From the WordPress dashboard, locate the Settings menu. If we hover over this menu, you’ll see a submenu appear with options for various WordPress settings including:
• General
• Writing
• Reading
• Discussion
• Media
• Permalinks
WordPress General Settings
To get started, expand the WordPress settings menu. Click General Settings.
The first thing you’ll notice in General Settings is your Site Title and Tagline. You’ll want to make sure these titles match your site because your site title will be visible in Google search results. By default, WordPress includes “just another WordPress site” as your site’s tagline. You’ll probably want to update this tagline to be descriptive of your site, because the site tagline will also show up in Google search results for your site.
The next section is the WordPress Address (URL). For the site address URL, you can enter the URL address if you want your site homepage to be different from the directory where you installed WordPress. In most cases, it’s best to leave these two URLs alone.
Next you’ll see the E-mail Address that’s used for admin purposes, like new user notifications.
Next are settings for Membership. With WordPress, you can allow anyone to register for your site.
The New User Default Role is by default set to subscriber. You’ll probably want to leave this setting, since you don’t want to grant administration privileges to just anyone that registers for your site.
Next is Timezone. Scroll through the list to select the city in the same timezone as you then select your preferred date format. Keep in mind this date format will be visible on blog posts. If you have any questions about this format, you can check out the documentation on date and time formatting by clicking the link below this section.
The next three areas Date Format, Time Format and Week Starts On, allow you to customize your date and time settings.
Last is Site Language. You can select your language from the drop down list. Once you’ve updated or change these settings, click Save changes.
WordPress Writing Settings
Next up are Writing Settings. From the left-hand navigation menu, click to open the Writing Settings page. All of the settings on this page apply to writing and publishing content for your site. The top section controls the editor within the WordPress dashboard, while the rest control external publishing methods.
In the first section, you’ll see options for formatting, including settings for default post category and default post format. When you make your selection in these dropdowns, new posts will automatically have the selected category or post format applied. Post formats are simply a way WordPress can format your posts, depending on if your theme provides styling for that particular format. We’ll cover more on categories in a later chapter.
The next section is the Post via e-mail section. The Post via email settings allow you to send an email to your site with post content. To use this, you’ll need to set up a secret e-mail account with a POP3 access, and any mail received at this address will be posted. For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep this address secret.
The last section is for update services. When you publish a new post, WordPress will automatically notify the update services listed here. For more information, check out the Update Services link in this section.
Again, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen for your new settings to take effect.
WordPress Reading Settings
Now it’s time for Reading Settings. This screen contains the settings that affect the display of your site’s content.
From here, you can choose what the front page displays, either your latest posts or a fixed/static page. Once you’ve created a few pages, those pages will be listed in the dropdown as options for your front page and where to display your posts.
In the next section, you can set the number of pages your blog pages show at most. This setting will limit the number of posts shown on a single page of your blog, before a user has to use a “previous” or “next” link to see more posts.
The next section is where you can control the display of your content in RSS feeds, including the number of recent items syndication feeds show and whether to show full text or a summary.
The last section is for search engine visibility. If you’d like search engines to ignore your site, click the checkbox next to Discourage search engines from indexing this site. This might be a helpful setting if you’re currently developing your site and you’re not ready for it to be indexed by search engines.
Click the Save Changes at the bottom of the screen to update these changes.
