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Launching a new blog is very daunting for some whilst very exciting for others. To me it’s a totally exciting experience and I can’t wait to get started. If you’re the same, it’s important to make sure your enthusiasm doesn’t lead you to launching too early and without having everything setup properly.
I relaunched ViperChill a few weeks ago and the site has already received tens of thousands of visitors. This wasn’t by accident or any form of ‘luck’. Instead, I carefully took the time to setup everything necessary for a great launch that would allow me to explode traffic onto the site and turn those visitors into subscribers.
I’m not going to share the usual ‘write what you’re passionate about’ or even give you tips on how to install WordPress — I’m hoping you’ve covered that already. What I am going to share, however, is exactly what steps I take when setting up a new blog (and why) so you can hopefully learn a thing or two to tweak on your current site or for your next launch.
WordPress Settings
1. Change the Domain – On a typical install, your blog will show in the WordPress settings without the www in the domain. I prefer having this, so I add it back in my going to Settings >> General. You will probably have to log into your WordPress admin again after doing this, but that will only happen once.
2. Tweak the Permalinks – Permalinks are simply the URL’s of your blog posts and pages. By default, your URL’s are setup like http://www.viperchill.com/p=8 which isn’t very pretty and doesn’t give an indication to what the page is about. In Settings >> Permalinks I use the custom option and type %postname%. This means that my URL’s can be something like http://www.viperchill.com/launching-new-blog/ which is both pretty and informative.
3. Enable Threaded Comments – In the past I would have installed a plugin for this, but now WordPress offers this as standard. In Settings >> Discussion you can choose to enable nested comments and select how many levels deep you would want these to go. This enhances the conversation in your comments and allows you and other readers to reply to specific comments directly.
4. Add Ping Services – You probably won’t have to do this, but when I installed my blog there were no ping services in the Options >> Writing section of my WordPress admin panel. Adding ping services means that you can send trackbacks to other blogs which lets them know when you link to their posts. It also gets your site listed in Technorati and other blog aggregation services.
5. Turn Off Comment Notifications – If you’re new to blogging it can be exciting or useful to find out when your blog gets a new comment. Once you get in the 30+ comments per post stage or even 200 in some cases (my record) then getting emails about comments completely takes over your inbox. I prefer to turn this off in Settings >> Discussion and simply find out about new comments from my dashboard.
WordPress Plugins
6. Akismet – This comes default with WordPress and is their own way of helping to combat blog comment spam. I guarantee that if you do not activate this, you’ll soon be going crazy with all the russian spam and porn links appearing on your website. Grab an API key from WordPress.com and you’re golden.
7. Align RSS Images – I like to use images in my blog posts and I know I’m not alone. It’s common though that when someone puts images in their post and they align nicely, things won’t look as pretty when you get the post in a feed reader. This plugin aligns images in your RSS feed so they are exactly where they would be on your site.
8. Backtype Tweetcount – If you visit this post in your browser and look at the top left of the article, you’ll see a tweet count button with a link to retweet the article. Tweetmeme is a much more popular plugin which does the same thing but I like that I can customise Backtype to match my theme whereas Tweetmeme is (for now) not as easy to tweek.
9. Comment Redirect – If someone takes the time to leave a comment on your site, there’s a good chance they like what you’re writing and want to read more. Because of that, my good friend Joost wrote a plugin which automatically redirects commenters to any page on your site. If you leave a comment here for the first time you’ll see what this is like. I created a page that specifically tells new commenters about the sites RSS feed and how to subscribe.
10. Subscribe to Comments – RSS revolutionised writing content online and meant that people didn’t have to keep returning to a website in order to see if it had updated. This susbscribe to comments plugin allows commenters to get email notifications of new replies on the discussion they’ve taken part in without having to remember the URL or frequently returning to the site.
11. Cufon – I’ve only ever installed this on one blog (this one) but you might be wondering why my post titles look slighty like images. Well, Cufon allows you to transform certain text so that you can use a huge array of fonts and everyone will see them clearly, no matter what browser or operating system they are using. I think there are less than 10 fonts in the world that work well on every operating system and browser so this massively expands that choice.
