I was looking at a number of news sites that have been put up and notice that the same things are being done or I should say not being done, so here are some suggestions.
One thing we have no control over is when the spiders are going to show up at our sites, but we sure don't want them there when it is not ready so lets look at what is there when you first activate your domain name and pick a theme.
This is what your new site looks like before you do anything to it.
and in most cases the above is your side bar. I don't recommend that you leave your site in this condition because if the spiders should happen by you will end up so far down the listings that it could take months to dig out. so the first thing I recommend you do is log on to your site and go to settings on the left side bar.
click on reading and then click on the box for Discourage search engines there is no guarantee they will not index it but most will honor it. Now this is very important you need to stop at this point and wright a big note and stick it to your computer to turn this off when your site is ready for the world.
Next I recommend that you clean up your theme click on all post on your side bar.
select move to trash check Hello World then click on apply this will remove the post, next click on Categories.
what you want to do is change Uncategorized to a category you will be using on your site.
you should also change the slug at the same time and remember you have to save your changes at the bottom of each page. Next you should up date your site you can do this from your dashboard.
Just click on Please update now.
you will need to click on the blue Update Now button again.
It will show you the progress of the up date and when done you will end up on this page.
the up date number will always be changing with each new up date. Next lets clean up the widgets, to do that click on Appearance and then Widgets.
You be taken to the above screen, we have no need for the Meta on the sidebar it looks unprofessional so any widget you want to remove or install is simple drag and drop where you want it.
In this case I moved the Meta widget to the inactive area. Next I want to get rid of that sample page.
So I click on all pages and then change Bulk Actions to Move to Trash and click on sample page then Apply.
Next I want to change the admin display name.
I click on Your Profile and the above screen is displayed.
I change the Nickname to the name I want to be displayed on the post and comments.
I need to update this information before I can activate it by clicking on Update Profile.
Now I can select the name I want to use from the drop down list and again click on update Profile at the bottom of the page. Next head over to general settings.
and change your tag line to a keyword phrase for your site and remember to update every page after you make a change.
you are now starting with a clean slate and I recommend you don't activate your site until you have at least 10 post to offer to the world.
This is great information! Thank you for sharing it with us!