Settings: WordPress Guide

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Satish Kumar in WordPress Guide

The various Settings screens are used to configure your WordPress site. Normally, once your WordPress site is set up there’s no reason to change any of these settings. These Settingsoptions will only be touched upon very briefly. You can find out lots more information in regards to configuring your site within the WordPress Codex.

1. General:

The General settings configure your basic site preferences such as the Site Title & Tag Line, the WordPress Address & Site Address and the date and time format, among other things.

2. Writing:

The Writing settings configure various options with regards to writing your site content. Settings include defining the default size of the Post Box (ie. The height of the Visual editor), the default Post Category, Post Format (if supported by your Theme) and Link Category and publishing options.

If you plan on creating Posts from a desktop blogging client or an application on a mobile device such as an Apple iPad, you may need to enable the Atom Publishing Protocol or the XML-RPC publishing interface on this screen.

3. Reading:

The Reading settings define how your site is viewed. You can define whether your front page displays a static Page or your blog Posts, how many blog posts are displayed by default as well as Syndication/RSS options. If you configure your site to display a static front page, you can set which page to display and also which page will show your blog posts.

4. Discussion:

The Discussion settings define how your readers interact with your site and how your site interacts with other blogs. You can configure Pingbacks and Trackbacks, whether readers can post Comments or not and if so, how those Comments are moderated and displayed on your site.

This screen also lets you configure whether the Post Author should be emailed whenever someone posts a comment on your site. If you are receiving emails whenever someone posts a comment, simply uncheck the box next to Anyone posts a comment within the E-mail me whenever section on this screen and then save your changes.

If you would like to be notified whenever a comment is held for moderation, it can be configured on this screen as well within the E-mail me whenever section. The email notification is sent to the email address listed in the Settings > General SubPanel.

5. Media:

The Media settings define default image sizes that are created when an image is uploaded along with the location where those images are uploaded and how they are categorised.

6. Privacy:

The privacy setting enables you to block your site from search engines or allow it to be visible.

7. Permalinks:

The Permalink settings enable you to configure the URL format that is displayed in the web browser when someone browses your site. By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them however you can change this so that the URL is more “user friendly”. This also helps considerably with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). To change the way your site URL is displayed simply select one of the radio button options within the Common Settings section on this screen. Next to each option is an example of how the URL would be displayed.