There’s a lot to think about when first launching a blog.

What you’ll write about, what you’ll name your blog, if you should self host and how to actually set your blog up. I’ve created a three part blog series with everything you need to know about starting a successful blog.

I had so much content to share I had to break it up into three posts! You can read the first post, everything you need to know about starting a successful blog, in this series here.

This post, everything you need to know about starting a successful blog, contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and make a purchase I will receive a commission from the sale.

In post two of this three post series, on how to be ready to launch your new WordPress blog, you will read about:

If you haven’t read my post, Everything you need to know about starting a successful blog yet, start there and then come back to this post!

How to Be Ready to Launch Your New Blog

You are diving into the wonderful world of blogging! You’ve narrowed down your niche, created a motto, came up with a name, grabbed your social media handles, and decided on hosting and a theme. Now come the fun part. Setting up your new blog.

Once your theme is installed in WordPress it’s time to customize it. There are a couple of ways to customize and set up your site. I’ll be focusing on key items to pay attention to and how to set them up. As customization options will vary based on your theme.

If your theme comes with a child theme and demo content be sure to install these before you start customizing. This is very important! You will find that without the child theme and demo content, you will never be able to set your theme up the way it was in the live preview. Nothing will make sense until you’ve installed the child theme (if your theme comes with one) or the demo content.

1. Customize

Once you are logged into WordPress go to Appearance > Customize in your dashboard menu. This is where you will do a lot of your initial set up. Start by working your way through the menu. As you customize you will see the changes in real time.

Refer to your theme documentation when you set up your site. This is why I love the theme I bought from Hello You Designs so much! They walked me through setting up and customizing my site step-by-step so that it looks exactly the way their live demo of it does.

2. Setting up a static or widgetized homepage and a blogfeed

When customizing your site you have two choices on how to display your homepage. You can display your latest posts or a static page. I recommend going with a static or widgetized homepage. If your theme is designed with a widgetized homepage, like mine is, it will be set to display your latest post, but look like a static page.

Setting up a Widgetized Homepage

My theme uses a Widgetized homepage so it displays “Your Latest Posts.” You’ll notice that when you land on my site it looks like a website, not a classic blog feed. This was very important to me when choosing my theme. Instead of having my blog feed on my homepage, I have a second page where all of my blog posts are hosted.

If your theme uses a Widgetized homepage you will need to create a second page titled Blog. Under Page Attributes, you’ll want to set the page’s template to “blog page.” When building your main menu you will use this page to navigate to your blog feed.

This is managed by the theme I am using, which we talked about in Everything you need to know about starting a successful blog.

Originally I had my site set up as a classic blog. My home page simply showed my most recent blog posts. Now my home page features different widget areas that display welcome images and text as well as a section that displays my three most recent blog posts. You can navigate to a separate page for my blog feed in the menu. 

It makes my site feel much more professional. Essentially I have a website with a blog. I highly recommend setting up your site this way. So when you’re looking for a theme, be sure it has this capability.

When you land on my home page you’ll find the most important information and links I want you to find. On my homepage, I introduce you to what Happily Dwell is all about!

• Right from the start I cast vision and invite you to join me!
• You’ll find an intro and link to my About Me page
• My three most current blog posts are featured
• I have two places you can sign up for my newsletter
• And at the bottom you’ll find my Instagram feed so you can connect with me on social media too.

My current theme, Hello Blush, is designed by Hello You Designs. This theme has everything I could’ve ever wished for built into it. Powered by Genesis Framework, I’ve never been more happy with a theme.

Setting up a Static Homepage

If your theme does not have a Widgetized homepage, you will want to set up a static homepage. You will create a page and assign it to be displayed as the homepage of your website.

Create New Pages

The first step is to create two new pages on your site. From your dashboard go to your pages and add new. Title the first page: Home. Create another page and title this second page: Blog. Set the Homepage template to “default template” and the Blog page template to “blog page,” in the Page Attributes section.

Set your Homepage to static

You can set your homepage to static by going to Settings > Reading. It will ask you to assign a Homepage and a Posts page. For Homepage select the new “Home” page you created. And for your Posts page select the new “Blog” page you created. (You can also set your homepage to static by going to Appearance > Customize > Homepage.)

Now you can go to Customize and preview what your site will look like.

