The inner workings of your Word Press website can be controlled within the settings section of your site. These settings control a wide range of aspects of the site including how many posts are displayed by default, the title and address of your site plus many more settings. The following section will go over the different sections located within settings and give an overview of these settings.

Plugins can add additional items into this menu which will not be covered in this tutorial. The following will also skip or combine some of the settings that do not require an explanation.

General

General settings that is specific to the entire website.

  • Site Title – The title of your site that will appear in the Browser title bar.
  • Tagline – A tag line is a short description of your website that can be used in the logos and titles, similar to a subtitle.
  • URL (Word Press and site address) – Enter the web address and the Word Press location. Usually these can be left as they are. If you moved your website to a new domain you would need to update  these addresses.
  • Email Address – An email address for the administrator of the website.
  • Membership – If you un-tick the box members will be unable to sign up to your website. Members are able to contribute to your site via comments and content if you allow them to.
  • Date and Time Settings – Ability to configure how the date and time are displayed on your website and change your time zone setting and the day that the week starts on.

Writing

The writing settings affect the way that you put information into your website.

  • Size of Post Box – Increase the amount of lines to make the editing box larger by default.
  • Formatting – Allows you to turn on and off features such as emoticons and the ability for the site to correct XHTML automatically.
  • Default Categories – Select the default categories for Posts and links and change the default format for your posts.
  • Press This – Press this will allow you to install an app into your browser that will allow you to quickly grab bits from the web and add them to you posts.
  • Post via e-mail – Word Press allows you to create posts by sending an email to a specific email address that you create as part of your hosting. These settings allow you to configure the mail server settings so that your website is able to retrieve these emails.
  • Remote Publishing – If you wish to publish to your blog from software on your computer such as Windows Live Writer you will need to enable it within this setting location first.
  • Update Services – Word Press can inform popular update services each time you update your blog. This can be enabled or disabled from within this location.

Reading

The reading settings are about how people get information from your website. You are able to configure the front page and how many posts are displayed by default from within this section.

  • Front Page Displays – Your front page can contain either posts (News) or alternatively your front page can contain static page. If you choose to display static content you can specify the page that you would like to display and the page that should then contain the post items.
  • Number to Display – The number of blog posts that are displayed on either the posts page or the RSS Syndication by default can be changed on this page.

Discussion

As Word Press was primarily designed as a blogging site visitor feedback is very important to the site. The discussion allows you to control the interaction between visitors and yourself as the site administrator. Remember that just because Word Press was originally created as a blogging platform doesn’t mean that your site has to adopt a similar attitude. You are free to create your site without interaction.

  • Default Article Settings – These settings allow you to turn on or off feedback features on a global level. If you wish to disable people from posting feedback onto your site this is the section you will need to change. These settings can be overridden on an individual post or page setting. (i.e. if you would like to create a discussion you can enable it for a specific item)
  • Other comment settings – controls other general comment settings such as what information is required from a person who wishes to leave feedback or if a user has be to registered to provide feedback and how long a person can comment on an article for.
  • Email me whenever – Controls when the site will email you regarding comments.
  • Before a comment appears – Controls the way that a site moderates feedback. You may wish to approve every comment, or alternative you may wish to approve users who are free to comment.
  • Comment Moderation and blacklist – feedback can be held for moderation if it meets specific criteria. I.e. if it contains more than 2 links to other websites or specific words or other criteria. Similar rules can be used to automatically deny feedback from appearing. I.e. if you notice that people are linking to an inappropriate website you can block feedback containing that address automatically.
  • Avatars – Avatars are images that follows you from website to website, they appear beside your name whenever you comment. These settings will allow you to configure avatars and related settings.

Media

Media settings allow you to control the way that media is displayed within your website.

  • Image sizes – Control the size of thumbnails, medium and large image displays within your website. This is handy if you would like all images within your website to display at the same size.
  • Embeds – Control the ability to embed media from external sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc.) into your site.
  • Uploading Files – Often you can leave these settings alone as they will be automatically set correctly. These settings can be used to store content in a non-default location etc.

Privacy

Privacy contains only one setting which is if you would like your website to be searchable by search engines or not. This setting is best turned off until your site is ready for launch. Once the content etc. has been added you can then turn on the ability for your search engines to search your site.

Permalinks

By default Word Press uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them; however Word Press offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links A number of predefined settings are available to you, you are able to customise this by using the available tags at this website.http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks These settings should not be changed on a regular basis. Changing Permalinks on a regular basis can break the way that other sites (including Google) link to your website.