12. OIO Publisher – You don’t see any ads on this site, but for my other sites I use OIO Publisher. This is by far the best ad manager available for WordPress and allows you to not only sell ads automatically but track how many clicks they get, their rotation, and where they appear on the site. I’ve used this for years and can’t recommend it highly enough.
Basics
13. Add An About Page – My about page is not-so-cleverly called What the F**k? and tells people who I am and what this site is about. Ideally it should be easy for people to tell what you produce without having to go to this page but it is nice for readers to get to learn more about their favourite authors.
14. Set-up a Contact Page – Most bloggers want their audience to be able to get in touch with them so if you’re the same, you definitely need to set this up. My contact page is very simple, and simply contains an image of my email address. I don’t share the text version as I’m not a fan of spambots. I also don’t include a form because the few extra seconds it takes to type out an email and open a new browser tab will separate the people who really want to hear back from me with the time wasters.
15. Have 3 Remarkable Posts Ready – Don’t ask me why I chose this number, but I like to have 3-4 remarkable posts on my site before I launch or at least ready to go live as I start promoting. This not only gives people a sign of what is to come but allows you to deal with marketing your new site with a break for a week or two from writing content. If your posts aren’t remarkable, it’s unlikely people will come back so although they will take time to put together, put a lot of energy into them.
16. Sign-Up To Feedburner – Feedburner was purchased by Google a few years ago for $100m and is one of my favourite services online. It allows you to keep track of how many subscribers your blog has and what services your readers use. Not only that, but you can easily setup email subscriptions and insert social bookmarking links directly into your feed.
17. Decide on Categories or Date Archives – As you can see from my own sidebar (which will get a little busier soon) I’m a fan of minimalist design. Partly for minimalism and partly for SEO reasons, I think it’s better if people decide to either use categories or date based archives to organise their content, not both. I have also created a page which lists all of my articles for usability.
SEO
18. No Follow Certain Links – Adding the nofollow attribute to certain links tells search engines not to pass Pagerank to them and not to give any ‘benefits’ to the receiving page or site. This attribute was created due to the influx of spam on the Web and is used by default in WordPress comments. I also nofollow links to pages that don’t need my link juice such as About or Contact and even things like my RSS feed. Google engineer Matt Cutts wrote that Google frowns on this sort of activity so use it at your own risk.
19. Change Your Title – Anyone with a clue about SEO will tell you the most important thing to optimise for on-site SEO is your title tag. By default, the WordPress title tag is backwards. What I mean by that is it will show you the website name first before a post title on individual post pages. Instead, I prefer to simply show the post title by itself and then choose my own title for the homepage. My code for this being:
<title><?php if(is_home()) { echo ‘Viral Marketing : ViperChill’; } else { wp_title(”) ;} ?></title>
The title of your homepage should include the keyphrase you choose from the next point.
20. Choose a Keyphrase – Tons of people like to simply name their website after what it’s called, and not what it offers, and that’s fine. I, on the other hand, like to kill two birds with one stone by choosing a title that is both descriptive and has the potential to get me search engine traffic. Head over to the Google Keywords tool and find a term that is relevant to your niche and gets a lot of searches.
Once you have decided on a phrase, put it on your title and try to get backlinks to your site with this as the anchor text. For example, if you ever write guest posts then you can link to your website with this term as the hyperlink. There is a lot more to SEO and getting rankings than this, but that should get you started.
21. Get My Social Media Profiles – If you’re hoping your site will become a well known brand in your niche then it’s important to get accounts on the top social media sites with your site name to stop people hijacking your brand in the future. These should also help you ‘dominate’ the search results for your name. To start with, I recommend signing up to: Twitter, Technorati, MyBlogLog, Youtube and Flickr and any other sites that are relevant to your niche.
Design
22. Fix Address Bar RSS – In the address bar (where you type URL’s) your blog also has an RSS icon. The problem is that if you’re using Feedburner, this icon takes people to a different RSS address instead of your Feedburner one. Thankfully, the problem is quite easy to fix.
In your header.php file find this code:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” />
And replace it with:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”YOURFEEDBURNERURL” />
There is a plugin that redirects your other feed, but I prefer to just do this simple hack. Now you’ll make sure you’re getting all of the subscribers you should be.
