I set up on average one new wordpress site a week for various clients. I created my own guideline document of things that i tweak and change once i have installed wordpress on the server. Please find my list below. 01 - go to settings > general: and change the tag line & time format 02 - go to settings > discussion: and customize the comment settings 03 - go to settings > media: and customize the image dimensions 04 - go to settings > permalinks: and change the settings to post name 05 - go to appearance > themes: and activate theme 06 - add pages (home, news, about, contact etc…) 07 - create main menu, add pages, set main menu as main 08 - set front page to be home page, set post page to be news page 09 - install plugins I would love to hear what other people change / tweak once they have installed wordpress