It's important that when you are first setting up your WordPress affiliate site you get a few things right in the admin area setup. This will include tweeking a few settings and installing a few plugins, the plugins I recommend are ones which I have always seen as essential to any WordPress site.

1) Setting your permalinks

The first thing I always do whenever I am setting up a new site is set my WordPress permalinks. Okay so what are permalinks? Permalinks is basically another name for permanent URLs to your individual posts/pages and categories within your WordPress site and there are many ways you can set these up. As standard when you create a post you would see a URL which looks something like this: http://www.example.com/?p=34, which isn't very nice looking and neither is it great for the search engines. So what we want to do is make our URLs more search engine friendly and more visually appealing and we do this from our WordPress admin area, simply do the following:

- Login to your WordPress admin area
- Click on the option on the left which says 'Settings'
- Click on the option which says 'Permalinks'
- In the content area of the page you will now see a list of options under 'Common settings' and this is where you set your permalink structure.
- In the 'Custom Structure' box add the text '/%postname%' and click save changes.

There are a few permalink settings you can use but this is the one which I use and find most effective in my WordPress affiliate sites. To see a list & to read more about permalinks you can go here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

2) Creating a static home page

You will want to create a static WordPress home page for your site if you are aiming to use the site in an e-commerce style. This static page will usually contain information about your site, it will tell us what your site does and what is offers, you may also want to place some images on there as well. To add a static page is really simple. The first thing you need to do is go ahead and create your static WordPress page, now it doesn't matter if you don't have your content ready for that page yet you are just setting the page ready. So go ahead and do the following:

- Login to your WordPress admin area
- Click on the option on the left which says 'Pages' and then 'Add New'
- Enter your page title and enter your page content, you will then notice that   a 'Permalink' option has now appeared between the page title and the page content, this is where you can now specify what you want your page URL or   permalink to be by clicking the 'Edit' button.
- Once you have done this simply click 'Publish'.

Next...

- Click on the option on the left hand side which says 'Settings'
- Click on where it says 'Reading'
- Then in the content part of that page you will see an option which says 'A static page (select below) ', simply select your desired front page from the 'Front page' dropdown list and click on the save changes button.

That's it, you should now have a static home page to your WordPress affiliate site and your permalink structure is correctly set.

3) Recommended Plugins

Next there are a few plugins you should be using in your WordPress site as standard, these are:

- XML Sitemaps Plugin

This plugin allows you to easily build a sitemap for the search engine spiders to find their way around your WordPress site, this helps to get your site pages indexed in the search engines and consequently get visitors to your site.

- DDSitemap Generator

This plugin will generate a visual sitemap on a page of your WordPress site which is there purely for your visitors to help them find their way around your site.

- WordPress Spam FREE & Askiment

This plugin is helpful in blocking spam to your site, trust me once your site has been indexed in the search engines and starts to get traffic you will need some kind of spam blocker. WordPress Spam Free not only blocks spam to your site but it also allows you to build a simple spam friendly contact form for your site. I currently have this plugin installed right here on my own blog and it does a great job. ASkiment does a similar sort of thing but in order to use it you need a WordPress API Key which you can get from the link from the configuration screen of Askiment.

- All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is a great little tool and a must have on any blog. It's simple to install and configure and works straight out of the box, automatically generating meta tags for your site and titles for the search engines. All of which can be manually overridden.

- Sociable

Sociable adds buttons which link to social networking sites, these buttons are then used by visitors to bookmark your blog posts/pages which gets your site pages/posts indexed quicker as well as being a great source of traffic.

- WordPress Database Backup

For me this plugin is a must, no matter whatever else you do make sure you always backup, backup & backup. This plugin allows you to automatically set your site to send a database backup to your email address at intervals you choose. I set mine to send me backups every Sunday which I then store in a specific backup folder, this way I know that if any of my sites go down I have the core material needed to get them backup again.

- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

Pinging is a great feature of the WordPress platform which sends out a type of call to the blog directories and SE's everytime your site content is updated. The only problem with this though is that a ping is sent out when you schedule, edit or or publish a post and soon without realising it your site has been banned from the pinging services. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer solves this problems and ensures that the WordPress pinging service works correctly.

- WordPress Automatic Upgrade

This plugin is a great little plugin but I have found a few compatibility issues when it comes to adding plugins directly to your site via the new automatic install feature in your admin area, so for this reason I always keep it installed but deactivated for when I need it. The plugin makes it simple and easy to upgrade your WordPress blogs in just a few simple clicks.

Now, there are many other plugins you can install and which people will recommend you install but these are just the ones I always have installed on my sites when I first set them up.

I hope this post has been of some use to you if you are new to the whole WordPress affiliate site concept and I will look forward to seeing you all getting some of your sites up and running.

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