23. Make RSS Options Clear - The main goal for most bloggers is to increase their number of subscribers. So, if you want people to sign-up to your feed, make it easy for them. I include both a clear link to my RSS feed (for people who know what they are) and the option for people to get email updates. On PluginID, only 10% of my subscribers use email subscriptions, but that’s still over 500 people who may not have subscribed otherwise. I highly recommend including both.
24. RSS and Social Buttons in Footer – If you look at the bottom of every blog post on this site, you’ll see a graphic which encourages people to either subscribe to the RSS feed or tweet the article if they like it. Although I have a tweet button at the top, people are more likely to share something they have read and enjoyed rather than something they’ve just landed on.
Similarly, people are more likely to subscribe to your RSS feed after they’ve read an article they like, rather than just by landing on your homepage.
Over To You
What things do you do when launching a new blog? I would love to hear them…
RSS Subscribers: 
Great post Glen. There are some useful tips I’ll try like rss image alignment. Regarding comments, I still use email notifications because I think the dashboard is not appropriate for the level of attention I want to give. Again, I don’t get 100+ comments per post.
That’s a fair point Oscar, but I still read all comments on my blog and reply to most without getting notifications
Each to their own of course!
Is there anything you do that I do not have on the list?
I install wp-super-cache so my pages are fast.
I’d say a good one is make sure your blog can handle a large amount of traffic- use wp super cache, a good hosting plan (not godaddy), oh and don’t ever accidentally use a windows server with wordpress (don’t ask)
Have a custom header. Even if a simple one. Default headers make the blog look new. Even just making a very minor change to this can create a HUGE difference in how the blog is perceived by first time visitors.
Great list.
Excellent addition, Baker.
Thanks!
Nice post. Certainly helps for me with the new football/soccer blog I have started.
I’ll add Gravatar plugin to this list. Makes the comments section better.
P.S: I think you can add recent posts to your sidebar now that your blog has more than 5 posts.
Recent posts is a good idea, although I’m thinking of doing top posts instead like Copyblogger. I still have a lot of optimisation on this site to do first (to make it faster) before I start adding more database queries
Appreciate the comment, Ram!
This is definitely becoming my most favourite blog. Keep your excellent work, Glen.
You are Steve Pavlina of blogging / marketing
Haha, thank you Lucy.
It’s funny you say that, as Steve thinks of himself as the Glen Allsopp of Personal Development
That’s indeed funny. The circle is completed, just like in this comics: http://ow.ly/AC6C
Great post. Taught me a thing or two…loving that Viperchill is back!!!
Great post Glen!
There are quite a couple of plugins that I do not have installed yet, gonna get crackin’ on it now
Peace!
Likely more food for thought for a separate post — but how do you approach design? Design around ads? Or get/find/make a nice design first, then drop in ads? Do you set yourself a fixed time for the design or just OCD-ish go on until it’s perfect?
Before opening the doors I like to make sure I have analytics in place. Certainly in the beginning this includes HitTail. HitTail is a nice way to get a list of long tail terms that makes sense.
Hey Ruud,
Can’t believe I forgot Analytics. Yes, I do that as well, guys.
I prefer to create the design first then fit everything in an around that. And I am very OCD in that I have to make everything look awesome (at least to me) before I launch.
You should check out Piwik, I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it’s amazing and it runs on your own server. Personally I’ve experienced that a page takes a lot of time to load while queying Google Analytics.
I use BLVDStatus, it is awesome.
All great tips and plugins Glen. I also like “All in one SEO”:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Cheers,
Dayne
Great and informative blog. I am thinking about starting my own blog, so this all looks like really good advice
Louise
Great list. A few things I need to go check on from this list. My biggest pet peeve of commenting on blogs is those who don’t offer the subscribing to comments. There is really no way to go remember all of the places I check and try to interact without it. Sure, I could bookmark every blog post I comment on, and go back to check and see if the converfsation is ongoing periodically. But why miss out on this huge and simple opportunity to get and participate in feedback on your blog?
If there is no way offered to get followup comments on a blog post, I won’t even comment on it anymore unless it’s very important to me. It really is a huge missed opportunity for blog interaction.
Good roundup! I found quite a few tips in here that I hadn’t seen before.
Since one of my blogs got hacked recently (and that was a real pain!), I would add some security measures. For example, changing the DB table prefixes, using something like the login-lockdown plugin and, very important: The WP DB-Manager plugin for automatic backups.
