WordPress for beginners training – Lesson 3.

Settings

Table of contents
Learning objectives

1. The WordPress settings

2. General

3. Writing

4. Reading

5. Discussion

6. Media

7. Permalinks

8. Privacy

Key takeaways

Learning objectives
In this lesson, you’ll learn:
● which settings WordPress offers;
● how you can customize your site with the settings that WordPress
offers.

1. The WordPress settings

When you start with WordPress, you’ll probably want to brand your website
and give it a personal touch. Eager to start customizing your website? The
settings menu in WordPress is a great place to start!

To access the WordPress settings, simply go to the Settings menu item in the
admin menu (Image 1). When you click the Settings menu item, it expands,
showing the types of settings: General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media,
Permalinks, and Privacy. Let’s explore them one by one.

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Image 1: The WordPress settings

2. General
The General settings, as its name suggests, allow you to edit the general
settings of your site, such as the title, the URL, and date and time. We’ll
explain these settings one by one. It’s important to know that you have to
click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to save any
changes you’ve made to these settings.

● Site title
Here, you can fill in the name of your site. Most themes will display
your site title at the top of every page. The site title is also displayed
in the browser title bar.

Image 2: Site title settings in WordPress

● Tagline
Your site’s tagline consists of a few words that describe the essence
of your site. This could be your site’s slogan, but also just a short
phrase or sentence in which you explain what your site is about.

Image 3: Tagline settings in WordPress

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 ● WordPress address (URL)
In this field, you enter the full URL of the directory in which you
installed WordPress and thus where your WordPress files are stored.
Usually, WordPress is installed in the root directory of your site
(https://site.com). This URL is filled in automatically, so if this is the
case, you don’t have to change anything.

Image 4: WordPress address settings in WordPress

● Site address (URL)

The other URL you can fill in is the site address. This is the URL you
want people to type in their browser to reach your site. Of course,
this can only be an address of the domain you registered for this
WordPress site.

Image 5: Site address settings in WordPress

● Email address
You can enter the email address you want WordPress to send
messages to regarding the administration and maintenance of your
site, for example, when new users register as a member of your site.

Image 6: Email address settings in WordPress

● Membership
If you want anyone to be able to register an account on your site,
you can check the box next to Membership. With this setting
enabled, people will be able to register through the login screen.

Image 7: Membership settings in WordPress

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 ● New user default role
In WordPress, there are various roles you can assign to your site’s
users. We’ll tell you about these different roles in more detail later in
this course. For now, it’s enough to know that you can keep the
Subscriber option if you plan to allow anyone to register on your site.
Subscribers don’t have any administrative rights on your site, while
contributors, authors, editors, and administrators have more rights.
This ranges from simply being able to write posts in the back end
(contributor) to full control of the back end (administrator).

Image 8: New user default role settings in WordPress

● Site language
This option allows you to change the language of the WordPress
back end and front end. If you change the site language, default
widget names, theme strings, etc. on the front end change as well.

Image 9: Site language settings in WordPress

● Timezone
You can set the timezone you are in. You can either select a city in
the same timezone as you or a UTC timezone offset.

Image 10: Timezone settings in WordPress

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 ● Date format
The date format is the format in which dates are displayed on your
site.

Image 11: Date format settings in WordPress

● Time format
The time format is the format in which the time is displayed on your
site.

Image 12: Time format settings in WordPress

● Week starts on
This option allows you to select your preferred start day when you
are using a calendar widget from the WordPress core. Monday is the
default setting. This means that a monthly calendar will show a
Monday in the first column.

Image 13: Week starts on settings in WordPress

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3. Writing
Let’s continue to the writing settings. These settings allow you to control
things that have to do with writing and editing posts. Let’s explore these
settings one by one. Keep in mind that you have to click the Save Changes
button at the bottom of the page to save any changes you’ve made to these
settings.

● Default post category

The default post category settings allow you to pick a category that
WordPress uses by default in cases when, for example, you’ve
forgotten to assign a category to a post, or if you’ve deleted a
category that already contained posts. If you click the drop-down
menu, you’ll see the list of categories you already have. The default
category for this option is Uncategorized.

Image 14: Default post category settings in WordPress

● Default post format

Themes can use post formats to create different styling for different
types of posts. This option allows you to choose a default post
format. For example, if you have a blog where you post a daily quote,
you can set the quote option as default and have your posts appear
as quotes.