For a more in-depth article on setting up a static homepage, check out this excellent post by WPBeginner.

3. Setting up your main menu

Your main menu directs your readers to the most important pages on your blog! For me those key pages are: Home, About, Blog, Productivity and DIY Projects. These are the pages I want my readers to easily and quickly be able to navigate to. Go to Appearance > Menus in your dashboard to set up your menus.

While your main menu is the key menu you’ll set up, you can also set up other menus to use on your blog. For example you can create special menus for categories or even a list of specific blog posts and place them in widgets on your site. My theme even has a mobile friendly Social Pages Menu that I use especially for sending people to my blog from instagram!

I also recommend making your menu sticky. Also known as a fixed menu, a sticky menu will remain visible at the top of your page as your visitors scroll. This is super helpful since it gives them access to your menu at all times.

They can navigate whenever they want and won’t have to scroll all the way up again to get to the menu. My theme is built with a sticky menu. If your theme doesn’t have a fixed menu you can install a plugin, like My Sticky Menu, to make your menu sticky.

4. Widgets

When it comes to customizing the look of your site widgets play an important role. They house blocks of content on your website. Widgets have different functions depending on the type of content.

Common widget locations are at the top, sides and bottom of your site. Widgets support the framework out side of a page or post. So they do not go inside the page or post content.

You can add text, html, newsletter forms, menus and more to a page or post with a widget. If you look to the right side of this post you will find a search bar, image, body of text, newsletter sign up form, and Instagram feed. Each of these is contained in a widget and show up on all my blog post pages.

To add widgets to your site go to Appearance > Widgets in your dashboard. Widgets can also partner with plugins. For example I have a plugin to import my Instagram feed to my blog. The code from the plugin is in a widget. That’s how I get it on my blog.

5. Installing key plugins for additional blog features

Ever wonder how they get that pin it text over a image or those social sharing icons on the page? Beyond having a fabulous theme, plugins are your best friend. A theme is the framework that provides the layout and design of your website. Plugins partner with your theme to add additional functions and features to your site.

Here’s a list of my favorite plugins and what I use them for:

• Rank Math SEO – I recently switched from using Yoast to RankMath as my SEO plugin. You’ll come to find that SEO is an extremely important component of blogging. This plugin acts as a guide to optimizing your post for search engines. Which is key when it comes to being found when people are searching for content.
• Feed Them Social – if you scroll to the bottom of my website you’ll find my instagram feed beautifully housed on my site thanks to this plugin.
• Grow Social by Mediavine – This places social sharing buttons on your individual posts. You can set up which social platforms you want people to share your posts to and determine the placement of the buttons either at the top, bottom or side of the post.
• GDPR Cookie Compliance – Being aware of governing laws such as GDPR is essential as a blogger (hobby or for profit) and this plugin adds a cookie notification at the top of my site, informing a visiter that my site uses cookies. A notification you’ve probably grown used to seeing on every website you visit now.
• Jetpack – One of my favorite plugins, Jetpack delivers analytics and insights on my blog traffic. I can easily check my site stats to know how many visits my site or a specific post is receiving. It also shows me where my traffic is coming from so I know if people are finding my site via social media like Pinterest, direct links or search engines.
• LuckyWP Table of Contents – Having a table of contents in your post is great for SEO! This plugin makes it super simple since it creates a TOC with links to each headline in your post.
• Weblizar Pin It – This is the plugin that I use to get that pin it button on the images in my post. This is helpful if my readers want to pin a specific image in the post.
• W3 Total Cache – This plugin is a WordPress performance plugin. Use it to improve the speed and user experience of your site. With this plugin you can add browser, page, object and database caching. As well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

I recommend doing your research on plugins and using reliable ones. One of the number one reasons websites crash is due to bad plugins. I look for plugins that have been updated recently and have high ratings.

6. Settings

Before you take your site live go through your Settings section. You’ll find General, Writing, Reading Discussion, Media, Permalinks and Privacy settings to go through and set up.

The most important setting I want you to take note of is Permalinks. Under the Permalink Settings select Post Name. The post name permalink structure is the best structure for SEO.

This setting is permanent for your entire site so you want to choose the right structure from the start. If you were to change it later you would lose all your link paths.