For SEO, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is also quite valuable.
I also use the No-Selfping plugin to avoid getting trackbacks every time I interlink my posts. Don’t know if there’s a simpler solution to this. Or do you just tend to delete the self-pings?
Great article! While I already do most of these, there are a few that I’ve not done before. One thing that I do that’s not on this list is I add CommentLuv. It usually encourages more people to comment.
Hey Glen,
I love this check list. It really helped we get things tighter on my blog.
Another plug in I use is WP’s XML-sitemap.
Take Care,
Jill
[...] 24 Things I Do When Launching a New Blog. [...]
Thanks for this Glen, I have installed some of these but some new ideas for me here which I’ll look into.
I wanted to ask you too with regards to keyphrases is ‘Personal Development & Life Coaching’ too long i.e. should it just be a couple of words or is this ok?
Thanks again – really enjoying these posts.
That’s fine for a title, but I would just focus on one to build links for.
- Glen
Ok great thanks Glen
Hi there Glen,
Great post! I was a long time follower over at HQHow, so without a doubt, I knew that subscribing to ViperChill would be nothing short of spectacular.
Anyways, you know a great way to avoid having to go through the entire obtaining an API key process when using Akismet is to install WP-Spamfree. It’s an awesome plugin that I use for all of my blogs and niche websites built on WordPress. I’ve successfully blocked comments without one getting through the though spam filters. You also have the option to log spam comments in a .txt file that shows you whose attacking you and what IPs to block.
Great post Glen! This is my first comment but I follow Viper Chill since the very first article. You are doing an absolutely awesome job so far!
For the post title customization, you can use the “all-in-one SEO plugin” as well. It allows to change several things for SEO optimization (specific title for each post, specific keywords for each post, etc.). It is a bit less scary for people who are not geeky enough to change the PHP code themselves and it also allows to upgrade your WordPress theme without losing your modifications.
Great post, Glenn. I’d like to add a few things that I do for each new blog:
* Claim the site in Technorati and the webmasters sections of Google, Bing and Yahoo.
* Build a couple of throwaway links from established sites (e.g. submit to a well known social bookmarking site) just to get it spidered quickly.
* Add analytics code. I use Google Analytics, as well as the server logs for a quick overview of site trends.
* Test, test, test! Test all pages in the three major browsers. Test the contact form. Test the RSS feed. Test using the W3C validator. Test everything before launch.
* Set up Google Alerts, Bing/Yahoo/Twitter search RSS for the brand and key target phrases.
In your step four, you recommend adding ping services. Do you still find that “blog and ping” is a useful strategy? It’s become less and less effective for me over recent months.
Loving that Cufon plugin. Nice having a bit more typographic control.
Yes, it’s awesome!
I’m just a small time blogger, but these tips are very helpful to me. Thanks.
We found that timing of posts is also important. We put up one post a day and we make sure they’re scheduled for 9:00 am central time. This way, our daily readers know when they can come to read the days post. And by choosing 9:00 am our posts get on twitter at a good time (7:00 am Pacific and 10 am Eastern) so they don’t get buried so much by other tweets.
Nice. I pick 1pm NY time (not sure what that is Pacific / Eastern) so that the people who check feeds on their lunch break and use Twitter at the same time can get the content.
The code for a custom header (#19) that you have posted here gives me an error. I am using WP version 2.8.5
The code is very basic php so you should have no problems.
Copy the text into a text file first and check there are no extra spaces or breaks before adding it into WordPress.
This was very useful, at least some things I can modify on a free platform. I’m preparing a blog, and this info was very helpful!
Awesome!
Thanks for a fantastic list of ways to optimize my wordpress blog!
I submitted it to reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/internet_marketing/
Great list man, SUPER helpful! Thanks, I just implemented a ton of these…
Great list of things in getting ready to release your blog. My question is how does Viper Chill relate to your keywords like in the advice you just gave us.
Thanks, Eugene
Viral Marketing is my keyphrase I’m trying to rank for.
Hey Glen,
thanks again for a great list of things you could do for a new blog. This is so helpful especially for someone like me.