Note that for this setting to work, your theme has to support it. This
means you may still see this setting, but if your theme doesn’t
support a default post format, you won’t be able to use it. That does
not mean that you will have to install different themes until you find
one with a default post format. Instead, when searching for a theme
you can use the Post format filter.

Image 15: Default post format settings in WordPress

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 ● Post via email
This option is somewhat advanced. It allows you to set up your blog
to publish emails as blog posts. To do this, you have to create a very
secret email account, as every mail received at this address will be
posted on your blog. So, you have to create an email account just for
this purpose. Your web host and/or your email provider may help
you with this. If you’ve created an account, you can fill in the account
details here.

This feature is useful when you want to publish content even when
you can’t access your website. For example, when you’re in a country
where a website is blocked by a government. Or when you’re in an
area with little internet connectivity.

Image 16: Post via email settings in WordPress

● Update services
These settings allow you to let others know when you post new
content on your site. When you enter site update services (tools you
can use to let other people know you've updated your blog) in this
box, WordPress will automatically notify them when you publish a
new post.

There’s one default URL: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. That’s the

default update service. If you click on the Update Services link above
the box, you can access a list of other ping services.

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 Image 17: Update services settings in WordPress

4. Reading
Next up: the reading settings. These settings allow you to control how your
posts are displayed on your site. Let’s explore the settings one by one.
Remember that you have to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of
the page to save any changes you’ve made to these settings.

● Your homepage displays

The first option allows you to choose what is displayed on your
homepage. It’s important to think about what you want your visitors
to see when they first open your site. Do you want to show them a
static page, for example, a page filled with information about your
company? Or do you want to show them your most recent posts on
your blog?

Image 18: Your homepage displays settings in WordPress

● Blog pages show at most … posts

This option allows you to set the number of posts that your blog
pages show.

Image 19: Blog pages show at most settings in WordPress

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 ● Syndication feeds show the most recent … items
This option allows you to set the number of items syndication feeds
will show.

Image 20: Syndication feeds show settings in WordPress

● For each article in a feed, show full text/summary

You can also choose if you want to show the full text or just the
summary in syndication feeds.

Image 21: For each article in a feed, show settings in WordPress

● Search engine visibility

The last setting on this screen has to do with your site’s visibility for
search engines. If you want search engines to find your site and put
it in their index, so other people can find your site through the
search engines, you should leave this box unchecked. Check the box
if you don’t want search engines to index your site. Note that
checking this box is a request to search engines to not get indexed.
However, they may not always honor your request. Moreover,
people, as well as bots will still be able to read your webpage.

Image 22: Search engine visibility settings in WordPress

5. Discussion
The discussion settings page has to do with various comment settings.
Remember to click Save Changes at the bottom of the page to save any
changes you’ve made to these settings. Now, let’s dive in!

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 ● Default article settings
The default article settings consist of three checkboxes (Image 23).
The first two settings are related to ‘pings’. Pings are basically just
notifications.

Image 23: Default article settings in WordPress

Checking the first box means that you want to notify sites that you
have linked to in your post. Checking the second box means that you
allow other sites to notify you if they link to your site. These
notifications show up in the comment section of the blog that you
have linked to, provided that they have allowed other sites to be able
to notify them. The third box has to do with commenting in general.
Check this box if you wish to allow people to comment on your
posts.

Note that these settings can be overridden for individual articles.

● Other comment settings

There are more comment settings, grouped under ‘other comment
settings’. These settings pretty much speak for themselves, but there
are a few things you should be aware of. If you check the first box,
then people who write comments on your posts have to fill out their
name and email. This also goes for the second box. If you check this
one, people have to be registered and logged in to comment. Note
that this option will only work if you have enabled registration in the
General settings.

Another one that needs some clarification is the option to show

comments cookie opt-in checkbox. If you check this one, it means
that the cookies of the author of the comment will be saved.

You can also choose whether you want to have threaded

comments, and you can decide how deep they should go. This
means people can reply to a comment directly, regardless of when

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 the original comment was posted, and your comment will appear
just below the original comment.

Image 24: Default article settings in WordPress

● Email me whenever
Here, you can choose whether you want to be notified by email
when someone posts a comment or when a comment is held for
moderation.

