it seems we are all making lists in January…

My lists include different plugins based on whether it is an affiLiate site / semi-autoblog/ or local business CMS style site.

Appreciate your list and tip on Basecamp todo lists

I personally Just change the blogrollm inks to relevant but Non competition sites like associations etc

Include wp-timemachine as it zips the whole site backup to my DROPBOX

@jeff Baer – wordbooker worksma charm for Facebook comments.

It would have been great if you could hyperlink the links to plugins. Great list!

I Use WP Robot for auto blog posting ( using keywords) its kick ass and beats everything in sight. This can make 500 per day if you crank it up and back dates them. You can built a whole new site with 2000 post overnight. Cost about $160 and well worth it.

This checklist will help me to navigate my way through the maze of creating my wordpress blogs http://www.healthyhairproject.com. Thanks so much for simplfying the process!

Wow, Thanks Michelle, this is very helpful!
I will be integrating it into our existing document, this has some we don’t use and I think are great.

Regards
Bo Blaze
http://www.AlternativeLifeCoach.com

Great post. It is a good reminder of what needs to be done. I really appreciate the links that you provided as well.

Best regards,
Emerson
Emerson Holliday Creative! – http://emersonhollidaycreative.com

Michelle you rock my world baby… thanks

Good stuff but you are a typical Internet Marketer, too much assuming. You say to change the default category in posts, but you do not say how. It is not obvious in wordpress. These things are the single biggest problems that IM tutors have. They always miss stuff out and the newbie has to stuff around for hours trying to figure this stuff out. However despite all this you are one generous lady.

And for best Security in your WordPress you need http://www.sitesecuritymonitor.com/secure-wordpress-plugin

Magic Checklist Michelle, lots of value here, why would some people see a checklist as a detailed tutorial, we could write a chapter on each of the items you list, maybe there’s a product in that

Thanks so much Michelle for this post. I have always loved WordPress, and have used some of the plugins that you recommend. This post has been very helpful, and I have already included a few of the plugins that are new to me. Thanks for sharing your knowledge

Gareth – http://eZenith.com/

@Dave – I wrote, “URL & XML Sitemap added to my Google Webmaster Tools account”

Great article shortlisting the To Dos for a somewhat typical WP installation. Although it would seem mixed bag for newbies, it’s all about ‘customization’ Thanks for info Michelle.

looks good… need to include in list the steps for setting up RSS feed subscription and/or email subscription capabilities

I am curious why you do not allow pingbacks & trackbacks?

I would recommend WP SEO from Yoast instead of All-in-One. I have used both and WP SEO does considerably more.

Also W3 Total Cache is faster than Super Cache for me.

You have several other things here that I will be trying. Thanks!

Hey Michelle, again, awesome post and thanks for checklist! Just wondering if you or anyone has had problems with the site running slow b/c of all these plugins (plus more specific to each site). If so, would love a solution or feedback about that. I was going to add all these to a client’s site but he already has a ton of plugins. Thanks so much in advance!

One of my favorite utility plugins is Broken Link Checker – it automatically checks all of you links and notifys you when one is not working.

Awesome- I have a ton of basecamp task templates, and my wordpress one isn’t nearly as good as this- I’ll be integrating it straight away.

I’m quite new to WordPress, so forgive a naive question. The Permalink/custom setting to /%category%/%postname%/ seems to break published pages.

Thanks for sharing your WordPress checklist Michelle. One of the joys of WordPress is the flexibility it offers but having a checklist such as this is very useful for anyone just starting out.

I think these huge numbers of plugins will slow down your site:) And Total Cache won’t help much. Maybe with your own server…

awesome information.. michelle

Top article, I have set up wordpress but clearly there is more to it. Cheers I beteer get to work on it.