Unfortunately, since my blog is “humanexplosion.com”, the related keyphrases I would get out of that would probably be things on explosives, bombs and spontaneous combustion. I swear I have no intention of wanting to kill anyone, I just want them to BE HAPPPYY!!
oh well, thanks for the advices glen, greatly appreciated.
Steven *boom out*
This is probably the best info I’ve gotten for my new blog. And though it’s not my first blog, I’m still wet behind the ears. There’s so much to do, and I’m a writer, not a technical person. But I’m willing to learn, and you’ve helped me a lot. Thank you.
You’re very welcome Maria, thanks for your comment.
Brilliant ideas here.. and I’ve only got to number 9 so far but keen to try it out. I am writing a little email for my computer boffin who takes care of all the geeky stuff for me with a wish list of things that need doing to make my blog better.
There’s always heaps to do but I love the challenge. Thanks for sharing your tips.
Sorry for leaving 2 comments but I’ve read it all now.
Feedback first:
1. Sorry, comment redirect didn’t seem to work – maybe because I have commented on pluginID before?
2. By using a pic for your title you’re obviously not wanting it to be use for seo purposes?
3. RE no, 18 No Follow Certain Links – Would love to know why you do that.
My 2 Cents: I think you and the other commenters have it covered but Broken Link Checker is good as nothing says amateur on a website like broken links. And what about the Share tool so people can digg/tweet/stumble/delicious as they feel fit. Dream territory I know but dreaming is my field:)
Hi Annabel,
Awesome to see you here as always!
1. Yep, thats because you’ve commented here before. Trying leaving a comment with brand new details.
2. I’m talking about the title in the HTML code, not what you see at the top of the page here. Look at the title on your web browser. That is what I have changed.
3. Basically pages get a certain amount of ‘link juice’ from links to them (which help them rank in Google) and the more pages you link to from that page, the more link juice that you give away unncessarily. For example, I have no intention for my about me or contact pages to rank highly in Google.
Great Tips, all help is appreciated!
This post is very useful vor Blog Beginners. Thanks for the great tipps.
I love the idea of the comment redirection, and it is definitely on the reasons that is encouraging me to leave this comment.
Keep up with the great tips
Great tips!
I’ve just launched my new home, ‘THoTA’, with some social aggregator features. More is comming, of which.. my new blog. These tips are very useful, even if I use Drupal as a CMS.
Plugins are not a problem: to have a good checklist is the point.
Thanks for this!
Hey – excellent post. Just found out about you via problogger. I’ll be using your tips when I relaunch my blog. Quick question – what’s the theme of your blog? Is it a variation of Thesis?
Hi Glen,
Devoured your post! Lots of points that I am not doing right now. Have book marked this post and am going to all my sites to implement those items that I currently do not have … and as a checklist for any new sites in the future.
Once again, many thanks………….valentina
Good content, good advice. I’ll be using this as a blueprint.
Glen, I just want to say THANK YOU!! I’m planning to start my own blog and your post will be very helpful. Thanks so much for sharing!
Hey Glen,
Thanks for the post- several things I am not doing. Interested to see the Comments Redirect.
Great article; I am just appling some of the ideas to my new blog. thanks again.
Great stuff,
I’ll be applying a lot of this when I migrate my wp.org blog over to a hosted version.
That in mind; a great article would be “Migrating to a Hosted Blog” or “The benefits of a Hosted Blog” although I am pretty sure that that is covered somewhere.
Phill
This should be a checklist every new blogger must read when launching a new blog. Just wonder how long it takes you to fulfill this list? A day?
I would say 2-3 days based on having to write 3 remarkable posts
Great post. This is the first time I am hearing about OIO publisher. I am gonna check it out. Thanks.
Heya Glen
only thing I can’t work out is how to change the title on my web browser to add my key word (I’ve tried amending header.php and installing SEO Title tag plug in but no joy) … can you point me in the right direction?
Just been working on making my blog more functional using this post and made some great changes
Cheers
Jen
Show me your
[...] talk about value! Case in point is his latest post on his 24 point checklist that he implements with every new blog he starts. Not only have I bookmarked that post, but I [...]
Thanks Glen
My original corresponding line in my header php is:
I changed it to this:
and get this message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ‘,’ or ‘;’ in /home/jensmith/public_html/wp-content/themes/blogsimplified/header.php on line 6
I’ll email you Glen – the code hadn’t appeared. J
I love your posts, keep writing more often!