Image 25: Email me whenever settings in WordPress

● Before a comment appears

With this option, you can choose whether comments on your site
must be manually approved. If that’s too much work, you can also
select the option that a comment author must have a previously
approved comment. When you select this option, authors with one
or more previously approved comments will have their new
comments approved automatically.

Image 26: Before a comment appears settings in WordPress

● Comment moderation
To further help you with moderation, WordPress also has the option
to hold off comments that contain a lot of links. Change the default
number of links, to the number you desire by typing the number
here. In the box below this option, you can type in the words, names,

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 URLs, email addresses, or IP addresses that you want to be queued
for approval before they appear on your site.

Image 27: Comment moderation settings in WordPress

● Comment blacklist
If you want to completely ban words, names, URLs, emails, or IP
addresses, you can blacklist them. With this option, those comments
will automatically be considered as spam and they will not appear in
your queue, nor on your site.

Image 28: Comment blacklist settings in WordPress

● Avatars
The last option on this screen has to do with avatars. Avatars are the
little photos or illustrations people use as a profile picture. Here, you
can enable the display of avatars for users of your site. So, this is
what you (and your visitors) see for people who comment on your
blog. The avatars show up next to comments. One of the options
here is to use Gravatars – short for Globally Recognized Avatars.

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 Image 29: Default avatar settings in WordPress

6. Media
Now, let’s explore the next tab: the media settings. Remember that you have
to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to save any
changes you’ve made to these settings. Here we go!

● Image sizes
When you upload an image, WordPress automatically saves a copy of
that image in four different sizes: original, thumbnail (very small),
medium, and large. These settings allow you to edit those sizes. Why
would you want to do that? Well, there could be a certain image size
that you’d want to use very often.

For example, if you know that in your posts, you like to use an image
of 300 x 600 pixels because it fits the way you want to structure the
text around the image. In that case, you could make the standard
dimension for medium images 300 x 600 pixels, and you’d be able to
very easily use the medium size and add images to your posts quite
quickly.

For each of these sites, you can set maximum dimensions in pixels.
So by default, a thumbnail is 150 x 150 pixels. For thumbnails, there’s
an extra box that allows you to decide whether an image should be
exactly that dimension. If so, WordPress will cut off part of the image
to fit the dimensions. If not, it will scale the original image

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 proportionally. For thumbnails, we’d advise you to leave this box
checked. Note that some themes and plugins create additional
image sizes.

Image 30: Image sizes settings in WordPress

● Uploading files
The Uploading files option is about managing your media library. If
you leave it checked, WordPress will create folders for every month
and year. This makes it easier to browse through images, so we’d
advise you to leave this on unless you have good reasons not to.

Image 31: Uploading files settings in WordPress

7. Permalinks
The next tab we’re going to explore is the permalinks settings tab. The same
thing applies here: to save any changes you’ve made to these settings, you
have to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Let’s first discuss what permalinks are. A permalink is basically the full URL
of your post or page. URLs should be readable and meaningful to your

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users. Therefore, it’s important to consider what URL structure fits your
website. Let’s dive into the settings.

● Common settings
The common settings allow you to choose from six different URL
structures. On this screen, the URL that will show is visible for each
structure.

A custom structure is usually a good option because it allows you to

pick what’s best for you. The boxes with percentages and a word
indicate so-called variables. So, for the ‘year’ variable, the URL will
show the year in which the post was published. And for the ‘category’
variable, the URL will feature the category the post was in.

Image 32: Common permalink settings in WordPress

● Optional
In addition to common settings, there are also optional settings.
Here, you can change something for very specific pages: your
category and tag archive pages. These pages are automatically
created when you create a category or tag. They are basically a list of
all the posts that are in a certain category or tag. With this setting,
you can change their URLs.

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 Image 33: Optional permalink settings in WordPress

8. Privacy
The last tab we’re going to discuss in this lesson is the privacy settings tab.
Here, you can edit your privacy policy. There’s a template that WordPress
provides for you which covers some important stuff, but it’s incomplete and
may need additions on your part. WordPress has set up some headings
about topics it simply can’t provide information on because that’s up to you.
It’s wise to check the regulations in the country you’re in and see if your
privacy policy complies. Luckily, the page features some links to helpful
suggestions. You can also choose to create your privacy policy from scratch.

Image 34: Privacy policy settings in WordPress

Key takeaways
● In this lesson, we’ve explored how you can customize your site
with the settings WordPress offers. You can access these settings
through the admin menu in your WordPress back end.

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