I wish I had known this when I launched this blog because now I am stuckwith a permalink structure that I don’t want. Changing your permalink structure down the road is a huge ordeal that involves redirect links and a lot of work!

So don’t make my mistake and be sure to choose the post name permalink structure when setting up your WordPress site.

7. Creating your pre-launch content

Before you hit publish on your brand new blog there are some essential blog pages you should have set up on your site. I also recommend writing a bunch of articles in advance.

• Write your about me page. Your About Me page is a wonderful opportunity to introduce yourself and what your blog is all about to your audience.
• Be sure to set up your legal pages. You’ll want to have a privacy policy, disclaimer, and terms and conditions. Which I shared in my previous post: Everything you need to know about starting a successful blog
• Publish several posts: Have several posts written and published on the blog so that you have a site with posts once you launch. I recommend 5-10 prior to publishing your site.
• Have posts ready to be published: Have several posts written and scheduled to post once you launch your blog. I recommend have 5-10 posts ready to go. This gives you a buffer. Once you launch your site you’ll already have several posts written and schedule. This allows you to focus on writing new posts with less pressure.
• Have a Contact page. How can people find you? Are you available for collaborations? This page is key if you want brands to be able to easily reach out to you.

8. Getting your new WordPress blog seen

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

I could write an entire blog post just on this topic. SEO is incredibly important. The better your SEO the higher your chances of your post being shown in searches on search engines. A great way to know you’ve written a good SEO post is to use an SEO plugin. I used Yoast for years, but recently switched to Rank Math. Both are great!

Rank Math rates your post out of 100 for SEO. With 100 being the goal. It move through three color tiers: pink, yellow and green, green being the best. Once I am in the green tier with a score of 82 or higher I feel confident in my SEO and publishing my post.

It also breaks down the areas of my post I need to improve from basic SEO, keywords, internal and external links, and readability.

The advantage of these plugins is that they guide you through the SEO of your post. There’s so much more to know about SEO, but this will get you started.

I’ll also be sharing more about SEO tools in my next post!

Share on Social Media

One of the most straightforward ways to get your blog seen is to share it on social media. For my blog Pinterest is my best traffic source, followed by search engines (like Google), then Facebook, and then other sources. Decide what social media platforms you want to set up for your blog. I focus on Instagram, my Facebook Page, Pinterest and Twitter.

Share on Pinterest

Pinterest is by far my favorite social medium platform. For multiple reasons. First of all as platforms go I think it’s simply genius. When it comes to a visual search engine I personally believe it far outshines Google. Unlike other social media platforms, it doesn’t rely on followers.

For every post that I publish, I create 5-10 quality pins to share on Pinterest. I cannot stress enough the power of this platform for driving traffic to your website. I have pins from years ago that bring in DAILY traffic to my blog. Even if you don’t see immediate results, you will see results years later.

Be sure to have a pinnable image in your post and use plugins to encourage social sharing. There’s nothing better than your readers pinning your images to Pinterest!

If you want to know even more great Pinterest tips check out these key Pinterest basics for bloggers.

Like this image 👇🏻 Would you take a moment and pin it?!

Schedule with Tailwind

Tailwind automates the most difficult parts of your social media marketing.

I recommend pinning directly to Pinterest and using a scheduler like Tailwind. I do a mix of both. I like to be active on the actual platform, but using Tailwind allows me to spread my activity out. This way I’m not dumping a bunch of pins on Pinterest all day long. As a blogger task batching, like scheduling pins or social media posts, helps us be more productive!

Check out Tailwind for free and see what it’s all about for yourself!

Send out an email or text to your friends and family

When you first launch your blog, let your friends and family know. Send a simple email or text to let them know your exciting news, what your blog is about and that you’d love it if they checked it out. Sending them to your blog will give you that first boost of traffic to get you rolling.

I’ll be honest, in the beginning, your family and friends may be the only ones seeing your content. But, don’t be discouraged!

Blogging truly is a journey. It takes time to learn how to blog well. It takes time for your new blog to gain traction. But, if you are passionate, work hard and stick with it, it is wonderfully rewarding!

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Feeling ready to launch your new WordPress blog?! In my next post of this blog series, The 19 best blogging tools to start using immediately, I’m sharing my favorite blogging tools!

xoxo Naomi

This post, everything you need to know about starting a successful blog, contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and make a purchase I will receive a commission from the sale.