[...] 24 Things I Do When Launching a New Blog – ViperChill [...]
Hey Glen, thank you so much this is wicked!
Just wondering if you could clarify something for me. If people subscribe through RSS do I have access to the data it collects?
Thanks very much,
Serena
Not sure what kind of data you are looking for but you can find out what RSS services they are using or their email address, yes.
- Glen
[...] Good Gear 24 things to do when launching a blog Making Your Own Products (the economy in doing so) 10 reasons you should never get a job Make Money [...]
Hey Glen!
Thanks for all the very good advice. There are several things you mentioned that I have been looking for.
I just recently started my blog and it still has a long way to go before it is completely optimized the way I would like. But it is a learning process.
Thanks again!
Jonathan
Thanks for sharing these useful info. I learnt a lot.
What a great post, I’ve started many blogs… who hasn’t, but I got serious a couple of months ago, and I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’m working through this step by step, great post, thanks
[...] 24 Things to Do when Launching a New Blog. Solid ideas here. [...]
Glen,
This was forwarded by a friend and immensely helpful. I am about to start my first blog related to a new business I am launching, and I want to do it right. I am a marketer by trade and love that many of these suggestions make it easy for the READER to participate and subscribe…I’m always reading things on how to improve SEO, but you’re also helping from a user-experience perspective, which I don’t see too often. Thank you!!
One question…since there are so many awesome comments and suggestions posted, might you update this list by adding some of the suggested tactics that you endorse?
great stuff… plus i wanted to see your new commenter page
[...] 24 things to do when launching a new blog [...]
Good, hands-on ideas. Great to see your blog updated
Hey Glen,
Do you recommend to have a logo, I just don’t know how or which one, or even where to get one. Don’t you need a graphic designer?
[...] 24 Things I Do When Launching a New Blog – 24 Tipps zu Einstellungen und Plugins für einen neuen WordPress-Blog – wordpress blog tips howto [...]
[...] Glen Allsopp/ViperChill: 24 Things I Do When Launching a New Blog [...]
I’m setting up my very first blog now, so this will come in very useful. Thank you!
nice tips!
After setting my site up, the first thing I do is social bookmark my site via Onlywire or SocialMarker so it can get indexed. After that it’s consistently generating content and building links. Manual link building is incredibly boring so I’m looking at social media traffic as a way to drive traffic AND links.
Do you get traffic from social media or pure SEO? I’m focusing on the former with some really good link bait but I’m interested in your advice.
Best,
Raza
[...] reading at a place called Viperchill, edited by a guy named Glen. He just happened to write a post regarding the preparations of launching a blog which got me all excited and ideas started flowing through my head and this is where we ended [...]
Oh shit. I’ve been doing better than I thought I was. Aside from most of the things you’ve outlined here, one of the first things I do is add the ShareThis plugin so that my readers have the ability to share their favorite post across multiple social networks easily.
I really like that comment-redirect plugin. I think that’ll be tomorrow’s project.
Tweaking permalinks is huge. Why don’t make that automatic?
This is a must have! Thanks
First thing I do is check out how other blogs were set up. Then start creating my blog, then I run to great posts like this that show me how to further improve it! In my case though, ranking high in Google is one of the things I aim for. Do you have tips for this?
Oh, and I just had to check your redirect from comments
What do you think of it?
My concern with my blog is it’s too design intensive. I like the site design very much and it certainly fits my personality. When I started the blog I thought it would work well but now I’m starting to reconsider.
Not trying to get hits to my blog but I really would like some advice regarding my design.
Thanks for any help…
I always install Platinum SEO so I can set title tag individually for each page and post.
Great Post Glen! Unfortunately, many people read these blog posts and think it’s a ‘Pie In The Sky’ in terms of simplicity of getting great traffic and subscribers. When in reality it’s a ‘Best Practice Guide’. Every business owner I deal with tells me that they tried it him or herself. Anymore, Internet success is as much a science as it is an art. For my business, I read a lot on the web and follow these guides, constantly updating my playbook to stay current. The Internet and E-commerce is always evolving. Todays success will be tomorrows failure if you are not constantly evolving with it which instantly puts you ahead of the ‘Set it and forget it’ majority. Our success has resulted from staying up-to-date in technology and utilizing it to exploit the competitions weak spots, surface untapped markets, and dominate our niches. Its posts like these that enablle me to stay on top of the important things, Thanks
[...] http://www.viperchill.com/launching-new-blog/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/ [...]
[...] a similar and great post of a fellow blogger Glen from ViperChill.com. He wrote an article titled 24 Things I do when launching a new blog. I respect his work and advise you to take a look at his post, but in this post of a same subject I [...]
test.
I’ll give you an hour to write something before I delete this
I don’t know if this is a valid comment, but I just want to check out your comment redirect. To make it a valid comment though, I’m just sorting out my blog now (starting from a clean slate), and this is the article I was looking for in my history. Great tips (the redirect to www is my favorite)
thanks for this article..
i’ll apply it when i make new blog next month…
Allw me to do ctrl+D
Just testing Comment Redirect. :;)
Just having a gander at comment redirect
Will keep these in mind when I open up my next blog!
nice information i thinking about new domain and soon i will publish that. Your 24 points give me so much information…thnxxxxx
Also creating a favicon for your site. Just looks more established and professional and it’s so easy to do.
Great info! Want to see what the comment redirect plugin landing page looks like
Nice post there. I’m also using wordpress and your guide help me launching my new site. I missed out a few points for sure if I am not reading this post. Keep posting more informational articles like this. I always love to come back and learn more.
Thanks.
Nice post!
Thanks for this awesome checklist! Will definitely be going through this before I launch my own blog. I’m leaving this comment so I can check out what your Comment Redirect page looks like.
Hi Glen,
I really like your initial approach to make sure everything is ready to go. I have been told in the past that you should have 10 post to start. However, quality post like yours that deliver above beyond three is ideal. I have just now started to create a new blog with WordPress. I will implement all your suggestions and let you know how it turned out. I am sure it will be phenomenal.
What I get from Viperchill the most and something I am not doing right now or have ever done is testing testing testing. Sometimes it can be a pain. However I know you have to know what’s working and whats not. Getting these measurements will help you not fly blind.
When you look at it correctly you see that it can be quite fun. Thanks for all you do! I have finally found the one mentor that will get me through the trenches safely and successful. For that I greatly appreciate you. Thanks so much for sharing Junior!
Pamela
Thanks. Love all of your comments and I am implementing them immediately.
First-Comment-Redirection – that’s an interesting idea!
But I’d like to know what are you thinking about blog without particular theme? Can it be a successful project?
Hi, nice post by the , keep writing this useful stuff!
Excelent post! Actually I’m impressed with the high quality of your content. I wish we had some similar blogs here in Brazil. I had tons of ideas to implement at my blogs, and I hope they grow up after applying the ideias.
Thanks for the great job!
Cheers,
Matheus Zeuch
Thanks for the notes. I am new to blogging and have lots to learn. Sure is nice to have a professional list so to speak.
That comment redirect thing blew me away! The is a brilliant idea and I wish that I had implemented something like that on my blog ages ago.
Just found your blog a while ago Glen… there seems to be SO MUCH good stuff on here. I’m looking forward to slowly digesting all your helpful tips!
Hi Glen, thank you for sharing this great post and briliant ideas! Our site is launching soon, you are welcome to join us and share your expertise in your area with us
Thanks!
Hi Glen, fantastic and awesome article,
I have 1 question though (lol im treating your stuff as a to-do list) and im a South African living in Ireland, trying to write on a usually drab topic -tax, except where it can make ppl more money !
anyhow, how do you do the sweet awesome graphic at the bottom of every post? inviting RSS & Social media shares?
Great check list that every WP blog owner should know about! I’ve set up quite a few WP sites already and there are some great tips I’ve just picked up here. Can’t believe the tweet count is in the single digit. The least i can do is to bring that up to double digits for you
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Great post here! Keep coming back to it for blog launches. First time commenter, but have enjoyed and appreciated the site for a while. Commenting now to say thanks for the great posts and to test this comment redirect plugin!
Great stuff heard ur interview with Pat Flyn you guys are both awesome! Great to do list I am missing a few…gotta get em’ down before my full launch! Thanks!
Sorry, really just commenting because I want to see what your comment re-direct page looks like. Cheers though!